Shubbak Team
Alia Alzougbi
Joint CEO
Alia is a cultural strategist, artist and facilitator working at the intersection of art and social and environmental justice. Her practice uses the arts to interrogate the fundamental causes of inequality and explore alternative modes of understanding the world and being in it. She has worked with national and international organisations, including the National Theatre and the British Council, to create critical encounters in education and the arts towards collective liberation. She has curated a range of interventions and creative disruptions, from local corner shops to world-renowned museums. Alia is a Chevening Scholar, a Clore Fellow and Associate, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and volunteers as a coach and mentor with those experiencing reduced access to opportunities in the cultural and creative industries. She is a recipient of the Writer's Guild Olwen Wymark Award for the encouragement of new writing in 2019 and was nominated for a BAFTA
Scotland in 2008.
Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso
Joint CEO
Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso has been with Shubbak since 2018 where she is committed to forging more just cultural ecologies; developing collaborative and decolonial curatorial approaches and artistic development opportunities that reduce social inequality and access barriers to the industry.
She is co-director of At Home in Gaza and London, a telematic performance and exchange project bringing together artists and audiences across the divide. As a performance-maker, she has created work with companies in the UK, across the SWANA region, and beyond. As an associate with Kazzum, she has led education programmes with young people who are going through the asylum-seeking process. She has previously curated for AWAN Festival and Global Arab Female Voices.
Taghrid is currently a mentor on the Crossing Borders Programme at Scottish Refugee Council, a contributor with Culture Action Europe, and a steering group member of Global Voices Theatre.
Sukriti Sharma
General Manager & Comms Coordinator
Sukriti is a culture and community engagement professional with a deep love and curiosity for working with people from diverse backgrounds. She has previously worked on the Jaipur Literature Festival and Should Art, amongst other multi-art form programmes in India. She has mentored a cohort of young leaders from India and the UK on the Pravah International Citizen Service programme, and has also co-developed arts practice learning programmes for young artists - including the Mumbai edition of Writer’s Lab with Soho Theatre and G5A. Trained as a community music facilitator with Musicians Without Borders, her background is in creating safe and inclusive creative spaces for reflection, expression, and collaboration through community arts practice and youth engagement. Her academic inquiries rest across political science, cultural studies and music & development, and she holds an MA in Cultural Policy, Relations and Diplomacy from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Nick Anderson
Senior Producer
Nick is a London-based festival producer who has developed festivals and tours across the world. His particular interests sit within counter-cultural and mainstream crossovers, and how best to present exceptional artwork. He has worked across multiple art forms, and with a specific interest in electronic music and experimental sonic artists. When developing programmes and events, he is focused on presenting work with highest possible production and access levels. Recently he produced Nelly Ben Hayoun’s Tour de Moon, which was a huge scale touring festival across England, which focused on creating many hundreds of opportunities for young creatives. He’s very happy to have joined the Shubbak team, as he was an audience at the 2019 festival, and it was a cultural highlight of the year for him.
Shyama Persaud
Access Support Worker to Alia Alzougbi
Shyama has backgrounds in biological science, fine art, psychotherapeutic methods and qualitative social science research. Having started out in arts administration, she moved into cancer research within the NHS and became a steering committee member of Cancer Control in Low and Middle Income Countries, an annual conference at the Royal Society of Medicine. During this time, she trained as an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher and volunteered as a teaching assistant with English for Action, a campaigning charity for migrants & refugees. She currently has a research-based creative practice through which she explores relationships between the individual and collective; this is framed by the lenses of capitalism, relational ethics, space exploration and depth psychology. Alia has a disabling health condition and Shyama views their work together as a powerful site of integration for the various strands of her experience, as well as a unique relational space filled with learning, care and joy.
Our wider team
Our festivals are supported by a team of volunteers, freelance producers and partner organisations.
Website by Bullet Creative.
Shubbak Trustees
Shadia El Dardiry
Chair
Shadia El Dardiry is an employment lawyer at Clyde and Co. She previously worked at a charity law firm, where she regularly advised charities and creative organisations. Shadia comes from a human rights background, and has worked on migration issues in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. She has engaged in EU- and national-level advocacy as well as capacity building of local organisations. Alongside this, she has had a longstanding interest in the relationship between art and politics in the SWANA region, with a particular focus on 20th and 21st century literature from the region, and in art as a form of expression for migrants and refugees. Shadia holds a Masters in Political Science and a BA (Hons) in Political Science and Economics from McGill University.
Fady Alrayyes
Fady Alrayyes is a Principal at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), an institution established to help member countries develop their economies. In his role he covers the Arab countries, manages technical cooperation projects, and conducts policy dialogue on local currency and capital markets development. Before joining EBRD, he worked as a research analyst for Thomas Murray, a London based consulting firm specialised in providing information and risk rating of capital market institutions, primarily covering the Middle East and Africa desk and working on product development. Fady holds a bachelor in economics from London School of Economics, and a Master’s degree in investment and finance from University of Exeter.
Lynn Gaspard
Lynn Gaspard is the Managing Director of Middle-East specialist press Saqi Books. A fiercely independent forum for writers and artists from around the world, Saqi has made its mark as a publisher unafraid of taking risks, championing works by minority writers from the Middle East and beyond. Gaspard is a member of English PEN’s Writers in Translation Committee and of the MFest Expert Advisory Group, and was previously on the Nour Festival of Arts Steering Committee. She is the editor of the satirical collection Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic.
Almir Koldzic
Almir is a Co-Founder and Co-Director of Counterpoints Arts - a leading national organisation in the field of arts, migration and social justice, supporting the arts by, about and with refugees and migrants. His experiences in this context include leading on developing strategy and identity for Refugee Week UK Festival; developing Platforma - arts and refugees national network; building meaningful and long term collaborations with leading inter/national arts, cultural and advocacy organisations; and producing a wide range of events and commissions relating to displacement.
Sumantro Ghose
Sumantro Ghose is an Arts Producer, Curator and Cultural Strategist with over 20 years’ experience in museums and exhibitions, festivals, audience development and cultural diplomacy. Most recently he has been Managing Director of the London Design Biennale, and was previously responsible for exhibitions and museum programmes at Dubai Culture and Arts Authority. Prior to joining Dubai Culture, Sumantro was Deputy Director, Cultural Diplomacy Programmes at Qatar Museums in Doha. In the UK, Sumi has worked and consulted for a range of cultural and educational institutions including Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Frieze, Sotheby’s Institute, Richmond University and the American Institute for Foreign Study and was Acting Chief Executive and Director of Cultural Programmes at Asia House.
Andrew Marcus
Andrew is a communications, brand and marketing consultant, facilitator and coach. He was previously Chief Communications Officer at Executive Board level at the Museum of London responsible for PR, marketing, social media and public affairs. His focus was on redefining the museum’s brand and attracting greater numbers of people who are more representative of London.
Riwa Saab
Riwa is a Young Shubbak and Barbican Young Poets alumnus and interdisciplinary artist, specialising in theatre directing, poetry and singer songwriting. She recently completed a BA in Performance and Creative Enterprise at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.