Date Tuesday 10 June 2025
Location Darkroom Bar Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB
Overview
We are pleased to invite you to our debut mentoring event as part of our professional development arts programme, an informal space to meet and chat with industry professionals from across the cultural landscape. Come with your sketchbooks, portfolios, laptops or just yourself arned with questions that you feel most pertinent to your practice or where you want to see yourself.
These are 15 minute sessions which will enable students the chance to meet mentors, share work and gain valuable insight and understanding.
We encourage you to turn up early to ensure you are seen as we aren't booking slots instead running the event through a 'speed mentoring' approach in which people move in and out of session.
Meet the mentors:
Sian Fan
Sian Fan is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist based at Somerset House Studios. From 2021-22 she was the Digital Wonderlands artist in residence at the V&A Museum. She has exhibited internationally with institutions including Tate Modern, Mutek, FACT Liverpool, and the V&A, as well as producing work with Channel 4, the BBC and Facebook/Meta. Recent projects include a new commission for the major exhibition CUTE at Somerset House, a motion capture performance for Digital Bodies Festival and a three-screen videogame installation for Art Exchange. Sian also does lectures, seminars and mentoring and has worked with universities, schools and institutions including UAL, V&A Museum, Norwich University of the Arts, Goldsmiths, DanceEast and Whitechapel Gallery.
Her work combines movement, the body and technology to explore embodiment, spirituality and human experience in the digital age. She is particularly interested in the uneasy synchronicities between Asian and cyborgian bodies; in popularised depictions of Asiatic bodies in anime and video games; and in the thresholds of human identity where one exists as both and neither at the same time.
https://www.sianfan.com
Aliyah Hasinah
Aliyah is a curator, writer and filmmaker whose work focuses on decolonial approaches to history and the present day. They curate exhibitions, produce events, festivals, creative strategies, consult on campaigns/projects as well as making films and writing poetry, scripts and shit captions. Alongside this, Aliyah facilitates and speaks publically.
London based and working freelance, currently Aliyah has worked freelance for a plethora of clients and different organisations, artists, individuals and so on.
In 2021 they produced the D&AD Shift with Google development programme with partners adidas, penguin & Virtue. They also released a new short film Loving, exploring the perspectives of 5 womxn learning to love in their twenties.
In 2017 Aliyah co-curated the internationally acclaimed exhibition ‘The Past is Now’ (2017-18) at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, ‘This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things X’ at Eastside Projects (2018) and Bald Black Girls (2019) in addition to various exhibitions across Birmingham and London. In 2020 I’m curating an exhibition for Ort Gallery with Artist Olivia Twist on platonic intimacy and house shares.
https://www.aliyahhasinah.com/
Julia Howe
Julia is an Associate Director at London's prestigious and longstanding W MGMT - an agency representing models, VIP/celebrity talent, influencers and world class athletes. Within W, she is the founder of W Artists. Launched in 2022, her roster has gone from strength to strength, with W Artists becoming recognised in the industry as a boutique agency housing the most cutting edge and forward-thinking creative minds. She loves to encourage innovation and to focus on areas like building branding, and supporting diverse creative disciplines - she's passionate about working within a pioneering talent experience.
She has an extensive background in casting, scouting, fashion photography and journalism having worked with magazines like Dazed, i-D, Vice, Vogue &c., and agencies such as Anti, Contact, Select & Nevs - and has worked as a Casting Director with multiple clients across LFW.
Within photography, she has had her work exhibited at Tate Modern, Royal Academy of Art and ICA among other galleries.
She graduated from an MA at London College of Fashion in 2019.
Julia Howe
Associate Director at W MGMT
Founder of W Artists // W Artists IG
Steve Macleod
Steve is an award-winning Creative Director who has been at the forefront of photographic imaging for almost thirty years. He is a Director of Metro Imaging, one of Europe’s leading imaging production companies with a global reach offering a comprehensive range of services for exhibition and collecting markets. In his role he collaborates with a vast network of international clients including museums, galleries, and individual creatives.
Steve is a practicing artist represented by Black Box Projects, regularly exhibiting, his works are held in both private and public institutions including the V&A in London. He is also a commissioned artist and ambassador for Hospital Rooms Arts Mental Health charity.
Steve is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Suffolk; former Trustee and Deputy Chair of QEST, External Assessor and External Moderator at RGU Aberdeen. He runs an established mentorship programme and is a regular judge on international panels.
In 2024 Steve was presented with a Royal Warrant from HRH the King for services to industry and education.
Kate Soloman
Kate Solomon is a journalist and writer covering music, pop culture and lifestyle. Leaving behind a budding career in tech journalism, she quit her job to go freelance in 2014 and has spent the last ten years writing whatever she wants (to a point). Writing mainly for the Guardian, the Independent and the i, she’s profiled artists including Chappell Roan, Camila Cabello, Charli XCX and The Offspring, actors like Judge Reinhold, Harry Shearer, Naomie Harris and even once a footballer (Robbie Fowler). As well as interviews, she reviews albums and gigs, covers festivals like Primavera and Glastonbury and writes features on whatever else comes along - nasal spray, facebook scams, romantic revenge... you name it.
As well as journalism, she writes artist bios, copy for brands including Vue and Guinness, podcast scripts and in 2020 published a book about Amy Winehouse. She DJs, appears on podcasts, and juggles whatever else comes along if it sounds interesting and/or fun (or lucrative).
Darkroom Bar access information
Address: Darkroom Bar London College of Communication, SE1 6SB
Darkroom Bar is located on the ground floor of London College of Communication. After passing through reception, follow the path to the left of the stairs, turn right past lecture theatre C and the bar is on your left hand side. The bar is wheelchair accessible.
Launched in 2025 Arts SU is pleased to announce our 'Connection and Collaboration' strand built to improve networks, creative connections and communities of practice. We are excited to commence building an informal network of partners platforming the use of collectivity as a method of creative development and production.
Any questions about this event please contact Sophie Risner (Arts Programmer, Arts SU) on s.risner@su.arts.ac.uk