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
Steve Macleod
Professor Steve Macleod is a Director at one of Europe’s leading imaging companies, Metro Imaging, with a reputation for collaborating with many of the worlds most recognisable and influential artists.
An award winning Creative Director based in London, Steve have been at the forefront of photographic imaging for over twenty years, collaborating with a vast network of clients and developing new and innovative photographic printing practices.
He is also a curator and art director working across broad disciplines of creative industries. He runs a successful professional mentorship scheme through Metro Imaging and regularly reviews and works with artists in their professional practice. One of these mentorships is the MiAL & Metro Mentorship launched in 2015.
We intend to host 6 creative mentors for this event- please keep checking back for details of who they are and their specialism.
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