Core Team

Image: Core Team, 2022 © Catharine Braithwaite
(from left to right: Richard Sandell, Mark Thomas, Robert Taylor and David McAlmont)

David McAlmont has been a member of the Architectural Association since 2010 where he teaches Spatial Design & Performance at the Interprofessional Studio and the History of Art and Architecture as part of the History and Technical Studies programme. The appointment commenced when the school retained him as a performance consultant after some years and chart successes in the music industry, and collaborations with Bernard Butler, Shirley Bassey, Michael Nyman, David Arnold, Craig Armstrong, Courtney Pine and others. After studying the History of Western art and Architecture at Birkbeck College, he has actively sought to marry his performative background to his art historical interests with particular focus on creating Black LGBT+ portraitures. Projects have included Girl Boy Child, a collaboration with the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at University of Leicester and National Trust, part of the Pink News Third Sector Equality Award-winning Prejudice and Pride initiative and Portrait of a Black Queer Briton at the National Portrait Gallery. His next album, a fresh collaboration with Hifi Sean (Soup Dragons, The Hi Fidelity, Glitterbox) is scheduled for release in 2023.

Robert Taylor has published and exhibited widely over the last 35 years with work held in the V&A and National Portrait Gallery. Robert’s early work included many contributions to LGBTQ+ human rights campaigns, and HIV prevention projects. His current practice is divided between collections of portraits of women in academe and STEM commissioned by academic and scientific institutions, including the Royal Society and various Oxford University colleges, while his more personal art-based projects centre around identity, beauty and desire.

Since founding Soup Collective in 1999, Mark Thomas has developed his role as both an independent Film-maker, directing promos and documentaries for acts such as Elbow, Doves and Editors alongside producing and directing large-scale AV projects, video design and installation work for clients ranging from artists Suzanne Lacy and Ari Benjamin Meyers to the Almeida, Imperial War Museum North and the BFI. His work has been screened at the NFT, IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam), Liverpool Biennial and SF MOMA. Recent work includes Flying Dream 1, a broadcast documentary aired on Sky Arts detailing the making of Elbow’s recent album, recorded during the pandemic.

Richard Sandell is Professor in the School of Museum Studies and Co-Director of the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester. Richard led the research partnership between the National Trust and RCMG that shaped the award-winning Prejudice and Pride LGBTQ heritage programme, 2017-19. A research collaboration with the Wellcome Collection shaped their new permanent gallery – Being Human – that opened in 2019. His most recent books include – Museums, Moralities and Human Rights (2017) and Museum Activism (with Robert R. Janes) (2019), winner of the Canadian Museums Association’s award for Outstanding Achievement for Research in the Cultural Heritage Sector.