Staff
Rachael Disbury
Director
Rachael is a curator and producer based in Hawick, having joined Alchemy in 2018. Rachael taught on Edinburgh College of Art’s MFA in Contemporary Art Theory (2020-22) and prior to Alchemy was Project Manager at Deveron Projects. Rachael has served as a mentor and jury member on various training schemes, advisory groups, artist residencies and national awards in the arts and regeneration sectors, and has contributed to publications and panels with numerous organisations and film festivals.
Michael Pattison
Director
Michael is a critic from Gateshead. He holds a PhD in film practice from Newcastle University and is the editor of several books; his own criticism has been published widely. Michael has worked at numerous international film festivals as a curator, critic, advisor, keynote speaker, tutor and jury member. He joined Alchemy as a programmer in 2016, and has been a Director since 2019.
Milo Clenshaw
Festival Producer
Milo first joined Alchemy as part of a student placement during his Masters in Film Curation at the University of Glasgow, and has since gone on to work with the organisation as a Trainee, Print Traffic Coordinator, Programme Assistant and Assistant Producer. He also works freelance as a writer and curator, with his first novel published in 2024. He is drawn to the intersection of art, activism and social practice and has a particular interest in queer and DIY film.
Zuzana Fryntová
Project Coordinator
Originally from the Czech Republic, Zuzana is interested in inter-cultural socio-political contexts and local-global links. Her experience in socially-engaged arts has been shaped by her time at Deveron Projects, where she explored the connection between art, community, hospitality and environment, working with local communities and local, national and international artists. In her free time, Zuzana enjoys travelling, roaming around the woods and hills, going for a dip in the North Sea, exploring and learning, and just being active and creative in any way possible. She likes organising parties for her friends and has been told she can’t sit still – though she says she’s been learning.
Tom Swift
Creative Learning Lead
Since joining Alchemy in 2019, Tom has been working as a filmmaker and creative enabler with the diverse communities of Hawick and the Scottish Borders. Films made with and by these groups have been screened in parliament and various film festivals, and several have won awards. With a focus on meaningful participation, encouraging creative expression and learning genuinely useful skills through filmmaking, Tom is always excited to see what is created next.
Samhradh Douglas
Project Assistant
Samhradh Douglas was brought up in France before moving to the Scottish Borders. Following an MA in Music, specialising in music production, she is a multi-disciplinary artist with a love for making atmospheric electronic music and short films. She previously volunteered for the thirteenth edition of Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival.
Jonathan Ali
Festival Programmer
Jonathan is a film curator and writer based in London. He has a grounding in cinema from the Caribbean and its diaspora, and an abiding interest in the intersection of global south cinema with creative-hybrid film practice. He has worked for numerous film festivals, and guest-curated programmes and retrospectives in several places. He serves on film festival juries and as an adjudicator of projects for film funding initiatives. His byline has appeared in various publications.
april forrest lin 林森
Festival Programmer
april forrest lin 林森 (b. 1996, Stockholm — they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator investigating image-making and world-building as sites for the construction, sustenance, and dissemination of co-existent yet conflicting truths. They interweave moving image, performance, creative computing and installation in a commitment to centring oppressed knowledges, building an ethics of collaboration around reciprocal care, and exploring the linkages between history, memory, and interpersonal and structural trauma. Their work has been shown at the Museum of the Moving Image New York, Sheffield DocFest, LA Filmforum, and NOWNESS Asia.
Miriam Faria
Print Traffic Coordinator
Originally from Portugal, but living a nomadic life between Edinburgh, London and Lisbon since 2013, Miriam came on board Alchemy as a freelancer in 2025. She is a trained visual artist/scenographer and has worked across the creative industries for the past 26 years, both in the UK and in Portugal. Previous roles include Programme Manager at Edinburgh International Film Festival, Senior Programme and Screenings Coordinator at the BFI London Film Festival and Logistics Manager for French Film Festival UK. When she is not delivering a film festival, she enjoys travelling and planning for it, and taking snapshots on her yellow phone, for which the X95 Borders Buses commute to Hawick provides much inspiration.
Luna Issa
Artist in Residence
Luna Issa is an Iraqi-Scottish artworker. Her work is centred around a passion for Iraqi and SWANA art and culture, and spans cooking, curation and production. She is invested in community-building, both local and diasporic.
Luna runs SUMAG, an Iraqi-inspired food project, is a seasonal chef at Woodlands Community Development Trust, and is 1/4 of WSHWSH, a community-centred SWANA club night and events collective.
Trustees
Frances Davis
Frances Davis (she/her) is an arts-worker based in Central Sutherland. Her practice takes form in various ways – in work as a curator, artist, researcher, and educator. Recent projects have focused on how we live and work in the context of climate breakdown and include: Let’s Talk About the Weather, a collective weather report of a changing climate drawing on the embodied experiences and observations of people across Caithness and Sutherland; a residency with environmental scientists focusing on the affective experience of doing climate change research; and research and writing on the weather in artists’ moving image. Previously, she was curator at Timespan, a cultural institution in the north of Scotland, and she is currently a Teaching Fellow in Contemporary Art Theory at the University of Edinburgh.
Jamie Dunn
Jamie Dunn is an arts journalist and editor based in Glasgow. He’s currently the film editor of The Skinny, Scotland’s largest arts and culture magazine, and his writing also appears in publications like Sight & Sound, Cineaste and The Guardian. He’s chaired sundry film events for the likes of Glasgow Film Festival and Edinburgh Film Festival, and is a member of both the Critic Circle and GALECA, The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. And, like everyone it seems, he appears on a podcast; in this case The CineSkinny, a film podcast he co-hosts with colleagues from The Skinny.
Sonya Dyer
Dr Sonya Dyer is an artist from London, working primarily in moving image and sculpture.
Sonya’s practice explores where the centre is located in fictional narratives of the future. She explores how subjectivities and alliances are formed across cultures and temporalities, creating radical futures through unexpected connections. Her work has recently been exhibited in galleries including Primary, Nottingham, Somerset House, London, Whitechapel Gallery, London and Herbert Museum and Art Galleries.
Sonya is an alumnus of the Whitney Museum of American Art: Independent Study Program and is a lecturer in the Department of Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Matt Hickman
Matt Hickman is an award-winning songwriter, filmmaker and creative from Ayrshire, best known for his work with the Scottish indie-soul outfit Brownbear. In recent years, Matt has devoted a lot of his time and expertise to equalities work in Scotland, following on from his social justice work and campaigning for rights as an artist. He was previously the Engagement Lead for Culture Collective, and is now co-lead for We Are Here Scotland’s ‘Creative Balance’ project, researching the barriers facing mental health and wellbeing for Black & POC creatives in Scotland.
Amadu Khan
Amadu Wurie Khan (PhD) is Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. As a refugee-background activist, educator and creative, he occasionally serves as visiting artist, lecturer, trainer, consultant and public speaker on decolonising and inclusive arts education, creative industry practices and climate/environmental justice. His current creative research and practice is exploring how folktales and other oral artforms and traditions constitute communities’ responses to and social action on climate change and environmental justice. Amadu also employs storytelling for research, knowledge exchange and engagement, and for campaigning, advocacy and activism with and among civil society, mainstream service provision and disadvantaged grassroots communities in Scotland and Sierra Leone.
Alice Mainstone
Alice is an arts professional working across research, programming and operations in visual arts and festivals. Having obtained an undergraduate degree in History of Art and English Literature and an MA in Arts, Festivals and Cultural Management, Alice currently works as Programme Coordinator for Art Walk Projects and Operations Manager for Collective. Her research and programming interests include Scottish queer and social histories, participatory projects, and Fair Work in the cultural sector.
Tabitha Mudaliar (Secretary)
Tabi Mudaliar is a producer and writer. Her portfolio contains feature and art film, cultural events, radio productions, and arts projects. A Chair of Alive Community Radio, Director of DG Unlimited, and Network Coordinator for the DG Creative Wellbeing Network, Tabi is an established and well-known contributor and advocate in the creative and cultural landscape of the South of Scotland. She is a passionate advocate for true diversity and inclusion in Scotland’s creative sector, particularly for the underrepresented and the economically excluded.
Sarah Perks
(Co-Chair)
Prof Sarah Perks is a curator, writer, filmmaker and academic whose practice explores the intersections of contemporary art, ecology and speculative futures. Working across exhibition-making, research and embodied methodologies, she develops collaborative experimental platforms and projects that bring together communities to imagine new cultural and environmental narratives, including her Deep Council series of workshops. Sarah is currently Professor of Curating in the School of Arts and Creative Industries at Teesside University and half of artistic collaboration Forms of Circulation (with Dr Paul Stewart), whose 16mm films have been selected for leading international festivals including BFI London Film Festival. Sarah co-leads the MBA Cultural and Creative Leader and Professional Doctorate in Curating and Creative Practice. Previously Sarah was Artistic Director at HOME and Cornerhouse in Manchester, collaborating with international artists and filmmakers including David Lynch, Rosa Barba and Rachel Maclean.
Ingrid Pollard
Ingrid Pollard is a photographer, media artist and researcher. She is a graduate of the London College of Printing and Derby University. Ingrid has developed a social practice concerned with representation, history and landscape with reference to race, difference and the materiality of lens based media. Her work is included in numerous collections including the UK Arts Council and the Victoria & Albert Museum. She lives and works in Northumbria, UK.
Ren Scateni
Ren is a film curator and writer whose practice embraces experimental works and artists’ moving image exploring the interstices of political, disruptive and liminal identities. His writing has appeared in various art and film magazines including ArtReview, Hyperallergic and Sight and Sound. Ren is currently Curatorial Lead at Glasgow Short Film Festival and has been/is working across curation, consulting, mentoring, and PR for festivals, cultural organisations, and agencies including Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Queer East, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, BFI Doc Society, and Square Eyes.
Rhea Storr
(Co-Chair)
Rhea Storr is an artist filmmaker and researcher with an interest in the in-between, the culturally ineffable, translation, format and aesthetics, especially as it relates to Black cultural representation. She is a former co-director of not nowhere, an artist workers cooperative, and a former resident at Somerset House. Previous screenings/exhibitions include Artist Film International and Art on the Underground, New York Film Festival, CPH:DOX and London Film Festival. In the past, she has also been a programmer for Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival. She is the winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize 2020, the Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Prize and the Royal Photographic Society Award for Creative Contribution to Art in Moving Image.
Ed Webb-Ingall
Ed Webb-Ingall is a filmmaker and researcher working with archival materials and methodologies drawn from community video. He collaborates with groups to explore under-represented historical moments and their relationship to contemporary life, developing modes of self-representation specific to the subject or the experiences of the participants. He is a co-founder of the London Community Video Archive and is currently writing a book with the title BFI Screen Stories: The Story of Video Activism. Previous solo exhibitions have been at The Showroom Gallery (2015), Focal Point (2018), South London Gallery (2019), and Grand Union (2023). Group exhibitions include MK Gallery (2019), Invisible Dust (2019) and Brent Biennial (2022). Forthcoming exhibitions include Devonshire Collective (2023) and PEER (2024).