The Development Team

Matthew Taylor - Producer

Matthew is the driving force behind Play's the Thing. He is a freelance arts and ICT specialist, who has worked in the arts and criminal justice sector (CJS) for nearly 20 years. In that time he has worked as: a theatre director (directing eight prison theatre productions); a developer of accredited training programmes for prisoners and arts practitioners at levels 2 and 3; the lead developer on a number of arts networks (including the Social Arts Network, the Arts Alliance and Play's the Thing); the producer of two socially inclusive arts festivals; the producer of two conferences on the arts (one in relation to social inclusion at a European level, the other looking at arts in the context of wellbeing); a builder of websites for a number of different UK arts organisations. He regularly speaks at conferences on the arts in criminal justice and was a founder and developer of the original Prison Arts Network. He has been involved in EU funded prison arts programmes, more or less continuously, since 1998, taking part in particular in Grundtvig projects “European Prison Travel Diary” (2003-4) and “Theatre in Jail in Europe” (2005-7).

 

Alexandra Higgins - Director

Researcher and Education Training Advisor: Graduated from Oxford University in 2001 with a 2.1 in Psychology and Philosophy; Employment : Self-employed, delivering training, workshops and projects for the NHS and third sector around physical and mental health (2009 ongoing). Worked for the NHS for 7 years, with an increasing focus on delivering training and running workshops for health professionals, including mental health professionals (2002 – 2009). She has recently set up the Social Arts Co-operative, supporting artists working in the arts and social inclusion sector and is the Director of Happy Planet Projects, running arts projects with unemployed young people.

Christine Cellier - Media Manager

 

Andy Hoang - Network Developer

 

Frances Richens - Communications Assistant

Academic background in History of Art with a focus on performance art, studied at UCL. In 2010 she was involved in the set-up of a magazine aimed at students, for which she still edits the arts section, covering day-to-day arts activities in London. She is currently employed as a Publishing Intern at ArtsProfessional magazine and is working closely with Play's the Thing, fronting the media partnership between the two companies.