Managing Editor, Garland Magazine, Australia
Dr Kevin Murray is editor of Garland magazine, a platform for sharing the stories behind
objects made by hand today. He is Secretary of World Crafts Council - Australia and board
member of World Crafts Council - International. He was Director of Craft Victoria in 2000-
2007, where he developed the Scarf Festival and the South Project. He has curated many
exhibitions, including ‘Water Medicine: Precious Works for an Arid Continent’ and ‘Seven
Sisters: Fibre Works from the West’. His books include Craft Unbound: Make the Common
Precious (Thames & Hudson, 2005) and with Damian Skinner, A History of Contemporary
Jewellery in Australia and New Zealand: Place and Adornment (Bateman, 2014).
National Crafts Council of Bangladesh (NCCB)
Mr. Sk. Saifur Rahman is General Secretary of the National Crafts Council of Bangladesh (NCCB) since the year 2018, where, he has been a member for more than two decades. Mr. Rahman is a career Journalist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh since 1992. He has diverse experiences of working in different news media i.e. leading national daily newspapers, television channels, online portal, periodicals and radio. Presently, he is working as the Deputy Editor, Online Feature of the ‘Prothom Alo’, largest vernacular News Media in Bangladesh. Mr. Rahman is compassionate and an ardent supporter of the traditional crafts of Bangladesh and has been working with local artisans for a long period of time. His research paper on `Jamdani: Geographical Indication of Bangladesh’ was published by the Department of Textile and Fashion Design, Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in the textile thesis paper in April 2013. It is worth mentioning that he is in the editorial board of the book `Traditional Jamdani Designs’ published by the NCCB and other publications as well. Besides these, he is one of the resource persons of the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Foundation of Bangladesh and had conducted quite a few workshops with various groups in this context.
CDS Art Foundation, India
Mr. Asif Shaikh is one of India’s most prominent and accomplished embroidery and textile expert. Asif has created award-wining museum-quality embroidered masterpieces which have been sought after by textile lovers, collectors and museums across the world. Asif is a devotee of the art and craft of embroidery and the textile arts. Asif is the founder of CDS Art Foundation, Ahmedabad, an initiative that believes nurturing textile crafts through master artisan and designer collaborations. CDS Foundation has worked with many master artisans and designers, and has successfully held five collaborative fashion shows showcasing exquisite handcrafted textiles and garments graced with the highest level of craftsmanship. He is a trained interior designer and a self-taught embroiderer. Asif spares no effort or occasion to work with and encourage textile artisans to create beautiful textiles and assist them to show their work on a global platform. He believes it is his purpose of life.
Vice Chancellor, Kathmandu University, Nepal
Professor Dr. Bhola Thapa is working as the Vice Chancellor of Kathmandu University, Nepal, providing leadership to the whole academic system of the University. He has also served as the Acting Vice Chancellor and Registrar of Kathmandu University previously. Dr. Thapa was the Dean of the School of Engineering and before that, Dr. Thapa was Acting Dean of School of Engineering. Born in July 1967, Dr. Thapa started his career at the Kathmandu University as a Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He has published more than 100 research papers. The book ‘Engineer of Engineering Education’ authored by Dr. Thapa features the path breaking role of Norwegian Prof. Inge Johansen, in the initiation and development of engineering education at Kathmandu University. In addition to the administrative role, Dr. Thapa is associated with the Green Hydrogen Lab, which has been working for identifying the needs of local adaptation of the green hydrogen economy system in the market, technology transfer etc. He is pioneering the concept of Art in Engineering.
Curator (MA RCA), United Kingdom
Malcolm practices as an independent curator working across a range of art and design media and
formats. He established, along with Mr. Tim Bolton, the international biennial Making Future research conference in 2009. Malcolm has since curated every edition in the series, and the conference, based at Plymouth College of Art, has established an excellent international reputation with invited editions having taken place at Beijing Design Week, China; Cheongju, South Korea; and in Cebu in the Philippines. Making Futures explores new possibilities for small-scale craft, design-to-make, neo-artisanal producers and micro-manufacturers, arguing that these enterprises can be seen as political undertakings in which many molecular acts (of production and consumption) combine to produce vitally important responses to the global challenges we face.
Malcolm also researched and curated the flagship digital gallery for the UK’s National Media Museum – a project that won two national design awards and is widely seen as pioneering digital media art in mainstream UK museum sites. As a Director of the Plymouth Visual Arts Consortium, Malcolm worked with PVAC and the Hayward Gallery to help bring the British Art Show to Plymouth across five city-wide sites.Other projects have explored the dynamics of contemporary Chinese art production and include shows at the 798 Art District (Beijing), DadaPost Gallery (Berlin), Asia Pacific Weeks Festival (Berlin), and Yerba Buena Centre, (San Francisco).Malcolm has also regularly supervised and advised on research related programmes both inside and outside the academy, and presented and published for numerous catalogues, journals and international fora, including: Association of American Geographers; American Comparative Literature Association; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; the International Research Center for Cultural Studies, Vienna; the Association of Art Historians, Ephemera, etc.
Artist & Associate Lecturer, Falmouth University, United Kingdom
Tabatha Andrews studied at Glasgow School of Art, Skowhegan School of Art and the Slade School of Art. Working with sculpture, performance, film and sound, she explores the relationships between memory, objects, materials and the observer. Her work engages with a wide variety of communities and contexts, questioning how we communicate. Andrews also works with arts in health and the sciences, unearthing connections between craft, play, memory loss and language acquisition.
The Dispensary, a haptic cabinet of curiosities containing many ‘small acts of craft,’ was created with dementia patients at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and the woodturners of Devon and Cornwall (2016). In 2019, she collaborated with composer Charlotte Harding on Antiphon, a vocal work exploring call and response, the inner ear and architecture for the Spare Parts show at Science Gallery London. With neurobiologist Andrea Streit and choreographer Katrina Brown, Andrews made Stillpoint (2019), a non-visual performance exploring listening and sound objects. Andrews was Artist in Residence at Gloucester Cathedral in 2002-3, at Skowhegan School of Art in 2001 and The Cornwall Workshop in 2017. She features in 50 Women Sculptors, published by Aurora Metro and Supernova books in 2020. She is currently working on a library of sensory objects for artists with special needs at Exeter Phoenix and will be showing in Together We Rise at Chichester Cathedral in July 2022.