Meet our Staff

Susanna Wilford

Project Manager
Spark Festival

Personal Statement

I produce Spark International Festival of Media, Arts and Design - the annual international festival which Media Arts has been holding for the last 11 years.

My background is in theatre. I started out getting friends' bands gigs around town, then cut my teeth in mainstream theatre co-ordinating the education programme the for English Shakespeare Company UK's then-maverick international touring theatre company. This later folded, following a shift in UK arts funding policy. I then turned my hand to working in more radical contexts: in Arts for Social Change using theatre, storytelling and other media to support change with and by different sectors of the community. My work took me on forays from the council rooms of Rio de Janeiro City to 'murder mile' in Hackney E. London, to the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh, and finally to the women's prisons of England.

Currently I'm back to producing with Spark. My challenge is in how to continue to produce a lively, interesting festival to the highest quality with the resources we have. Producing Spark Festival is much like producing a play for the stage - bringing together all the different stories of the players (the artists and professionals) and weaving them in together to make for a lively, eclectic, thought-provoking, entertaining festival that moves the audience.