Team

Jon Davis is our Director. He has extensive experience as a creative commissioner, programmer and executive producer creating large-scale projects and place-based programmes that enable bold and inclusive storytelling. 

He has delivered extraordinary projects for the UK’s most significant cultural events including Coventry City of Culture, London 2012 Festival and 14-18 NOW on behalf of LIFT, and has most recently Executive Produced ‘Galwad’, an UNBOXED commission.

Jon’s work is driven by a commitment to genuine co-creation, collaboration, and a curiosity to understand place and community, responding to important social issues to create real civic change through art and culture.

John Hartley is our Deputy Director and comes to Cement Fields with wide experience from across the arts in the UK and internationally.

John co-founded an international agency managing artist commission and research residencies, working with partners and artists from across Europe and Asia. He previously worked at Arts Council England in visual and interdisciplinary arts and helped develop a new environmental strategy and art-in-industry placements. Between 2016 and 2018, he project managed the development and launch of a new Arts and Culture Strategy for the University of Exeter, and he also has experience working in university operations, strategy and knowledge exchange. 

John has a background in research-based arts practice and is interested in the complex weave of matter and imagination that makes places come alive.

Sam is our Curator and contributes to the development and delivery of Cement Fields’ artistic programme.

He has a background as a visual artist, having studied Print at the Royal College of Art and Photographic Art at the University of Westminster, and experience working with multiple UK-based arts organisations in a variety of roles.

Since joining Cement Fields in 2020, Sam has operated across the programme, supporting projects with artists such as Phil Coy, Lou Lou Sainsbury, and Caroline Bergvall, as well as on major programmes, including Estuary 2021, England’s Creative Coast, and Whitstable Biennale 2022.

Elizabeth Tophill is our Learning Curator. Elizabeth was about to leave the arts and become a full-time gardener, before Cement Fields lured her back with their exciting schools programme. She has worked within the cultural sector for over ten years, as Production Manager for Whitstable Biennale, leading school workshops with Strange Cargo, researching the Circular Economy with Future Foundry, and delivering Turner Contemporary’s education programme. 

Elizabeth is a practical and playful maker and artist, working with nature to create balanced, beautiful, closed-loop landscapes. She loves to experience, facilitate and invent art in surprising places, where anybody may happen upon it. 

Michaela is our Curator and Project Manager for This Must Be the Place. She’s developing a programme of opportunities for young people to influence the urban design of Ebbsfleet Garden City, in collaboration with Ebbsfleet Development Corporation. This three-year project brings together creative practitioners, artists, researchers, writers and academics to work with local young people.

Michaela has over 25 years of experience in the arts and has in the past worked for National Gallery in Prague, Flowers Gallery in London, Metal and Kinetika art charities, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, and with multidisciplinary artist Caroline Bergvall. 

Michaela’s also written reviews, edited State magazine and curated her own exhibitions, film screenings and events, with particular interest in the public space, digital realm possibilities and experimental film.

Sue is one of our Associate Curators and is working to consolidate the archives of Whitstable Biennale, which span twenty years from 2002 to 2022. 

She is a curator and writer, and has been working closely with early career artists on experimental and ambitious new work for 30 years, as Curator of Chisenhale Gallery in London for 10 years, and Director of Whitstable Biennale from 2005 until its last edition in 2022. Sue oversaw the organic development of Whitstable Biennale into Cement Fields, stepping down as Director of the organisation in March 2023.

She is currently a board member of Invisible Dust and the Stuart Croft Foundation, and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Kent.

Emma Leach is one of our Associate Curators and is currently working with artist Andrew Merritt on Intertidal Allotment.

She has a background as a visual artist, having studied at Kent Institute of Art & Design in Canterbury. For over 15 years she has been helping artists realise their ideas. She enjoys inhabiting other conceptual frameworks, using curiosity, sensitivity and humour to deliver works that are in tune with each artist’s ideas. Projects have included performance, sound, dance, film, sculpture and installation as well as the productive spaces where these disciplines meet.

Working with Cement Fields, she has curated programmes for five editions of Whitstable Biennale and has developed projects for North Kent with artists Esther Collins, Andy Merritt and Kieren Reed.

Andy is an artist, and lives and works in Whitstable. He is Course Leader and Associate Head of School at the University for the Creative Arts and previously taught at Wimbledon School of Art after studying Sculpture at Central Saint Martins in the 1980s. He has been involved in the Whitstable Biennale since its inception.

Andy has exhibited at The London Art Book Fair at the ICA in 2007 and the Whitechapel as well as at Book Art Fairs and events in the UK, Hungary, Minnesota, Russia and Denmark, Turner Contemporary in Margate and at the Whitstable Biennale and Sheffield Artists Book Prize. He has work in the Tate Britain Library and in Artists Book collections around the world and has exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum shop and with Marc Jacobs ‘Bookmarc’. He currently has work at the Book Art Bookshop in London, Boekie Woekie in Amsterdam and galleries in Whitstable and Norfolk. He has recently completed a large commission for The Grand Scotland Yard Hotel in London.

Amanda spent her professional career working in arts management, including media relations, regional theatres and then for The Royal Ballet and Royal Opera House. She held senior management roles at the Barbican, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (where she was Director of Arts and Heritage), Crafts Council, and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She has served on the boards of Central School of Ballet, Hampstead Theatre and the institute of International Visual Arts. She is highly engaged with both performing and visual arts, with a particular interest in interdisciplinary and immersive work. She has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing. Amanda lives in Whitstable, where she also serves on the board of an infants’ school.

Rachel started her career in the arts after achieving her BA in Performing Arts at Middlesex University. She worked as an artist and actor for the first 10 years of her career. In the 1990s Rachel pioneered the arts initiative Creative Block, a charity funded by the London Arts Board and the Arts Council. The project was housed in spectacular unused offices buildings in the City and West End at the time with the full co-operation of the owners who benefitted from the rates relief. The group built white and black cubes in which to present arts and theatre shows and installations.

Rachel served on the board of Clean Break Theatre Company for 10 years and held the chair for the 3 years during which the major lottery funding was won and spent. She has also worked with the board of the Estorick Foundation. In 1994 Rachel had a change of direction and re-trained as an accountant. She has worked in one of the top 5 accountancy firms as well as a number of small private practices. She set up her own private practice in 2009 which has grown steadily from personal recommendation. She now looks after 200 clients and has a team of 8 staff. The firm earned a Financial Times business award, and the Small Accounting Firm of the Year from Finance Monthly in 2021. The practice focuses on creative clients looking after artists, art galleries, designers and architects and is fast becoming one of the prominent accountants for artists in London. 

Jane Pitt is an artist based in North Kent. She makes installations that include sound, performance and text. Often sited in unusual public spaces, on land, water and in moving vehicles. Her work evokes a heightened awareness of environment and encourages curiosity in the topography and complexity of a place.

Running away with French Circus Archaos compounded her desire to make work across disciplines in non-traditional spaces for all audiences, including Wunderkammer, featured at The National Theatre and London Festival of Architecture; ‘Flüchtlingswelle’ commissioned by Wiesbaden Kunstsommer winning her the Curator’s Choice Prize for work which expresses global, social and political significance. Recent work includes: Fl-utter-ances (Tree Songs) audio-visual installation for Inside Out Dorset Festival; Maunder Maps for Ditchling Museum of Art & Craft and an international residency at Sura Medura, Sri Lanka