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Founded in 2013, our Development Board brings together leading Arcola Supporters with expert experience and connections to help drive our development programmes and fundraising initiatives.
Development Board members are Founding Patrons (Pillar 4 supporters). They actively work with the Arcola team. They help forge Arcola’s independence in fundraising; create a successful culture of giving and build a pool of regular donors, including through turning fans, stakeholders and supporters into active champions and givers.
Founding Development Board members
Graham Benson (chair)
Graham spent 35 years as a TV and film producer winning many awards and travelling the world making both domestic and international programming. In more recent times he's led a portfolio life as an advisor and consultant from the Americas to the Continent to South Africa and India. He also chairs Blue Heaven Productions, TriNorth Ltd, a sport promotion and event management company, All Out Cricket magazine, Cornhill & Harvest Ltd, a boutique financial consultancy, Screen South, Chairman of the Board of Trustees for The Continuum Ensemble and is deputy chairman of The FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival. With his appointment as chairman of the Arcola's development board he returns to his first love and roots - the theatre. For many years he was involved with Unity Theatre and before joining the BBC’s drama department in 1968 he was stage manager in Edinburgh, Dundee, Canterbury and Northern Ireland in the halcyon days of rep and touring.
Andrew Cripps
Andrew has been an enthusiastic supporter and attendee of the Arcola for over a decade and is very excited to help support it develop its new home. He is particularly interested in productions of experimental and challenging theatre at Arcola and broadening local audiences. He has actively promoted visual and performing arts in Hackney and Bethnal Green. Andrew is a Chartered Accountant who spent much of his professional life in consumer goods businesses and is now a non-executive director of a number of UK and international public companies. He lives a short walk from the theatre.
Vicky Eltringham
A Hackney resident and Arcola fan, Vicky's day job is in arts fundraising. She is currently Head of Corporate Development at ENO, folllowing two years in the same role at the Barbican Centre and five years with D&AD. She started her development career at the University of Westminster after completing a degree in philosophy with logic at King's College. She brings to Arcola development expertise from within the arts sector.
Stuart Honey
(biography coming soon)
Roger Bradburn
Roger is the Academic Director of West London College and has taught and worked in over thirty countries on five continents. Prior to his educational career he worked for a number of multi-national organisations and co-founded an electronics company.
He is a strong believer in the value of theatre in developing young people and is particularly interested in the educational benefits of the performing arts.
Roger is a long-term supporter of London Theatre and is delighted to be joining the Development Board of the Arcola.
Lauren Dark
Lauren Dark has worked as a Producer and in development for Ivana MacKinnon’s Stray Bear Films since 2014. She previously worked for five years at Ken Loach and Rebecca O’Brien’s Sixteen Films. She produced Jack Thorne/Tom Harper’s War Book which opened International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2015 and is currently working on Michael Pearce's BFI backed debut feature Beast.Lauren was named a Screen International Future Leader Producer and a BAFTA Break Through Brit in 2015.
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