The Board

Chair – Victoria Hume
Victoria Hume has worked with the arts in healthcare for 12 years. Working initially as Arts Co-ordinator for Chelsea & Westminster Hospital Arts, in 2002 she founded rb&hArts – a multi-disciplinary arts programme based at the two specialist cardiothoracic centres which make up Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. The charity now works with around 50 artists and musicians every year, and embraces exhibitions; a developing collection of visual art with includes work by Grayson Perry, Catherine Yass and Rob Ryan; live music, workshops and residencies. The project has been regularly featured in national press, most recently for the innovative Singing for Breathing programme, designed to support people with chronic respiratory disease. Victoria supported the arts element of the King’s Fund’s Enhancing the Healing Environment programme as a freelance consultant between 2000 and 2010. Since September 2011 she has also been Project Co-ordinator for The Other Side Gallery, which works to support and represent marginalised artists.

Victoria became chair of London Arts in Health Forum in December 2010.  She will also be chairing the new National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing until April 2012.

Susan Francis
Susan Francis is Programme Director for Architects for Health, a membership organisation for design professionals, and works as a consultant in health. Susan recently served as Special Advisor for Health at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), working closely with the Department of Health and the Future Healthcare Network to support health clients to develop excellent design briefs, generate and publish information on the benefits of good design and pioneer new thinking about healthcare design.

Chris Hilton
Dr Chris Hilton is a Specialty Registrar in Psychiatry and Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. After training in Cambridge and London, he has worked in a number of community and inpatient mental health settings with adults, older adults and children. He has particular clinical interests in Liaison Psychiatry and Substance Misuse, as well as co-facilitating a Psychodrama group for patients with personality disorder. He is highly active in undergraduate medical education as Honorary Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College, London. In his free time he is an avid theatregoer.

Val Huet
Val Huet (SRAsT, BA Fine Arts (Sculpture) , Dip. Group Psych., MA Art Therapy, MA Organisational Consultancy) trained in Sculpture at Camberwell School of Art and qualified as an Art Therapist in 1986. She has practised since then in Adult Psychiatry and later within a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service.  She is also a qualified Group Psychotherapist and Organisational Consultant. Val is the Chief Executive Officer of the British Association of Art Therapists, a post she has held since 2003. She also works as a consultant within organisations and as a private supervisor. She co-founded the Art Therapy Practice Research Network in 2000 and has been actively engaged in it since. She is currently developing and researching an Art Therapy Approach to Organisation Consultancy

Candice Hurwitz
Candice Hurwitz is the Director of Nwlh Arts & Design, a groundbreaking charitable Arts and Design programme for North West London Hospitals NHS Trust. The programme was launched at the House of Commons in 2006. Candice has been involved in the field of Arts and Health since 1995 and has been an integral part of design teams for several new hospitals; delivering Arts Strategies which integrate sustainable art into the architecture of new hospital buildings and their landscapes.  She founded First Aid Art+ in 2004, an Arts and Health consultancy whose main aim is to enhance patient pathways in the Healthcare Environment, through the use of art which is relevant to the specific work of hospital Trusts and their communities.

Guy Noble
Guy Noble, Arts Curator at UCL Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has worked in the area of arts, creativity and wellbeing since 1998. He was co-instigator of the research project, ‘Heritage in Hospitals: exploring the potential of museum object handling as an enrichment activity for patients’. He has extensive experience in hospital arts programming, project management and fundraising and is currently researching the role that cultural organisations can play in health. He has been a Trustee of LAHF for 4 years and served as Chair from 2008-2010.

Andrew Potter
Andrew Potter has worked for a number of music organisations. Much of his career has been as a Publishing Director at Oxford University Press where music was one of his responsibilities.
Andrew served as Chair of the Performing Right Society, representing the interests of 40,000 composers and songwriters. He formed the PRS Mapping Group into the provision of musical instrument teaching in England & Wales after which the government allocated a further £160m to music education. In 2000 he commissioned The Power of Music, a unique project to capture and share scholarly research into the healing, social and educational benefits of music. The PRS Foundation was founded in his last year as Chair. Since then he has been Chair of Making Music, of Community Action Projects Ealing, a mental health charity, and of the Design and Artists Copyright Society.

Sue Ridge
Sue Ridge is an artist, researcher and consultant who has lectured at Chelsea College of Art & Design since 1999. Recent projects include; since 2005 she has completed two commissions for Norwich and Eastbourne and Hastings Hospitals. For Norwich Hospital she worked with photographer Martin Figura on a series of photo-digital works for the waiting areas in the Breast Screening Department. At Eastbourne and Hastings Hospitals she was asked to worked collaboratively with poet John Davies aka Shedman looking at patient, staff and visitor responses to navigation producing artworks for an exhibition at both hospitals. In February 2006 she worked as a consultant for Bouygues UK Ltd on the arts strategy for the new PFI Hospital at North Middlesex University Hospital. In December 2006 she worked with Lauriston Primary School and received a £10,000 Arts Council Creative partnership Award in 2007. Sue recently worked with poet John Davies on the “Our Storeys” poetry project for the main atrium space at North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust. www.sueridge.com

Jill Sheridan
Jill Sheridan studied history of art and architecture at Bristol University before teaching in both the UK and US. She then went on to study for an MA at City University, London in the department of Arts Policy and Management whilst also working with artists as a freelance exhibition organiser and carrying out research. Appointed as Curator of Goldsmiths Gallery in London, she worked for ten years developing the exhibition and education programme before working in a gallery in the commercial sector. In 1995 Jill was invited to become a Course Leader at Goldsmiths, University of London and to develop a course introducing students to curating and arts administration. She continues to be involved with developing exhibitions, conferences and research in the visual arts both in the UK and abroad as well as being Director of Art Installation Services, an organisation working in the public, private and commercial sectors with companies and individuals throughout Europe.

Belinda Sosinowicz
Belinda Sosinowicz is a wellbeing and creativity expert who has spurred national innovations in wellbeing. She works with a wide spread of people ranging from the very vulnerable in mental health and community settings, the voluntary, statutory sectors and large organisations.  A wellbeing entrepreneur, researcher, trainer and coach she has been providing imaginative solutions to enhance and support well being and recovery for 17 years. She has expertise in programme development using innovative models of participation, client- led/ centred engagement, developing user- voice initiatives, consultation, Open Space and validated interventions.  Qualitative methods of research include Mental Well Being Health Impact Assessments, participatory action methods and IPA. Her passion lies with developing individual, group and economic resilience using and modifying cutting edge research in positive psychology and happiness.  She is Managing Director of Trust Art Project, a founder Director of the London Arts in Health Forum and creative co-Director for Emergence. She has lectured extensively and developed combined arts and health courses with UAL, UCLH and British Association of Art Therapists. She has an Honours degree and MA in Textile design, a Pgdip in Art Psychotherapy and is currently studying for an MSc in Applied Positive Psychology.