Arts Council of Wales' members are appointed by the Welsh Government’s Deputy Minister for Culture and Sport. Members normally serve for a period of three years and may be reappointed for a further three-year period.
Maggie Russell, Arts Council of Wales Chair
Maggie Russell was appointed Chair of the Arts Council of Wales in April 2023.
She has over 40 years experience at all levels of the arts, cultural heritage and creative industries in a Welsh, UK, and international context. Her career has been rich and varied including experimental physical theatre, working with the community, producing large scale music events, running venues and over 15 years as a multi award winning producer of film and television. For BBC Wales she was part of the Senior management team, ran the drama department and was Head of Talent. Maggie was brought up in Llanrumney, Cardiff, graduated from Warwick University and more recently completed a Post Graduate Professional training as a Psychotherapist.
She is motivated by a lived experience that arts can make a difference in people’s lives and a professional observation of how powerful that difference can be culturally, socially and economically.
She is committed to widening access, nurturing talent, developing work of the highest quality and reflecting the culture and arts of Wales to all its people and beyond its borders.
Alison Mears Esswood
Alison has over 20 years’ experience in music education in both the school and conservatoire sectors. Currently she is Director of Guildhall Young Artists and Safeguarding at Guildhall School of Music & Drama with responsibility for all the specialist training at under 18 level in Music, Drama and Production Arts. This includes Junior Guildhall, Centre for Young Musicians in London and 4 Regional Centres and the London Schools Symphony Orchestra. Prior to this she has held other management posts at Guildhall School including Head of Junior Guildhall and was made a Fellow of Guildhall School in 2017.
In Wales, Alison was Joint Artistic Director of the Lower Machen Festival involved in all matters artistic and operational taking the Festival to its 50th Anniversary year in 2017. She taught at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama Junior Department and worked in a freelance capacity in many arts organisations in Cardiff. She was also a member of the BBC National Chorus of Wales for 10 years.
Devinda De Silva
Devinda has over 20 years’ experience working within the field of social change. He has worked in partnership with communities across Wales and internationally, focusing on the arts and its ability to address inequality, and to encourage greater and more meaningful participation.
He is one of National Theatre Wales’ founding members. As its Head of Collaboration, he has led the creation and development of the TEAM programme – the company’s pioneering approach to engagement.
He currently holds advisory positions at the Baring Foundation and Cardiff and Vale College.
Gwennan Mair Jones
Gwennan Mair is the Director of Creative Engagement at Theatr Clwyd and is a trained Drama Facilitator and Director. Gwennan’s passion for community arts and engagement came at a young age growing up in rural Llan Ffestiniog. At 18 she studied Community Drama at LIPA (Liverpool Institution of Performing Arts). She returned back to North Wales as part of Anglesey based theatre company Frân Wen. Her passion drives her to lead on the community work for Theatr Clwyd; increasing their delivery of the Welsh language within intergenerational workshops, creating resilient relationships with partnerships for example social services and she is training the next generation of Welsh facilitators. Community and accessibility is the heart of all of Gwennan’s work and how through the Arts we can provide opportunity for change within communities.
Lhosa Daly
Lhosa is the National Trust’s Assistant Director of Operations for South Wales. She was formerly Executive Director of Spike Island, a creative hub in Bristol.
At Spike Island, she had overall responsibility for operations, commercial activity, visitor services, finance and fundraising.
Prior to Spike, Lhosa was Head of Development at Turner Contemporary, Margate.
Lhosa is the Chair of the Institute of Directors in Bristol; Vice Chair, Creative and Digital for the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership; Trustee of Avon & Bristol Law Centre and a South West representative for Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education.
Lhosa is qualified as a lawyer in both the UK and New York. She originally studied Law at Manchester University before working for some of the world’s largest professional service organisations. These include: Andersen Legal, Manchester; Herbert Smith, London; Ernst & Young, New York and since returning to the UK, KPMG and Ernst & Young in Bristol.
Sarah Younan
Sarah was born in Germany, raised in Kenya and worked in art restoration, theatre and stage design in Germany, France and the Netherlands. She moved to Wales in 2009 to study ceramics. Thanks to an AHRC doctoral studentship Sarah graduated with a PhD from Cardiff School of Art and Design in 2015. Her research focused on the use of digitised heritage collections from museums as creative, educational and open culture resources.
Sarah has exhibited art in the UK and internationally and worked in the museum sector in France and Turkey. She is passionate about creating opportunities through culture and currently works as Youth Engagement Coordinator
Tudur Hallam
Professor Tudur Hallam is Chair of Welsh at Swansea University where he has twenty years’ experience as a lecturer and researcher. He is an academic author and poet. In 2010, he won the Chair at the National Eisteddfod and this year will publish a volume of poems. He has published widely on Welsh literature and theatre and on the relationship of Welsh and English in Wales, including a commissioned piece on Dylan Thomas and Saunders Lewis for the British Academy. He recently joined the University of Houston as a Research Visiting Professor, developing comparative work in biculturalism, thanks to a fellowship by the Fulbright Commission. He is from Carmarthenshire and lives there with his family. Locally he is a school governor and a youth football coach in the Gwendraeth Valley.
Victoria Provis
A native of Cardiff, Victoria studied at Atlantic College before moving abroad to take a BA (Hons) in Economics at the University of British Columbia and an MBA at INSEAD in France. Following a career spanning corporate communications (Burson-Marsteller), strategic consulting (McKinsey & Company) and executive search (Odgers Berndtson, London and Cardiff), Victoria has more recently developed a portfolio of non-executive roles. These include terms as a Member of Glas Cymru, Board member of the Wales Tourism Advisory Board and Trustee of Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales (2010-March 2019) where she also chaired the Museum’s Development Board throughout the period of the highly successful St Fagans redevelopment project. She is currently a Council Member of the University of Wales TSD.
Prue Thimbleby
Prue Thimbleby has been leading the Arts & Heritage Team at Swansea Bay Health Board since 2012. During that time the team has grown from two to seven part-time staff who deliver an extensive Arts programme. The programme includes employing Artists to work on new buildings and refurbishments, large scale heritage exhibitions, drama projects for staff wellbeing and dance for falls prevention.
As part of her role Prue has established an extensive digital patient story programme and trained NHS staff across the UK as story facilitators. Prue has personally facilitated many patient stories which have improved healthcare, including – transforming incident reporting, improving cancer pathways across Wales and helping people find resolutions to complaints. She convened a series of international conferences called Storytelling for Health which have now become an ongoing biannual event across the world.
Prior to leading the Arts in Health work, Prue was a freelance Artist and Arts manager for 20 years and prior to that she was a nurse and a midwife. Her previous projects range from being Arts Director of one of the UK Cultural Olympiad projects in 2012; to creating large scale willow sculptures; to developing a lively Community Arts centre.
Elen Ap Robert
Elen ap Robert has been working in the Arts for over thirty years, as a professional opera singer, a member of Live Music Now Wales and as a music therapist practising in educational and health settings in her early career. In 2005 she became the first artistic director of Galeri Caernarfon and subsequently the first artistic director of Pontio, Bangor University between 2012 and 2019. She now works as an Arts Consultant, and has advised and reported on the development of Welsh language arts activity. She has significant experience in governance and communications. Brought up in Cardiff as a fluent Welsh speaker, she lives with her family in Felinheli, Gwynedd and passionately believes in the power of the arts to transform all our lives. Elen is on the Board of Directors of Welsh National Opera and chairs the artistic panel of the National Eisteddfod.
Ruth Fabby MBE
Ruth Fabby [formerly Gould until October 2019] is the Director of Disability Arts Cymru (DAC) since August 2019. Now residing in Cardiff, Ruth is leading the organisation to support a creative and equal Cymru where disabled and Deaf people are pivotal to the arts of the nation.
Previously she was the founder and Artistic Director of DaDaFest, one of the most successful disability arts festivals in the world.
Ruth initially trained in performance arts, speech and drama at Liverpool Theatre School, and has worked in the arts / disability arts all her professional life.
Ruth sees disability rights as human rights and is a passionate and knowledgeable speaker.
Ceri Ll Davies
Ceri attended Cantonian High School in Cardiff and read Music at Oxford University.
She has significant experience of arts education and the use of technology in the arts, having worked in Social Action, Community Music and Creative Learning through the arts. During 15 years at BBC Learning, she also produced award-winning interactive content in English and Welsh – including arts propositions - and as an Executive Producer led interdisciplinary teams across the UK.
Ceri believes that active participation and engagement though the arts are life-enhancing at every level.
Jacob Gough
Born in Aberystwyth Jacob started his career at Aberystwyth Arts Centre as a technician. In 2007 he made his first journey to Palestine where he volunteered with a human rights group and worked alongside ambulance crews. After returning to Aberystwyth for a year he left his job and moved back to join ‘The Freedom Theatre’, an NGO in Jenin Refugee Camp specialising in theatre and media for young people. Here Jacob established a technical training programme for theatre and worked as their Production manager, managing all their productions and international touring.
In 2014 Jacob gained a Masters in Disaster Management. That same year after working as a freelancer for National Theatre Wales he became their full-time production manager, he delivered some of NTWs most memorable shows including Mametz, City of The Unexpected and The Tide Whisperer. At NTW he was able to build on his passion for sustainability and access developing systems to enhance both.
In 2019 he left NTW to join Coventry City of Culture as Production Director, one of the SMT and in charge of delivery of the year long programme. As well as leading on production for the festival he also led the organisations work on sustainability.
July 2021 Jacob was asked to take up a senior role for Collective Cymru, becoming the Exec Director. Collective Cymru was a cross sector partnership brought together to bid and deliver a large-scale commission by Welsh Government as part of UNBOXED. The production GALWAD played out over 7 days at the end of September 2022.
With GALWAD over, Jacob has set up his own Creative & Production Consultancy company called Deryncoch, delivering consultancy and project management across a number of areas including operational systems and sustainability and his current clients include Leeds and Bradford Culture Trusts and Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru.