Monumental Impact

Artists and organisations collaborated with include Miami Book Fair, Chris Ofili, The Space, Bocas Lit Fest (Trinidad) and the BBC. This year she is the co-curator of My Words with Samenua Sesher and Joy Francis, a digital exhibition of the cultural contribution of poets of colour over 250 years as part of the core team of Museum of Colour. From 2021 to summer 2022, she was part of the UP Projects Team as a Curator and the Caribbean Community Engagement Consultant for The National Windrush Monument. Earlier this year, she was founder and co-curator ofThis Is Who We Area mentoring programme and a multimedia festival by and for global majority womxn of colour based in the UK and Australia which formed part of the British Council's UK Australia Season. She is the Senior Producer for the children-led project Colonial Countryside. Her contribution has been recognised through a ‘Women To Watch’ Award, and curatorships and speaker commissions for Bluecoat, Carnival Village, Creative & Cultural Skills and universities. Melanie is delighted to be a consultant with UP Projects who are making change and opening up discourse around public art and people's engagement with spaces and culture.

Born in the UK of Jamaican and German parentage Sonia E Barrett grew up in Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, Cyprus and the UK. She studied literature at the University of St Andrews Scotland and her MFA at Transart Institute Berlin/New York.

Her work unpacks the boundaries between the Determined and the determining with a focus on race and gender, She makes sculptural works so she can run her hands alone the fissures and manifest strategies for multiple compatible existences and mourn.

Her sculptural practice includes place making with a view to assembling communities under the threat of climate to (Re) claim space as well as instituting permanently.

Sonia is a MacDowell, CCCADI NY, and Yale Mellon Artist/Practitioner Fellow and has been recognised by the Premio Ora prize, NY Art-Slant showcase for sculpture and the Neo Art Prize. She has exhibited by the National Gallery of Jamaica, 32 degrees East Gallery, Kampala, Uganda, the Heinrich Böll Institute Germany, the British Library, The Museum of Derby, and the Kunsthaus Nürnberg. Her work has been shown at a number of galleries including the OCCCA California, the NGBK Berlin, Tete Berlin, The Format Contemporary in Milan and Basel and the Rosenwald Wolf Gallery Philadelphia.

Her works and writings have been published in the International Review of African American Art, Black History 365 Journal, Kunstforum International, Protocollum, ELSE journal, British Arts Studies Journal, Tate Publishing, and the Contemporary & Platform. She is an initiator of the AIPCC in Southeast England.

Errol’s background in mental health activism has influenced his arts practice such as his role as head of arts at the Mental Health Foundation and his directing of the Anxiety Arts Festival 2014, Cyborgs 2019 and his work in the curatorial research group PS/Y.

Errol is currently content producer for the Culture Box research project at the University of Exeter which promotes social interaction and public health through the arts in the time of Covid-19 for people living with dementia in care homes. He is visiting lecturer at the University of Greenwich, Goldsmith’s University of London and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.