Trustees
Anant Sharma, trustee
Anant Sharma has spent the last 14 years leading Matter Of Form — a brand and experience design consultancy that partner with timeless luxury brands, from Accor and Zaha Hadid Architects to Belmond, Diageo and Aman. A futurist, innovation enthusiast and keen advocate of developing meritocratic cultures that promote ideas and learning, Anant is also a dedicated teacher and student of behavioural design; exploring what drives us to do the things we do. Anant co-owns the design thinking school Experience Haus and lectures as an adjunct professor in branding, CX and innovation at EHL, the world’s leading hospitality university. Anant shares his insights at international public speaking engagements and via Matter Of Form’s podcast What The Luxe.
Ed Matthews-Gentle, trustee
Ed Matthews-Gentle FRSA is the programme leader for Creative Lancashire and strategic lead for Creative Industries at Lancashire County Council, with over 20 years of experience working with and developing creative organisations. Current projects and collaborations include the British Textile Biennial, the development of the Lancashire 2025 bid to host the UK City of Culture and overseeing Lancashire's Cultural Strategy. More recently Ed was invited by Crafts Council to join the Craft UK Anti-Racism Working Group. Ed also curates the National Festival of Making Conference and talks programme.
Ian Jindal, trustee
Ian Jindal is a consultant, researcher and advisor in eCommerce and multichannel retail performance.
He founded InternetRetailing.net and RetailX.net to serve Europe’s multichannel retailers with research, insight and analysis, including the Top500 performance rankings. Ian’s advisory clients have included Fiorucci, Selfridges, House of Fraser, Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Waitrose, De Bijenkorf, Kering and Walgreens Boots Alliance. Ian was group eCommerce director at Littlewoods Shop Direct, and head of online operations at the BBC. Ian founded the European eCommerce Forum and authored the UK’s first MSc in Internet Retailing. Ian was the general director of The Photographers’ Gallery and Treasurer of Engage.org.
Jake Solomon, trustee
Jake Solomon is a small business owner in the craft space, employing more than 40 people across two businesses in Birmingham. Foresso manufactures a wooden terrazzo made from industrial waste streams focusing on waste wood from the joinery industry and end of life refractory investment. Lunts Castings ltd is a 90 year bronze foundry. His focus is on creating working environments which are built around the people doing the work and creating well run and structured business processes that allow craft skills to remain in the UK. The desire to create viable craft-based businesses based on modern manufacturing standards, pricing, and social impact, no matter how small, is Jake’s central philosophy.
John Knell, trustee
John Knell is one of the UK’s leading thinkers on the changing face of work and works as an independent strategy consultant across the private, public and third sectors. Over the last 15 years he has built an international reputation as a cultural policy analyst, working with governments, funders, cities and major cultural institutions around the world. Since 2013 John has also been running Counting What Counts Ltd, developing the ‘Culture Counts’ platform to support the use of cultural experience metrics that have been co-produced with the cultural sector in Australia and the UK. In 2018, CWC won a contract with Arts Council England to roll out the Impact & Insight Toolkit across their funded portfolio.
John began his career as an academic at the University of Leeds (1990 -1997) where he undertook his doctoral research in political economy. He was Director of Research and Policy at the Work Foundation between 1998 and 2003. John retains strong links with leading research centres; and is a fellow of the RSA. He lives in Cambridge and has a consuming passion for music of all kinds.
Lady Kitt, trustee
Lady Kitt is a paper sculptor, researcher and drag king, based in Newcastle- upon Tyne. Kitt describes their work as "mess-making as social glue, driven by an insatiable curiosity to explore, share and (gently) incite the social functions of stuff that gets called art". Kitt is co-lead for Social Art Network North East, a founding member of Disabled artist-led consortium Disconsortia and a member of the global art-activism movement Nasty Women (NW), co-convening the NW International Art Prize in 2018. Kitt has recently shown work at Atlanta Contemporary (USA), Saatchi Gallery London (UK) and is currently maker in residence at Durham University and one of nine Constellations artists with UP Projects and Flat Time House.
Majeda Clarke, trustee
Majeda Clarke is an award-winning textile artist based at Cockpit Arts, London. She received the 2018 British Muslim Award for Creativity and took part in the Crafts Council Hothouse Programme. After a career in education, as a head of English and then as an inspector and advisor for Camden schools, Majeda retrained in textiles before setting up her studio. She is still active in education, recently working on the new UK government T Levels strategy for craft and design.
Melanie Eddy, trustee
Melanie Eddy is a renowned sculptural jeweller, with pieces held in public and private collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Goldsmiths’ Company Collection and the Spencer Museum of Art. She is director of The Association for Contemporary Jewellery, a trustee for The Silversmiths & Jewellers Charity and advises industry organisations both in the UK and abroad, including Turquoise Mountain’s Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Melanie is an associate lecturer on the MA Design: Ceramics Furniture and Jewellery programme at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and the University for the Creative Arts and a visiting lecturer at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation. She is one of the founders of The Jewellery Futures Fund, an initiative looking to diversify the trade and effect change through a programme of scholarships, grants and industry opportunities.
Richard Hill, trustee
Richard Is Chief Executive of the housing association, bpha, which has twenty thousand homes across Bedford, Cambridge and Oxford. His passion for housing has seen him hold leadership roles in the sector for nearly 20 years including as Deputy Chief Executive of the Homes and Communities Agency. Richard is also the non-executive Chair of drugs and alcohol rehabilitation charity, Phoenix Futures which works in residential, community and prison settings across the UK.
Rose Sinclair, trustee
Rose Sinclair is a Lecturer (Textiles) in Design Education, at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her PhD doctoral research focusses on Black British women, their crafting practices and textiles networks such as Dorcas Clubs and Societies. Her work on Dorcas Clubs ‘Craftivism: Making a Difference’ featured on BBC4 in 2021. Rose works across a range of participatory practices in pop-up shops and museum installations, including V&A London, House for an Art Lover and Timespan in Helmsdale, Scotland. Her latest work “Dorcas Stories from the Front Room, Textile Narratives, Now and Then, a co-curated exhibition with Craftspace focuses on crafts of the Windrush Generation. Rose co-curated the first retrospective of the work of Caribbean textile designer Althea McNish, 'Althea McNish: Colour is Mine', at the William Morris Gallery and The Whitworth in Manchester between 2022 and 2023.
Rose has authored several textile books and her latest work, the first monograph about Althea McNish, for Yale Publishers is due in Autumn 2024. She is on the International Advisory board for Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, and Co-Editor of the Journal of Textile Research and Practice. Rose is a founding member and Alumni of the Equity Advisory Council at the Crafts Council, a Heritage Crafts Ambassador for Heritage Crafts UK, an Associate member of the APPG Group for Craft and a Trustee of the Textile Society UK.
Yasmin Jones-Henry, trustee
Yasmin Jones-Henry is a Financial Times writer and co-founder and curator of The Lab E20, a new flagship for experiential retail, cultural exhibition and creative workspace, with a focus on positive fashion and sustainable living. She works in the space where fashion meets finance and culture meets commerce. Through her work as a writer with specialisms in sustainability (ESG), design and investment, she has established a career championing the role culture and creative enterprise can play as a catalyst to inclusive regeneration. As a cultural placemaking strategist, Yasmin is a thought leader and an advocate for rethinking retail, scaling circular economy design principles and working to diversify the talent pipelines across the fashion industry and the built environment.