Staff and Board

Ben Jones

I have been a resident of Bensham & Saltwell since 2005. I co-founded Dingy Butterflies in 2015, after five years of developing community art projects in Gateshead. I wanted to create opportunities for artists to develop creative projects with local organisations and residents of Bensham & Saltwell. To explore  what it means to live, work and play here. I feel Gateshead has a rich history, present and future that is invisible to those who don’t know about it. As an artist and curator, with over twenty years experience working in the arts, and having learned since 2005, I could see the strong creative spirit in Gateshead and wanted to support its development and create new opportunities for artists and the people of Gateshead.

Andrea Carter

I am a resident of Gateshead and the Lead Producer at Newcastle based arts organisation D6Culture in Transit, where I manage the development and delivery of their artistic programme and audience development strategy.  I have studied and lived in the North East since 1998 and worked extensively in the fields of visual arts and heritage, with a long-standing focus on socially engaged practice and a greater representation of marginalised communities and networks.

Hannah Marsden

I am an arts producer and researcher and a Post-Graduate Researcher at Newcastle University in Media, Culture & Heritage. I like doing yoga, tending to plants, eating cake, and listening to stories. I am proud to be on the board of Dingy Butterflies because of its embedded approach to building place-based knowledge and enhancing local resources with and for the residents of Gateshead. Across the Tyne in Newcastle, I am a founding member of Dwellbeing Shieldfield where I coordinate arts and community-led activity around the politics of land and urban development. My research looks at the construction of values and world-making practices in the field of social art.

Rebecca Prescott

I am senior lecture at Northumbria University Business School. My passion for research focuses on the relationship between place and (specifically creative) practice. Thanks to 10 years’ experience working across sectors as a practitioner, lecturer, researcher and consultant, I have sustained, deep and extensive grounding in questions of creative practice and its relationship to wider issues of identity, inclusion and design. A core element of my research focuses on identifying the fundamental features of artist-led organisational development and the processes that both promote, and constrain, creative practice. Rebecca is also the Principal Investigator for the research project Mapping Gateshead and Flourish, a multidisciplinary, collaborative project that surveys and critically re-imagines urban creative and cultural activity.

Christine Frazer

I trained as a SEND teacher and worked in Belgium with the EU before moving back to Gateshead and volunteering with Mutual Aid. I work mainly in Teams and Dunston and support the Bridgebuilders with their ‘on the ground’ work. Being a Bridgebuilder, for me, is about living my ‘Trinocular’ approach to community development; deep active listening, acknowledging and talking about people’s trauma and finding ‘the sparkle’ – the people and places that exude joy, light and love.

Suzy O’Hara

I am a Lecturer in Digital Arts and Enterprise in the School of Art, Design and Performance at University of Sunderland, where I lead CoLab Sunderland. As a curator, educator, and practice led scholar, my research is concerned with exploring the central role that art-making and curatorial praxis play in addressing pressing environmental and social challenges impacting society. Recent projects include curating public programmes that bring diverse cross-sector expertise together to explore the role that socially engaged arts practices play in engaging local communities with pioneering Big Data scientific discovery, marine environment and heritage protection, and urgent practical challenges caused by coastal erosion.