Maninder Gill is a partner at the law firm Simons Muirhead Burton based in London’s West End where he is the head of the Intellectual Property team. His main focus is on commercial, retail, media and intellectual property issues including franchising, branding and reputation management.

Grace is a currently the Artist Development and Access Producer at The Lowry in Salford since 2019, and was previously Artist Development Coordinator at Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester from 2017-2019.

She is a highly skilled producer with over twenty years of experience having worked in Singapore’s national arts centre Esplanade Theatres by the Bay in 2004-2006; was part of the team from the National Youth Council that raised $10,000,000 SGD to build a 5-storey youth community hub called *SCAPE Co. Ltd in 2007-2009 as Head of Programmes and in 2014-2016 as Senior Manager for Programmes.

From 2010-2013 in Scotland, she worked in Dance Base Edinburgh, Audience Business, and Glasgow’s Cryptic Theatre delivering its sonic arts festival Sonica in an audience development and marketing capacity and has a record of accomplishment in artist development and multi-disciplinary programming and projects.

Grace is consistently excited by artists. As a leader, she has the emotional courage to be a relationship holder for artists: guiding them with creative provocations to realise what they want to make, and who they are, and to harness that energy.

She has a tremendous ability to turn an artist’s idea into a real, living project and bring partners on board to widen who access the work. Her quiet determination to create space and demonstrate care for underrepresented groups has had an impact on both The Lowry’s artist development strategy and the work of the wider programming team as well as her producing peers in the city.

Her specialism in Creative Access includes championing embedding access at the point of creation to create inclusive theatre enjoyed by everyone equally.

Richard Shannon is Head of Audio, Radio & Podcasting at Goldsmiths, University of London.

He was a founding director of Independent Radio Drama Productions and has produced major series for LBC radio in London and National Public Radio in the USA. His production of Vissi D’arte by Paul Sirett was commended at the Prix Italia and he has won a Silver Sony and several Gold and Silver awards for drama at the International Radio Festival of New York. He has directed the radio work of Martin McDonagh and Simon Beaufoy.

He is the producer of the award-winning podcast, Rainbow Dads and is a judge for the British Podcasting Awards, the Audible Audio Production Awards and the Writers’ Guild of GB Audio drama awards.

Richard is a published playwright and theatre director. His play The Lady of Burma premiered at the Old Vic theatre in London in 2006. In 2012, the Dukes theatre, Lancaster produced his play, Sabbat – the story of the Pendle witches.

His theatre work includes productions at the Young Vic Studio, the Bristol Old Vic studio and the Redgrave theatre. Richard has also worked as a producer on major public events, including the Royal Opening of St. Pancras International.

Leo Wan is an actor. He has performed with the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and across the UK. He has a longstanding relationship with New Earth Theatre, having appeared in three of the company's productions (Tamburlaine, Forgotten & Miss Julie). He co-founded Rising Waves, a mentorship scheme for BESEA artists, and is passionate about putting the BESEA community on the UK's stages.

Theatre includes: Oliver in As You Like It, Widow in The Taming of the Shrew (RSC), The Great Wave (National Theatre); Shakespeare Within the Abbey, Sonnet Walks (Shakespeare’s Globe); Forgotten 遗忘, Tamburlaine (Arcola Theatre); The Spanish Tragedy (Old Red Lion); Miss Julie (Storyhouse, York Theatre Royal, Southwark Playhouse); Das Ding, The Rover (New Diorama Theatre); Jekyll & Hyde (Southwark Playhouse), The Good Person of Szechwan (Sheffield Theatres, Lyric Hammersmith).

Television includes: Crashing

Radio includes: Death at the Airport, Lights! Camera! Kidnap!, Prime Cut, Tracks, Look Who’s Back, The Periodic Table, Memsahib Emma.