Artists First Trustees
Michele Farmer
As Strategy Leader, Learning Partnerships and Collaborations, for Bristol City Council, Michele is responsible for developing a range of partnerships to improve opportunities for children which extend beyond school.
Her significant presentation (and persuasive!) skills were developed as Director at Spike Island, establishing the organisation as a charity and raising over £2 million including one of the first ever applications to the National Lottery.
Those skills were further honed in her later position as Deputy Director at Watershed where she had responsibility for building partnerships and programming a range of digital media projects.
Her talents are no less valuable as Trustee of Artists First, a role she has held for 5 years.
Michael Prior
Michael brings a wealth of experience as a freelance curator and arts project manager to his position of Trustee. Since studying Fine Art at Leeds Polytechnic (1989-1992), his career has taken him from Leeds City Art Gallery and Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery to his current public art projects in Bristol at Brunswick Cemetery, Oasis Academy and Cosham Hospital and the Wonders of Weston project in Weston Super Mare.
In between, he has worked at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham as Curator (1997-2000) and at Arnolfini, Bristol as Access and Education Programmer (2000-2009) working on a number of significant initiatives alongside many notable artists.
Ann Pugh
As a partner in Redweather, an independent production company based in Bristol, Ann is a disabled film Producer and Director. Although not exclusively, much of her work is about disability issues, education, social history and the arts. Education films include twenty films for the DfES promoting good inclusive practice and illustrating how the Disability Discrimination Act can be effectively implemented in schools. Television credits include productions for Channel Four, ITV and Discovery.
Ann has made short films with Artists First and its performing arts sister company, Firebird Theatre.
