Accessibility Settings

You can use these controls to adjust properties of the website’s presentation. Read more about the Festival’s Accessibility Guide

Our Team

Our Team

Dawn Bothwell

PUBLIC PROGRAMMER (PT)

Since 2009, Dawn has worked as an artist, curator, and researcher producing projects that explore site, with a particular interest in alternative regional histories. Her work has looked at the Northeast as a site for (art) production including 70-80’s experimental video and new media in Washington New Town, concrete poetry, and publishing in Sunderland in the 60’s. She also makes music solo as Pentecostal Party and with friends in Hen Ogledd, a band exploring the sub-Roman Old North. Dawn completed a PhD at C.R.U.M.B, University of Sunderland and an MRes in Exhibition Studies with Afterall Journal at Central Saint Martins. She has enjoyed working with artists who take an expanded approach to moving image including Giles Bailey, Adam Chodzko, Benedict Drew, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Laura Harrington, Rory Pilgrim and Heather Phillipson.

Malcolm Howson

FINANCE OFFICER ()

Born in The Lake District, moulded in Liverpool and now residing in Berwickshire – Mal has worked in the wine trade and the NHS before joining the team at BFMAF. Mal is the one member of the team without a creative bone in his body (but he can use a calculator).

Elisa Kay

Deputy Director (PT)

Elisa Kay joins BFMAF after spending the last few years as a freelancer working in curatorial and research roles with the UK’s Government Art Collection and Somerset House, London, and as a fundraiser for a number of UK arts organisations. Prior to this she was a Curator at Spike Island in Bristol, where she worked on exhibitions with artists including Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Roman Štětina and Sriwhana Spong, as well as Spike Island’s public and artists’ programmes. Between 2012-2014 was Project Manager for How to work together, a shared project by Chisenhale Gallery, The Showroom and Studio Voltaire, and from 2008-12 she was the first Curator/Director at Flat Time House, the former home and studio of the artist John Latham.

Peter Taylor

Festival Director

Peter Taylor (Belfast, 1974) is a film curator and has been Director of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival since 2015. His work explores plural and de-centred approaches to cinema and contemporary art, with an interest in radical aesthetics, collaborative practice, and revisionist approaches to dominant histories.

Before joining BFMAF, he was based in Rotterdam for over a decade, programming at International Film Festival Rotterdam and WORM — a centre for experimental film, sound and performance. He has curated, mentored and served on juries internationally, and contributes to the wider field through ongoing collaborations, research, and support for emerging artists and programmers.

Peter is currently on the advisory board of the University of St Andrews’ Centre for Screen Cultures, and in 2023 mentored for Cinema in Transition, 3-ACT Myanmar. His recent projects include co-curating Barbed Wire Love with Myrid Carten — exploring artists’ responses to the North of Ireland’s Troubles — and deepening BFMAF’s year-round engagement with local and global communities.

Miranda Mungai

Communications Manager (PT)

Miranda Mungai joined Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival part-time in 2023.

She is a freelance film curator, events producer, and facilitator based in Newcastle. In 2023 she was on the Independent Cinema Office Advisory Group, consulting on inclusion, diversity and accessibility, a Guest Curator at IMPAKT Festival, Black History Month workshop facilitator and curator at OUTPOST Gallery, and a Curatorial Fellow at the 68th Flaherty Film Seminar.

Since graduating from King’s College London in 2017 she has worked as Documentary Programmer and Industry Events Co-Producer at The London Short Film Festival alongside temporary roles at Open City Documentary Festival, Sheffield Documentary Festival, Tate Britain, and the Royal Academy of Arts Magazine.

 

Ben Lewis

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT (PT)

Ben has worked as a graphic and web designer, as well as in marketing, administration and management. In 2021 he set-up and ran Interesting Books + Zines in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Alongside his role at BFMAF, Ben works on the production team of the Journal of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society, runs a weekly meditation session in Berwick and, in 2024, set-up Berwick Contemplative Arts CIC a not-for-profit organisation putting on creative, contemplative and wellbeing events in and around Berwick-upon-Tweed.