Creative Dundee

Meet our Team

Gillian Easson
Director


Gillian designs a diverse portfolio of projects in collaboration with the team, and leads strategic partnerships which support the sustainability of creative communities. She’s grown Creative Dundee from the ground up since starting it as a blog in 2008, by catalysing opportunities for people and their place.

With a background in design and innovation, she has used this to improve access routes to education, employment and enterprise. Gillian has worked extensively internationally, sharing strategies and practical tools which value the broader impacts of creative clusters and networked approaches. Equally happy facilitating workshops, or navigating complex multi-partner projects, she is a fan of the messiness, embracing open and collective ways of working, to find the ultimate murmuration.

Claire Dufour
Creative Climate Producer


Claire is the project lead for CULTIVATE, a new regional programme supported through Creative Scotland’s Culture Collective initiative, focussing on improving social/climate justice for local communities through creativity and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

She joined the team in 2015 as Programmes Producer, developing and delivering projects including Fabric, a creative leadership programme for the city, and Ampersand+, a peer-support project to share your experience, skills and ideas with others.

Passionate about people, collaborative working and placemaking, she’s dedicated to providing safe, inclusive and brave spaces where we can learn from each other, and imagine and shape a better future together.

Andy Truscott
Team Producer


Andy is responsible for undertaking general and financial administration duties to ensure the smooth and efficient running of the organisation. He also supports our Amps initiative, and the development and delivery of CULTIVATE.

Andy is also a sound artist and records and releases ambient, electronic music under the moniker Kinbrae. His work has been commissioned for Dundee Design Festival as well as soundtrack work for TV.

Jen Collins
Programmes Producer


Jen facilitates projects and events with and for the creative community and wider city – including finding ways to build, profile and connect with our wonderful Amps network.

Since graduating from DJCAD, Jen has accompanied working as a freelance illustrator with an array of roles for cultural collectives and organisations. Her love of collaborating with others and fostering curiosity in creativity has taken her to Glasgow, Toronto and then back to Dundee – where she’s grateful to have had many chances to create, learn and grow.

Eilish Victoria
Creative Spaces Producer


Eilish creates space for communities to collaborate; exploring new models for city-making which actively engage communities, create new opportunities and enhance quality of life. She brings people together to better understand the need for creative space in the city and develop new partnerships, with the aim of making culture and creativity more visible and valued as a key tool in the equitable transformation of our cities.

With a background in Urban Design, Eilish is passionate about how our cities and neighbourhoods can help us lead happier, healthier and more sustainable lives. She believes that creative and transparent processes allow for exciting collaborations between designers and communities, and loves bringing big ideas together and exploring the best ways to communicate them in fun, accessible ways.

Freya Barcroft
Digital Producer


Freya takes the lead on developing our digital work and channels, ensuring our work spotlights creative practitioners, spaces and opportunities from across the city, alongside our extensive programme and events. 

With a background in marketing and accessible children’s publishing, Freya is particularly passionate about young people’s access to art and creative spaces, and is a firm believer in the life-changing power of storytelling.

Meet our Board

Creative Dundee is grateful for the support, skills and expertise of our voluntary Board, who meet on a quarterly basis. We know we’re not as diverse as we could be and we’re working to remedy that. If you think you can help, please get in touch.

Gill Donoghue (Board Chair)


Gill has over 25 years of experience leading and managing a wide range of services in the charity/voluntary sector, with skills and knowledge covering housing and property management, social care, volunteering, and community engagement activities.

She is particularly interested in the impact of design and digital transformation on the way services are delivered, putting people at the heart of what we do and can achieve. Her current role involves both strategic and business planning—looking at ways to innovate, drive improvements and redesign services to deliver the best outcomes for people and their communities. Gill also brings experience of regulatory requirements and good governance in the third sector.

Maryam Deeni


Maryam is creative at heart, with a keen interest in community development and utilising the business sector to source out innovative solutions and societal progression. She advocates for young people and supporting initiatives which drive their growth, by working alongside organisations across private, public and voluntary sectors. 

Curator for the digital series “Design in the Diaspora: Scottish Creatives’ Impact on Culture”, Maryam hopes to see this project inspire the next generation to have creative agency over their work and take hold of the narrative of the creative industries.

Sorcha Pringle


Sorcha is a musician, composer and disabled activist based in Dundee. Her work includes delivering accessible music workshops and advocating for equal access to musical and creative experiences for all.  

Recently, Sorcha’s artistic practice has become more intrinsically linked with activism which she expresses through poetry and song. Sorcha is founder of Springboard Creative Arts, which supports and champions young aspiring disabled musicians, and offers a support network for disabled women working in the arts in Scotland. 

Springboard Creative Arts also designs and delivers workshops and materials to facilitate global citizenship and climate justice education through the creative arts. 

Sorcha’s latest project, Transforming the Narrative, commissioned by Touretteshero, is a creative expression of the experiences of disabled people during the pandemic.

You can also find Sorcha drinking good coffee or on walks with her dog.

Dave Close


Dave has more than 25 years’ experience of youth and community work in England and Scotland and has been Executive Director of Hot Chocolate Trust in Dundee since 2013. 

He is committed to fully human, collaborative approaches that meet the complex challenges of marginalisation and inequity: positive cycles of encounter and collaboration make change happen. 

He is also currently a trustee with A Place in Childhood, and attends St Paul’s Cathedral in Dundee.

Anzal Baig


Anzal is a trainee lawyer currently completing her seat in business law. She is passionate about the creative industries and the role of art in the wellbeing of communities.

She also works to design games for social good and is currently working with UNESCO MGIEP on making video games for peace and sustainability. This is an intersectional project between game designers, practitioners working in preventing violent extremism and experts in social and emotional learning to leverage video games for peace efforts. She also previously won the Lawyers Without Borders Innovation Challenge by making a game to help teach prosecutors about evidentiary objections. The game is being developed for use in their Counter Terrorism Institute in Nairobi, Kenya.

Anzal has also previously worked in the third sector with ESU Scotland, a charity working to bridge the poverty related attainment gap. There she helped design resources and activities to help incorporate critical thinking and debate in the classroom.

Richard Neville


Richard is a journalist with extensive experience in the Scottish media. He is currently the Head of Newspapers for DC Thomson Media, overseeing The Courier and The Evening Telegraph in Dundee and The Press and Journal and The Evening Express in Aberdeen as well as The Sunday Post. He previously edited both The Courier and The Press and Journal.

Richard is the architect of DC Thomson Media’s news brand transformation programme, Apollo, which is delivering a wholesale change to a reader revenue model based on creating compelling content for print and digital in a new data-informed newsroom using new and innovative storytelling.

Richard is passionate about helping to drive change in Dundee, and devised and launched the successful Courier Business Awards to help celebrate success across the region.

Previously, Richard was Editor of Business a.m., the critically acclaimed Scottish daily business and political newspaper that closed in 2003. He has also been Deputy Editor of The Scotsman and worked as a reporter for The Daily Record and Edinburgh Evening News and ran the news desk of the York Evening Press.

Richard is also a member of the Fundraising Board of the Maggie’s Centre in Dundee.

Jason Nelson


Jason’s art practice over the last 15 years has explored the production of work through socially engaged and collaborative processes. He often works directly within communities exploring notions of culture, co-production, collective ownership and stewardship. Jason is interested in how activity can empower and enable expression and action. His work is often a response to context and exists as a result of direct engagement with people, their environments and their relationship to it. Regardless of the scale of the project the underpinning concepts that drive his work are notions of learning, social structure and ideas of identity, community, ownership and agency. 

Jason has extensive experience at working for and with a wide range of organisations and partners managing and delivering projects of varying scale and complexity in a variety of contexts. Through his work Jason is exploring how to connect local significance with global relevance – how the local, through international partnership can find synergy and impact on the global. 

Thank you to all former team/board members, who have been a big part of Creative Dundee’s journey:

Former team members:
Rhia Cook, Jordan Butler, Steph Liddle, Laura McSorley, Susie Buchan, Sam Gonçalves, Lori Anderson, Katja Steel Kusáková, Andrew McDiarmid, Darcy Tayler, Marsali Miller, Perrine Mercenier and Ross Crawford.

Former Directors on our Board:
Louise Dickson, Rachel Williamson, Claire Dow, Pete Thomas, Claire D’All, Chris Trewartha, Suzanne Kerr, Heather Cassidy, Ian Abbott, Richard Meiklejohn, Piers Duplock, Ed Broughton and Creative Dundee co-founder, Lyall Bruce.

Creative Dundee team photos by Lydia Smith.

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