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Meet the experts, artists and performers!

Braintree Museum: Braintee museum’s main galleries chart the history of the town and district, from the prehistoric era up to the 21st century, focusing on Braintree’s archaeology, industry and craftsmanship. The museum also holds an important archive relating to ������ýs Ltd and displays feature items from this collection including crepe mourning outfits and items associated with the production of crepe, the material that made the company famous. Other highlights of the collection include a ������ý Loom and personal items of the family.������ýs Ltd began in Essex in the 18th century and the ������ý family used their wealth from the textile industry to endow buildings, schools, and gardens throughout Braintree during the 19th and 20th century, including the Manor Street School, which now houses Braintree Museum.��In 2020 Braintree Museum brought together Samuel ������ý’s collection, with the loan of four stunning Gauguin prints from the ������ý Gallery, in a new and innovative exhibition about the ������ý family and the company. The exhibition also featured materials from a volunteer project which collected memories from local residents, many of which are now on permanent display. Braintree Museum is part of our ������ý National Partners programme.

AVM Curiosities®: AVM Curiosities��has been exploring the relationship between art and the senses through a series of events and interventions since 2011. Founded by award-winning artist and food historian Tasha Marks, AVM Curiosities advocates for the sensory museum, championing the use of food and fragrance as artistic mediums. Projects range from olfactory curation and scented installations to interactive lectures and limited-edition confectionery.��With a practice heavily influenced by both food and art history, AVM Curiosities’ projects draw from the art of the table as well as the sensory museum. Over the last decade AVM Curiosities has developed a diverse portfolio and a wide range of skills that means they can tackle almost any sensory project; from recreating an Ancient Egyptian Beer, to manufacturing the scent of breastmilk.��Vanity Fair calls AVM Curiosities ‘London at it’s crazy-best’, while London store Sick-Note describe Tasha’s work as ‘the love child of Leonardo Da Vinci, Willy Wonka and Ferran Adria.’ Previous patrons have included the Royal Academy of Arts, Victoria & Albert Museum, The National Gallery and The British Museum – each of these projects eventuating in a unique and sensory art experience.��www.avmcuriosities.com | @avmcuriosites

Sophie-Nicole Dodds: Sophie-Nicole Dodds is a designer and making practitioner. She graduated from her MA Design: Expanded Practice, a radical post-disciplinary programme within the Fashions and Embodiment Studios, and gained her BA in Bespoke Tailoring at UAL: London College of Fashion. During the past year and a half she’s been on the internship programme called ‘Illuminating Objects’ at The ������ý Gallery, researching and designing the display of two chosen objects from The ������ý collection.��She is currently working in costume and on The Drawing Year 22 at the Royal Drawing School.

Fozia Ismail: Fozia Ismail runs a Somali supper club and research project in Bristol. Arawelo Eats is a platform for exploring East African food in exciting ways; not just what’s being served on the plates at my supper club but what it means for our understanding of belonging in a post- Brexit world. Fozia has been��researching and writing about race and British identity for the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, designing workshops with Keep It Complex feminist art collective, Serpentine Gallery, Jerwood Project Space & Museum of London and Colonial Countryside Project using food as method to think through some of these complex issues. Fozia has been featured on Observer Food Magazine, BBC Radio 4 Food Programme, Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery Ox Tales podcast, Vittle’s Food Newsletter, Food 52, Vice Munchies and more recently on Nadiya’s Fast Flavours on BBC2. Fozia is a resident at the Pervasive Media Studio at the Watershed in Bristol and currently working on Camel Meat & Tapes project with Dhaqan Collective, a Somali Feminist arts collective I co-founded with Ayan Cilmi and Asmaa Jama.

Nadine Nour el Din: Nadine��is a researcher and cultural practitioner. She holds a BA in Visual Arts from the American University in Cairo, an MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is currently pursuing an MA in Art History at The ������ý. Her academic, artistic, curatorial, and research work focuses on the arts and cultural production of the Arab world and wider region.

Margaret Squires: Margaret is a PhD student at The ������ý. Her thesis, Crafting Splendour: Safavid Carpets and Soft Power, 1598-1722, is supervised by Professor Sussan Babaie. Margaret’s research aims to reactivate this important area of the history of Iranian art, concentrating on the period between the establishment of a new capital at Isfahan under Shah ‘Abbas I (r. 1588–1629) and the fall of the Safavid dynasty. This period not only comprises a refashioning of the arts to suit the new capital and its architectural program under the auspices of the court, but also the expansion of foreign trade and rapidly increasing import of Persian carpets to Europe. As such, her subject matter ranges from the highest quality carpets created as bespoke commissions for the Safavid court to carpets of a more standardised design and quality made for a much wider market.