Board and staff

a group of people wearing colourful clothing smiling at the camera, standing against blue and gold printed wallpaper
Mae London Photography 2025

Board

Our Board of Non-Executive Directors is Thahmina Begum (Co-Chair); Rosie Dow (UCL); Hilary Jennings (Happy Museum Project); Linda Monckton (Historic England); Nuala Morse (University of Leicester); Trishna Nath (UnLtd); Matt Walsh (Co-Chair); and Jemilea Wisdom-Baako (Writerz & Scribez). You can read a short interview with each of them by clicking the links on their names.

Please get in touch if you would like to know more.

Former Directors include Deborah Munt (Ministry of Others); Thanh Sinden (Thanh Sinden Consulting / Founder & Director, Hoa Lotus); Esmé Ward (Manchester Museum); Angela Awuah (Mental Health the Arts); and Ben Pearce (freelance).

 

Former president: Lord Howarth of Newport was president of the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance from its foundation until his death in 2025. He was a founding chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Arts, Health & Wellbeing and the National Centre for Creative Health and a committed and inspiring advocate for and supporter of culture, health and wellbeing for many years.

Staff

The Alliance has 5 permanent members of staff: Executive Director, National Programmes and Events Lead, Regional Leads for the North and Midlands, and an Administration and Social Media Lead. We also have a Programme Lead for the Working Together programme and work with a number of consultants and freelancers.

 

a woman with short brown hair and glasses reads at a podium
Inspired Mae Photography

Victoria Hume
Executive Director

Victoria Hume is Executive Director of the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance.

Victoria was an arts manager in the NHS for 15 years before pursuing arts in health in South Africa for 5 years, including setting up a new module in hospital-based performance for the University of the Witwatersrand and managing a three-year, Wellcome-funded drama and diabetes programme with Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. She is also a composer and researcher specialising in culture, health and wellbeing, and has a Masters in Music and Health Communication focused on hospital-induced delirium. She continues to write and release music through Lost Map Records, based on Eigg.

a person stands in a kitchen in front of a tiled wall, holding a cup of tea and smiling

Kheyla Anderson
Administration & Social Media Lead

Kheyla has always had an invested interest in the wellbeing of others. Following the birth of her son in 2014, she founded Mother Nature’s Recipes, a company that focuses on making room for the necessity of self-care and community in motherhood from a holistic perspective. She also co-founds Birthing In Colour, a charitable organisation that creates safe spaces online for black and brown birthing bodies and is qualified as a Peer Supporter for the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers.

A white woman with short brown hair wearing a wooly black and white jumper looking down at the camera smiling against a bright blue sky

Lara Eggleton
Events & Programmes Lead

Lara has worked in the arts since moving to the UK in 2004, as a writer, editor, curator, artists, organiser, facilitator, consultant and mentor. She is an art historian by trade, with a PhD from the University of Leeds and a longstanding interest in the study of art across time and between cultures. Between 2017 and 2024 she was managing editor at Corridor8, a platform for art and writing in the North of England, where she collaboratively produced publications on a wide range of topics, from breastfeeding in public to mass extinction. More recently she’s been dabbling in creative memoir and looking after her two children. She is a dedicated advocate for creativity, cooperation and positive change for people and planet, and proud to join the CHWA team in 2025.

a person stands in the right of the frame, smiling and wearing a grey scarf. Behind them is are trees in leaf.

Rachel Massey
South Yorkshire Creative Health Lead

Rachel has over 20 years’ experience of working in Creative Health as an artist, project coordinator and consultant. She previously led Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s Art and Wellbeing programme and coordinated a county-wide creative health programme for Arts Derbyshire. She also worked in the health sector as a manager at Live Well Wakefield, a large-scale social prescribing programme. She joined Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance in 2023 as their North Regional Lead. She also leads Other Ways to Walk, which she founded in 2016 to help people connect with nature using creative & mindful approaches.

a woman wearing a stripey jumper with curly brown hair smiling at the camera against a sea background

Luisa Golob
Barnsley Creative Health Lead

Luisa has always worked within the charity sector and has been fundraising for charities since she was 12 years old! Starting her career working for Barnardos Voice and Influence service in Barnsley working with young people, moving to Leeds City Council running arts events and Music Industry competitions and then running a chat room for chronically ill children for the Sheffield Children’s Hospital. Luisa became the CEO of Ignite Imaginations for 16 years (HOME | igniteimaginations), a participatory visual arts organisation in Sheffield. Her passion here was to ensure people from all walks of life had equitable access to creative local experiences and opportunities to work in the sector. As a volunteer she ran the Sharrow Lantern Carnival for 14 years (Creativity and Community | Sharrow Lantern Carnival | Sheffield) an amazing community lantern parade in Sheffield, and had previously been on the steering group for SNAP and Sheffield Arts and Wellbeing Network and a board member and chair for the Sheffield Creative Guild. Sheffield Creative Guild Homepage Video. Alongside her partner, they ran an award winning microbrewery On the Edge Brewery | Facebook from their house for many years and they now have two small children.

A white woman with shoulder length brown hair wearing sunglasses, a black top and yellow cardigan facing the camera and smiling, as she leans against a railing with amidst a natural green background

Helena Reynolds
Derbyshire Creative Health & Change Lead

Helena has over 20 years’ experience of arts project management and strategic development. Since 2008 she has been working in Derbyshire, honing her special interest in creative health – first at North East Derbyshire District Council and then as the Creative Health Manager at Arts Derbyshire. She started out as a French and Spanish (and sometimes music) teacher in both secondary and primary schools. At the heart of all her work is her desire to help to create a better, fairer world in which everyone can thrive.

Helena is also a traditional folk musician, singer and dancer. She has toured with various bands around England, continental Europe and Canada, performing concerts, playing for dance, and teaching music, harmony singing, and English and European folk dance. She plays the violin, 5-string viola and English half-long border bagpipes - yes, English bagpipes do exist! In her spare time Helena has started up and run 3 traditional dance community groups, and has helped to organise national folk festivals. She doesn’t have any spare time any more, as she has two young children, with whom she lives in Staffordshire - but she still gets out to play fiddle for the Morris whenever she can.
 

Find out more about our regional champions

Find out more about our strategic alliance members

 

The Alliance was brought into being thanks to the support of Arts & Health South West, who hosted the organisation, applied for and held its funding, and provided governance through the Arts & Health Southwest board from 2017-2019.