UB's new Board of Trustees

This month we're proud to announce our brand new board. Joining the Unfinished Business team will be Phil Mackenzie, Jan Ryan, Hen Norton, Hardish Virk, Nicola Turner and Ansuman Biswas.

In true UB style, we'll all be getting together next week for a chaotic cook-up at our Stoke Newington studio to welcome them into the fold.

We feel incredibly lucky to have found a group of artists, creators and producers that support our vision and who hold between them an untold wealth of experience in the arts and beyond.

Full profiles will be online soon, but in the mean time - drum roll please - here's the line-up.

Phil Mackenzie (Chair)
Back in the 80s, Phil was one half of the internationally renowned dance theatre company MANACT. Leo and Phil first met twelve-years ago, when Leo performed in his production ‘Circelation’ - a minimal techno version of Tarzan, performed for 3000 people a night at the 2001 Dubai Shopping Festival. Since then Phil has played an integral role in transforming Cardiff’s artistic landscape, where he currently runs the Artist Development programme at the Sherman Theatre.

Ansuman Bizwas
Ansuman is a mercurial creator whose myriad projects combine gripping content and innovative form. A truly international interdisciplinary artist, Ansuman works across mediums to create an incredibly diverse range of projects; from running seminars on democracy for monks in a Burmese monastery, to flying on a real magic carpet in Star City, Moscow. Ansuman and Leo met recently over a 'DIY artist's meal', where they found common ground in both their creative preoccupations and their choice of salad dressings.

Hen Norton
Hen is an artist and an independent creative producer with an interest in facilitating creativity and environments for debate and discussion. Over the last few years she’s worked internationally as a consultant and producer and with Motiroti, TED | TEDx, Arts Council England and the Bristish Council, alongside various personal projects. She is also the co-founder one of the UK’s first crowd funding sites, wedidthis.org.uk. We met Hen working with writer and producer John Kieffer and immediately became excited about working with her.

Jan Ryan
Jan is the mastermind behind the world-renowned production company UK Arts International. Having produced and toured a veritable hit list of internationally acclaimed work, including Ragamuffin and Township Stories, UKAI currently have twelve projects underway and counting. Leo first worked with Jan touring with Kaos Theatre in the mid-90s, when UKAI booked them an extraordinary 50-gig tour across the UK, Europe, Australia, and Taiwan.

Nicola Turner
Nicola runs the hugely successful arts consultancy NT Creative Arts Ltd. They specialise in supporting artistic leaders working internationally and currently lead projects for Creative Scotland, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the British Council. She was previously the Assistant Director for the Cultural Leadership Programme (CLP), where she worked with Diane Morgan, our company consultant, who introduced us to Nicola.

Hardish Virk
Hardish is an expert in audience development, marketing and PR within the arts and cultural sector. Over the last twenty-years he's delivered projects for a huge range of heritage, festival, visual, dance, music and theatre organisations and practitioners across the UK and Europe. Leo and Hardish have crossed paths several times over the past few years - this will be the first time they've struck up a working relationship.