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Councillor Tim Rippon, Chair of Culture and Sport Partnership Board

Tim was elected onto Council in October 2000. He is currently the Cabinet Member for Economic Regeneration, Culture and Planning. Tim recently completed an MSc Urban Regeneration, he works for South Yorkshire Housing Association and is a part-time lecturer on Urban Regeneration and Planning at Sheffield Hallam University, as well as doing consultancy work on Regeneration.

Member of Yorkshire and Humber Assembly, Board Member for Creative Sheffield, Director of: Sheffield Galleries & Museums Trust; Sheffield City Trust and Sheffield Science Park and Sheffield Theatres Trust. Member of various community organisations including Norfolk Park Development Trust and Norfolk Park Regeneration Board.

Interests include: walking; mountaineering; mountain biking; nano-technology; travel; reading and going to theatre.

Ann Gosse, PhD, M.SocSii, FRSA, CLOA, MILAM

Dr Ann Gosse, Director of Culture for Sheffield City Council, and Chair of Chief Culture and Leisure Officer’s Association, CLOA. Ann is responsible for the strategic direction and development of Culture for Sheffield through the creation and delivery of the ‘Sheffield Culture Strategy’. Areas encompassing Culture include Sport, Libraries, Museums, Archives, Heritage, Events, Arts, Creative Industries and Cultural Tourism. The Director is responsible for the direct delivery of Libraries, Arts and Sports programmes and works in partnership with the major Cultural Trusts in the City including Sheffield International Venues, Sheffield Museum and Art Gallery and Sheffield Theatres and the Cultural Industries Quarter Agency together with a wide range on independent producing companies to deliver a comprehensive programme and provide world class Cultural facilities.

David Gent

David Gent was born in Toronto Canada and moved to the UK aged 8 years. He attended Carnegie College Leeds and was the youngest chair of an Olympic governing body of sport (BCU) at age 28 years. David has been Regional Director for Sport England in Yorkshire for 5 years. His early career was in local government in the field of High Performance and Community Sport. David is a life-long Derby County supporter.

Kate Dore

Kate Dore is the Director of Yorkshire ArtSpace Society and has been with the company since 1992. Since 1995 Kate has led the Society’s development programme which included the opening of Persistence Works, the UK’s first purpose built art and craft studio complex, in 2001. Persistence Works has won a number of major architectural awards and Kate was nominated for the Client of the Year Award in 2002 for her part in the project.

Kate is a Trustee of the newly created National Federation of Artists’ Studio Providers, the first body to represent the sector in the UK.

Nick Dodd

Nicholas Dodd is the Chief Executive of Sheffield Galleries & Museums Trust and is responsible for the new Millennium Galleries, the Graves Art Gallery, Weston Park Museum, Bishops House, the Ruskin Collection and the designated collection of metalwork. He is also Lead Director of the Yorkshire Hub and a national board member of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). Nick was, until September 06, a Trustee of the National Heritage Memorial Fund/Heritage Lottery Fund for 6 years.

From 1994-2002 he was Director of Wolverhampton Arts and Museums, and in that time the Service achieved a number of prestigious awards for access and including Museum of the Year for Fine Art, the Gulbenkian prize and two Artworks awards for creative work with schools. An innovative IT strategy underpinned outreach to schools and life long learners. Nick has also worked in museums in Coventry, Maidstone, London and Ironbridge as well as archaeological sites in Iran, Italy and Britain.

He is a member of the Museums Association, on the executive of the Visual Art and Galleries Association, the Campaign for Learning in Museums and Galleries, the English Art Museum Directors Conference and a founder member of the Group for Larger Local Authority Museums. He represents Yorkshire on the Renaissance in the Regions Hub Lead Partners group and the city’s museums on the Sheffield Culture Board. He sits on the court of the University of Sheffield.

Margaret Bennett

Margaret is currently Director of Communications and Partnerships at the Quality Improvement Agency for Lifelong Learning. She was previously the Deputy Director in the Lifelong Learning and Skills Directorate, DfES. From 1996- 2001 she was Chief Executive of the National Library for the Blind and was involved in many national and international library committees, championing equality and access to library and information services. She has also been Assistant Director at North West Arts - the Regional Arts Board (now Arts Council England, North West), Finance Director at West Midlands Arts, and Central Services Director at Nottingham Community Housing Association. Margaret began her career as a chartered accountant. Margaret is currently the Chair of SMEC, the group of companies that run the Showroom Cinema and Workstation and has been on the board of Yorkshire Arts.

Katz Kiely

Katz Kiely is founding director of Just-b. Productions. The company commissions interactive projects, designs interactive projects, provides knowledge transfer, networking opportunities and consultancy to the digital industries
An expert in the dynamic areas between the media industries, technology and digital creativity, Katz was responsible for the b.PLAYFUL and b.tv 2001 Creative Convergence Forums. She acted as executive producer for the award winning Hands Across the Ocean, a live distributed performance across five continents. She was also pivotal in the Shooting Live Artists commissioning scheme, a unique partnership between the Arts Council, BBC and Studio of the North. One of the 12 commissioned projects, Can U See me Now by Blast Theory/Mixed Reality Labs, won the prestigious Ars Electronica prize for innovation, was short listed for the BAFTA interactive prize and has been showcased around the globe.

Deborah Chadbourn

Deborah Chadbourn has over 20 years experience setting-up, managing and producing work for a variety of cultural organisations across the performing and digital arts including Sheffield based Forced Entertainment, Access Space and Site Gallery. She has worked on a number of developmental projects, and guided organisations through their transition from small scale to internationally renowned touring companies playing the festival circuits in Europe and touring to Australia and USA. After working freelance, specialising in organisational development, Deborah became Development Director for Danceworks UK in 2006.

An active member of several boards and committees since 1995, including the Combined Arts Panel of Arts Council England, Yorkshire, Deborah currently serves on the boards of Forced Entertainment and Vincent Dance Theatre (chair), as well as being the Creative and Digital Industries representative on Sheffield First’s Culture Board.

Professor Jeremy Till

Jeremy Till is Professor of Architecture and Director of Architecture at the University of

Sheffield, where he has established an internationally leading reputation in educational theory and practice. His written work has been widely published, including the recent book -Architecture and Participation and forthcoming Architecture and Contingency. As an architect, he is a Director in Sarah Wigglesworth Architects best known for their pioneering building, 9 Stock Orchard Street (The Straw House and Quilted Office), which has received extensive international acclaim and multiple awards. He is Chair of the RIBA Awards Group. In 2006 he was appointed, following an open competition, to represent Britain at the Venice Architecture Biennale, presenting a project about Sheffield.

John Palmer

John Palmer is Director of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs at Sheffield Hallam University. He trained as a journalist and has spent 25 years running internal communications and external corporate relations for companies and organisations that were launching from scratch; repositioning after take-overs and mergers or expanding into new territories. After working for local and national newspapers, he moved into corporate relations in 1981 in a position with ITV broadcaster TVS.

John moved on to become Controller of Press and PR for Central Television in the Midlands. When Central was taken over by Carlton he became Controller of Corporate Affairs for the Carlton UK Television – ITV’s largest broadcasting company.

Other significant posts include positions at IMG and JCB, in 1997, as Head of Worldwide Communications. John is also founder of PCA Management, the marketing arm of the Professional Cricketers’ Association, formed to raise funds to support players with career retraining and medical care once they retired from the game.