BGW was founded in 2016 by director Lizz Brady (she/her) after a long period of mental health illness resulted in a stay at an inpatient psychiatric hospital. With a recent degree in fine art, Lizz used her personal experiences to develop a creative programme that would inspire and support others via transformative art exhibitions and community events.

Lizz has curated exhibitions at Guest Projects (London) BACKLIT gallery (Nottingham) Auxiliary Project Space (Middlesbrough) and Phoenix Art Space (Brighton) with the theme of mental health and disability being the integral focus.

Lizz also exhibits her work internationally, and has previous shown in New York, Venice, Madrid, Seattle and Leeds.

Leon Clowes (he/they) is an artist of sounds, story and socials. He explores the hidden and uncomfortable, inviting nuance in difficult conversations. Leon's has been commissioned by BBC
Radio 4, Contemporary Music for All, Liberty, SPILL, Supernormal and Deptford X festivals, Drake Music Scotland, Disability Arts Online and Queer Art Projects.

He is a co-founder of the Addiction Recovery Arts Network, and is both a Multitrack Fellow and Open School East Associate Artist.

"Lizz has this rare gift as both an artist and a curator which is about producing the highest
quality of exhibitions, yet keeping accessibility and community at the core. I know I have much to learn from her. What BGW is going to achieve with the future proposal is ground breaking and it will have positive ripples across the sector. I was honoured to be asked to be part of the board."

Christopher Samuel (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in identity and disability politics. Often echoing the many facets of his own lived experience as a Black disabled man, his work tells stories, highlighting the often unseen experiences of his day-to-day life and those of others in similar circumstances. His practice includes small detailed ink drawings, film, print, audio, research, and large installations.

Nationally, there are multiple barriers facing marginalised artists.To have a dedicated disability-led organisation and space for all (not just for disabled artists) is much needed.It will provide opportunities to make work, to connect, to have space and to be visible for all of the creative community, bringing opportunity and growth to the community.

Access and representation is really important - not just to me - but to all of society, to make our communities more diverse, richer and more resilient.

Being part of the BGW Board is an opportunity for me to support and champion something that I think will be quite special.

Georgina Aasgaard (she/her) is a Cellist and Music and Health practitioner with over 20 years of experience delivering music-based interventions across clinical and community settings. She has served as a lead musician for both the Liverpool Philharmonic’s Music and Health Programme and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital for 17 years. Recently, Georgina was awarded funding from the AHRC as a Community Innovation Practitioner, where she focuses on fostering well-being through co-creation and co-production within local communities.

In 2024, she published a toolkit to support musicians working in paediatric care. Her pioneering approach to music-making has also extended to prisons, elder care homes, and refugee centers. A recipient of multiple NHS awards, she was named Merseyside Woman of the Year for Arts, Culture, and Media in 2019.

Georgina has joined the board of Broken Grey Wires to share her insights on building creative communities that support mental health and wellbeing from a practitioner’s perspective.

Pierce Starre (they/them) is a Liverpool-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores the complex intersections of their identity as a queer, working-class, neurodivergent CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), with parents who communicate through British Sign Language. Alongside their artistic practice, Pierce is a registered British Sign Language Interpreter.

Working across live performance, sculpture, textiles, and multimedia, their work challenges and subverts heteronormative and neuronormative narratives. Through immersive and thought-provoking experiences, they seek to foster connection, reflection, and transformation.

Committed to collaboration and community-based practice, Pierce is a collaborator of the Chisenhale Dance Space community and is a member of the collective OTHER, which focuses on work shaped by marginalised identities and lived experiences. The collective prioritises the creation of safe, supportive, and nurturing environments for the development, performance, touring, documentation, exhibition, and sharing of artistic work.

Pierce also runs Performance N’ Tha, an artist-led platform dedicated to amplifying the voices of queer, neurodivergent, and disabled artists.

Lena Theodoropoulou (she/her) is a lecturer in the sociology of public health at the University of Liverpool. Lena's research interests include drug and alcohol use and recovery, mental health, feminist epistemologies of care and empirical creative methods, and she has a commitment to interdisciplinary working.

Her latest project (in collaboration with Dr Nicole Vitellone and the artist and filmmaker Melanie Manchot), draws on the Deleuzian concepts of minor practice and fabulation and focuses on how participatory filmmaking can advance knowledges and practices of recovery from drugs and alcohol.

Prior to this research, she conducted an empirical study exploring the practices of care emerging in two drug recovery services in Liverpool and Athens. Employing Deleuzo–Guattarian orientations to assemblage and feminist approaches to care, Lena offered a critique of neoliberal approaches to recovery from drugs and alcohol, while collapsing the dualities of harm reduction and recovery. The project led to the publication of the monograph Becoming with Care in Drug Treatment Services: the Recovery Assemblage, published by Routledge in 2023.

Lena teaches on the Master of Public Health, where she leads modules on qualitative methods and the sociology of health and illness, and is a member of the Centre for Health, Arts, Society and the Environment (CHASE), a cross-faculty, cross-disciplinary centre to promote humanities and social science thinking and practice.

Jon Davies (he/him) is a musician and arts worker, based in Liverpool since 2007. Currently working for Metal, he has previously held freelance positions at Abandon Normal Devices, Open Culture and Liverpool Biennial, and was the director for audiovisual production and events agency Deep Hedonia.

As a musician, Jon has presented work for Milan Triennale, Electronic Voice Phenomena and Lampo Chicago, and regularly performs and produces records solo and as part of improvisational sound art trio LICK.

Jon is also a board member of Granby Community Land Trust, rejuvenating the historic high street and maintaining affordable housing.

Fauziya Johnson (she/her) is a curator, artist and producer based in Manchester. Fauziya creates with a focus on current social and political issues through community-centred art projects and exhibitions.

Her work creates thought-provoking, engaging and trusted spaces for communities to engage in, making collective care, deconstructing harmful systems, and activism the core of the work for marginalised groups, in particular Queer, Black and disabled communities.

Fauziya's vision for her work is to create vibrant thought and engagement with audiences. She extends her practice by doing workshops to develop community collaboration and expand on collective care.