About Deptford X

Deptford X is a visual arts charity based in Deptford, South East London. We foster artistic talent and nurture community within the borough of Lewisham and beyond. We achieve this through a free festival in Deptford and ongoing activity supporting artists and our local communities throughout the year.

Founded in 1998, Deptford X is London’s longest-running visual arts festival. Between 1999 and 2023, we staged a free annual ten-day festival, working with hundreds of artists to locate art at the centre of everyday life for all of the area’s communities. From 2025, we plan to have our first ever Deptford X Biennial. This evolution from an annual to the biennial model will give us more time and capacity to work in-depth with our communities, and to support/collaborate with artists and audiences in various ways, throughout the year.

Deptford X places equity, accessibility and care at the heart of its organisation. In the UK context this means we are opposed to racism of any kind and at all levels, while promoting equality of access to all opportunities in the arts, employment, education and beyond.

Furthermore, Deptford X stands in solidarity and support with and for all anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-discrimination and anti-poverty struggles across the world. At this point in time that specifically means we:

stand in solidarity with Palestine and its inhabitants, including children, and we call on all governments to act towards securing an immediate ceasefire and cessation of hostilities in the wider region, and facilitating full access to humanitarian aid and peace.
support all actions trying to end conflict, famine and devastation across the globe.
consider rights for humans and non-humans as our collective responsibility.
hold space for the artist’s voice, and their right to open up dialogue for discussion regarding the above.

Our Vision

Deptford X:

Is led by local artistic ambition, interests and practice.
Brings art into informal contexts and public spaces for all to access.
Seeks to make a positive contribution to our locality, communities, and to art, and to lead by example.
Places equity, accessibility and care at the heart of the organisation.
Holds space and advocates for difference, creativity, experimentation and learning within art.

Fundamentally we support artists and creative practice, as well as those who do not yet identify as artists, with a focus over the next three years on:

1) People of Colour: Specifically local Black communities. We are actively redressing the balance of participation in Deptford X and visual arts as a whole and making space for People of Colour-led creative programming.

2) Disabled people: We are working to remove barriers to participation in our work and inviting disability-led programming.

3) Young people: We are developing ways to engage local audiences and participants at a younger age and create pathways for their participation and ownership of Deptford X.

Deptford X Staff

Director: Kwong Lee – kwong@deptfordx.org

General Manager: Charlotte Phaure-Davis – charlotte@deptfordx.org

Freelance Fundraiser: Catherine Herbert – catherine@deptfordx.org

Board of Trustees

Seema Manchanda (Chairperson) is Managing Director of The Showroom Gallery, former Assistant Director Planning & Environment, London Borough of Wandsworth, and is chair of Action for Race Equality. She made the jump from the world of planning and regeneration to arts in 2020 when she joined The Showroom as Managing Director, following the completion of a Fine Art Diploma from the Art Academy in 2019. When she has time, she is also a practicing artist.

Haffendi Anuar is an artist working in sculpture, painting and installation. Oriented in relation to his childhood memories of encountering and being enveloped by the fabric, his research and exploration into the iconography of the garment encompasses personal family photos, archival photographs, images from social media and the Internet and looks into the fabric’s origin, social utilization, visual patterns and formal structure. His works are in the collections of the Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, London and Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Kuala Lumpur. He runs the Gerald Moore Gallery in South East London and is a visiting tutor at City and Guilds of London Art School, London.

Teresa Cisneros is a Chicana cultural producer. She is Senior Practice Manager Culture Equity Diversity and Inclusion at The Wellcome. She has worked with many art institutions including Nottingham Contemporary, Tate, Spike Island and Serpentine to explore care, policy making, learning, and institutional change. In 2016-18 at The Showroom she curated Object Positions to explore cultural equity, decolonial processes and colonial administration. She is a part of agency for agency and is interested in reconstructing cultural institutions from the inside to begin working towards forms of transformational justice. Teresa was one of the panelists for the inaugural Supported commissioning programme for the 2019 Deptford X festival.

David Cotterrell is a visual artist who maintains an active studio practice from his studio in Deptford. He is engaged internationally in the realisation of art, curatorial and advocacy projects. His work spans galleries, architecture and the public realm. He is Research Professor of Fine Art, Director of the Culture & Creativity Research Institute (CCRI) and co-founder of Empathy & Risk C.I.C. David is a regular contributor to the Deptford X Fringe programme.

Margaret (Meg) Gorman is a professional HR & Transformation Lead with over 25 years’ HR and Finance experience globally and nationally. She is an entrepreneurial, commercial problem solver with an engaging, collaborative approach. She leverages her global experience to deliver business change with creativity, energy and enthusiasm.

In 2024, Meg left Citigroup to become an interim HR & Transformation lead while building her artistic practice. She uses data to drive people transformation and business change via strategic organisational planning and execution in not-for-profit and global financial service sectors, including 18 years at Citigroup. She is the co-founder of Adelpha Studio, an online art collaboration, and regularly exhibits her work.

Meg joined Citigroup after completing her MBA and MA at the University of Pennsylvania at The Wharton School and The Lauder Institute. Prior to business school, Margaret’s work experience included strategy and advisory roles at Charles Schwab and Dresdner Bank.

A graduate of Pomona College, Meg grew up in Indiana. She developed a lifelong love of art and writing which culminated in her first self-published work in October 2018. She wrote, illustrated and self-published the children’s picture book All Animals Count in five countries, raising funds in partnership with a conservation charity to save valuable ecosystems worldwide. Meg can often be found wandering the Thames path between her home and her studio, searching for good light.

Rachel Jackson is a Freelance Programmer, Producer & Artist Manager. Recent clients span the commercial and charity sector including U-Live, Festival Republic, Serious Events, London Jazz Festival, Spitalfields Music Festival and more. She manages the band Mermaid Chunky, a wonderfully left-field audio-visual duo based between Stroud and South-East London. Rachel is also a practicing musician performing in the band ‘Lello’ and sustains a practice in expanding electronic elements to her saxophone playing.

Jordan Mourzouris is Head of Major Projects (Digital) at Historic England, where he oversees the implementation of a new Digital Strategy. His work spans institutional data conservation, AI R&D, and technical programme management.

Previously, he held roles in technical, curatorial, and product/project management at organisations including the Contemporary Art Society and Arts Council England. Jordan has also curated radio projects with Montezpress and worked as a freelance sound producer and editor.

Celeste Ricci is a development and fundraising specialist with a background in art history and contemporary art theory. She is currently Head of Development at Create London, and was previously Senior Development Manager at Tate.

Fiona Roper is a Senior Collaboration Manager for the GLA Group, leading cross-organisational projects and programmes in line with the Mayor’s priorities to ensure maximum benefit for Londoners. Previously, she worked as an HR professional at Transport for London for over ten years. Fiona completed her BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths in 2002 and occasionally sketches in her spare time. She is a youth mentor in Lewisham and Greenwich and enjoys singing as part of London’s Transport Choir and Deptford Community Choir.

Nicola Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist born and based in South London whose work often utilises performance, film, sound, and print. She completed her MA at the Royal College of Art, where she was awarded the Augustus Martin Prize 2013 and the RCA Graduate Jealous Print Prize 2013. She is also the recipient of the London Print Studio New Graduate Award 2013. She has shown her films recently in Paris, Berlin and Miami. Exhibitions include Multiplied at Christie’s; Carousel at Aspex Gallery; and Parallax, at CG Projects. She is programme coordinator for BA Fine Art at Winchester School of Art and associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins. Nicola was nominated by Larry Achiampong to produce new work for Deptford X 2018’s Platform strand.

Suleyman Wellings-Longmore is an artist and human rights lawyer, with a creative practice that fuses painting, sculpture and design, and a legal career focused on migration and protest rights. He is currently on the MA Painting programme at the Royal College of Art as a Sir Frank Bowling scholar and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Nora Wuttke is a social anthropologist, with a background in architecture. As an anthropologist of infrastructure, energy and the (built) environment, she is a postdoctoral research fellow at Durham University and fellow of the Durham Energy Institute. She maintains and active art practice in her studio in Deptford.

Company Number: 04133414
Registered Charity: 1087490