Wesley Kerr (Chair)

Wesley Kerr is a freelance broadcaster and journalist and a keen historian and horticulturalist. Since 2001 he has been one of the presenters of the BBC coverage of the Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower Shows, specialising in the history of plants, people and places. He has covered over 3000 stories, most in the UK, and also from around 40 countries.  He was BBC News’s first black reporter, reporting on the spot a huge range of stories from the Heysel Stadium tragedy, the Windsor Castle Fire through to the Oklahoma City bomb.

Born in London, Wesley was brought up in Middlesex and Hampshire. He won a Hampshire County Bursary to Winchester College and an Open Scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read History, graduating with a BA Hons and an MA.

He joined the BBC in 1979 as a trainee researcher then as director, producer, reporter and correspondent, on programmes including Panorama, The Book Programme, Nationwide, South-East at Six, Sixty Minutes and London Plus. In the late 80s he spent 4 years as Newsnight’s Arts & Media Correspondent covering theatre, books, movies, music, museums, galleries, TV and newspapers. At BBC News in the 90s he was Education, Social Affairs, Health, New York and Washington Correspondent and reported for most of BBC Radio’s news and current affairs shows. For a decade he was also Royal Correspondent. His live commentary as Elizabeth II returned to the Palace following Diana’s death is used in the Oscar-winning film The Queen. From 1997 he presented and reported for several series of BBC1’s primetime consumer shows; Watchdog Healthcheck, Face Value, On the House, Value for Money and Holiday.

Wesley received the RHS General Certificate in Horticulture in 2004, the year after he went freelance. He has written many articles for publications in the UK, (including The Times, Sunday Times, The Guardian, Evening Standard, Punch and the Times Literary Supplement) and also for periodicals in Jamaica and the USA. From 2004 – 2006 he was a Judge for the National Lottery Awards.

Mike Bieber

Mike Bieber has worked as an investigator for the Local Government Ombudsman since 1999.

After becoming a solicitor in 1972, Mike worked in community development, becoming particularly interested in advice in aid work. Over the next 15 years he helped set up one of the first housing aid centres, became involved with law centres as a volunteer and as a trustee locally and nationally, and was deputy director of the Greater London CAB Service. In between, he was a research fellow for five years at The City University, carrying out contract research for central government into the training and education of staff in housing departments and housing associations. In 1984 he became Assistant Director of Social Services in Hackney; and then joined CancerLink, a national charity providing information and support to those affected by cancer, as Director. He was six years with CancerLink, and also became involved with other self-help organisations in Britain and abroad.

In 1992 Mike left to study History of Art at UCL, and then carried out research at Leicester University into the governance of independent museums. He has worked as a volunteer and in paid work in the museum sector for over ten years, including as a trustee of the Ragged School Museum since 1998 and a mentor for the Museums Associations AMA since 2002. He was also a trustee for the London Museums Agency from 2001 to 2004. He is a member of the Museums Association and of ICOM.

Mike was a member of the Community Funds London Awards Committee from 2001 to 2004. Since then he has become a member of a local grant giving charity in London.

Prakash Daswani

Prakash Daswani, Chief Executive, Cultural Co-operation. He is an experienced arts administrator who has worked at the vanguard of culturally diverse arts in Britain continuously since 1979. He has devised, directed and produced a broad range of international arts projects in Britain and elsewhere that have featured some 3,500 artists from 75 countries and been attended by around 3 million people.  These projects include: cultural festivals - including the renowned Music Village series; world theatre seasons; national and continent-wide tours by visiting international artists; and conferences, symposia and presentations on international cultural relations, global identities and inter-culturalism. 

He ran the Commonwealth Institute's Arts Centre (1980-87) with the late Robert Atkins. They later co-founded independent arts charity Cultural Co-operation in 1987. He is a graduate in English (Lancaster) and postgraduate in Social Anthropology (LSE) and Arts Administration (City University) who has written widely, including the Management of Cultural Pluralism in Europe (1995) for UNESCO. He was a Board member of the London Arts Board (1988-9) and UK juror on the EU's Culture 2000 committee.  He qualified in 2002 as an Executive Management Coach to assist the development of UK-based artists and organisations of diverse origin and, from 1999-2003, also acted as a consultant for the Ford Foundation in the Palestinian territories, Zanzibar and Kenya.

Shreela Ghosh

Shreela began her working life as a performer; one of the original cast members of Eastenders between 1984 -1987, Shreela has also worked extensively in the theatre. After re-training as a reporter with BBC TV News, Shreela worked in London and Birmingham and went on to make documentaries.

Two years later Shreela became the Director of a National Dance Agency based in Yorkshire before moving from arts management to arts funding by joining the Arts Council of England when the Capital Programme was launched in 1994.

Five years on Shreela was appointed Head of Arts for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. She then moved to the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to become its first Programme Director for Arts & Heritage. Recently, Shreela has worked on the launch exhibition for the Louise T Blouin Institute which opened in 2006 before taking up her new role as the Deputy Director at Iniva.

Shreela has an MA in European Cultural Policy from the University of Warwick. She was invited to serve on the Fellowship Committee at NESTA – National Endowment of Science Technology & Arts, and is a Trustee of the European Cultural Foundation.

Catherine Graham-Harrison (NHMF Trustee)

Catherine Graham-Harrison is a strategic adviser working with a wide range of organisations in the private and not-for-profit sectors. Since establishing her consultancy in March 1994, she has been Project Director and latterly Adviser for Tate Modern; Acting Chief Executive of the Community Fund (previously the National Lottery Charities Board) and a Board member of the Stonebridge Housing Action Trust.

Other clients have included IBM; SmithKline Beecham; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation; the London Borough of Camden; the Camelot Foundation; Arts Council England; WWF-UK and Amnesty International.  Her work has covered strategic reviews of existing organisations and projects; development plans for new organisations and projects; funding strategies; and advice on and management of, organisational change and development.

Before becoming a consultant, she was Director of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and before that Community Affairs Director and a senior client manager at Citibank.  She started her career with a number of roles in the voluntary housing sector, the last being Deputy Director of a major London Housing Association.  She is a Governor and Trustee of Coram Family and was, previously, Chair of WOMANKIND Worldwide, a Trustee of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Vice Chair of Art Council, London (previously London Arts).

Nigel Thorne

Nigel Thorne is a chartered landscape architect and director of Martha Schwartz Partners Ltd.; an international landscape design practice based in London and Boston USA. Prior to joining Martha Schwartz he ran his own landscape consultancy, established in 1992, which had a diverse client-base, including multi-national organisations, local authorities, commercial and residential developers, architects, engineers and private property owners.

After completing a first degree (BSc Hons Geography) at Bedford College, London University he went on to take a masters degree in Landscape Ecology, Design and Maintenance at Wye College, London University in 1980/81. Short-term work placements at Windsor Great Park and the late Queen Mother’s estate at Frogmore led to an overseas appointment as landscape manager for an international construction company in Saudi Arabia. This was followed in 1984 by employment with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with postings in France, Israel and Cyprus, and eventually supervision of landscape and horticultural operations in and around the Mediterranean, Balkans and Middle-East.

Returning to the UK on a permanent basis in 1988, Nigel joined a highly respected commercial, industrial and residential property developer, again as landscape manager before establishing his own practice in a city that had been home since the mid 1970s.

He was elected President of the Landscape Institute in July 2006. He was also made a Fellow of the Institute shortly before his election. Since 1995 he has lectured to final-year undergraduates on the LI accredited BSc Hons Landscape Management course at the University of Reading.

He is a judge on behalf of the Civic Trust ‘Green Flag Awards’; a member of the Institute of Horticulture; Greenspace; an associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators; and a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Constructors.

Benedetta Tiana