He has previously worked in curatorial positions at Tate Liverpool, the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre (Canada) and the Künsterlhaus Stuttgart (Germany). He studied Art History, History and Curating and was awarded his PhD at the University of Wolverhampton. In 2019, he completed Stonewall’s LGBT Leadership Programme.

Birchall has taught and lectured at institutions including Zurich University of the Arts, ETH Zurich, and at the Liverpool School of Art, where he is a Visiting Fellow. He has edited numerous catalogues and journals, and contributed to a wide range of publications, including Interdependencies: perspectives on care and Resilience (Mousse Publishing, 2024) and Institution as Praxis: New Curatorial Directions for Collaborative Research (Sternberg Press, 2020).

Today she works as an independent on multiple arts/science projects for major institutions, science laboratories, museums and universities. She is one of the invited Creative Directors of the Official Italian Virtual Pavillon, CityX Venice at the Venice Bienale for architecture 2021. She is Senior Arts/Science Advisor and Associate at The Exploratorium – the museum for the science, art and human perception San Francisco USA working for their Global Studios which creates new science museums worldwide; Strategic Consultant and Creative Partner of the new Cavendish Arts Science Programme at Cambridge University UK; and the Founder and Producer/Curator of the annual Earth Water Sky environmental arts and science residency and commissioning programme at Science Gallery Venice, based at Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice, Italy.

Her curatorial work includes as curator of Backlight – the Nordic Photography Trienale 2020 whose theme that year was ‘Related Realities – art, science and technology’;  co-curator of  ‘Real Feelings: Emotion and Technology’ which opened at HEK (House of Electronic Arts), Basel, Switzerland, Autumn 2020, and MU – Hybrid Art House, Eindhoven, Netherlands Spring 2021; curator ‘Entangle: Physics and the Artistic Imagination’ Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden (2018-2019) and ‘Keith Tyson: The Matter of Painting’ Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, France.

Recent notable projects include: Nye with Michael Sheen (National Theatre); Es & Flo (WMC/Kiln Theatre, London); Psychodrama (Edinburgh Festival); The Boy with Two Hearts (WMC/National Theatre); Our Generation (National Theatre/Chichester Festival); Long Day’s Journey into Night with Jeremy Irons & Lesley Manville (New York & LA); The Mirror Crack’d and Constellations (NCPA, Mumbai); La Voix Humaine (Aldeburgh & Bath Festivals, UK);

Other theatre work includes: Man to Man (Edinburgh – Fringe First, UK Tour, New York); A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (with Corn Exchange – Edinburgh, – Fringe First, UK Tour, London, New York); Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby (West End London, New York, Hong Kong, Perth, Paris); Tiger Bay the Musical (Cape Town Opera & Cardiff); The Year of Magical Thinking with Vanessa Redgrave (London, Salzburg Festival, Dublin Theatre Festival & Broadway); riverrun (with TheEmergencyRoom – World Tour including London, New York & Sydney); One Man, Two Guvnors with James Corden (UK Tour, AustralAsia Tour, Broadway – Tony Award); John Gabriel Borkman with Alan Rickman (Abbey Theatre Dublin & BAM, New York); The Pitmen Painters (UK Tour, West End & Broadway); Phèdre with Helen Mirren & Ruth Negga (Epidaurus Greece & Washington DC); Waves (Luxembourg Festival & Lincoln Center, New York); Primo with Sir Antony Sher (Cape Town & Broadway); Happy Days with Fiona Shaw (World Tour including London & New York), The History Boys with Richard Griffiths (UK Tour, Hong Kong, Australia/NZ Tour, Broadway – Tony Award), Not About Nightingales (Broadway)

Film and TV work includes: Psychodrama (in development); Look Away (Independent – post-production); My Country (BBC2); She Stoops to Conquer (Heritage Films) and The History Boys (Fox Searchlight Pictures).

In 2023, Pádraig was the recipient of the Olwen Wymark Award from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain for his championing of new writing which was presented at the 18th Annual Awards Ceremony in London. Pádraig was a music scholar at Trinity College, Dublin and subsequently studied at the Royal Northern College of Music. Later in his career, he took a Masters in Business from UCC. In 2023, he was the recipient of the Olwen Wymark Award from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain for his championing of new writing. In his spare time, he runs a charity for the education of young women in the hinterlands of East Africa. He lives between West Cork, London and Mumbai.

Today she works as an independent on multiple arts/science projects for major institutions, science laboratories, museums and universities. She is one of the invited Creative Directors of the Official Italian Virtual Pavillon, CityX Venice at the Venice Bienale for architecture 2021. She is Senior Arts/Science Advisor and Associate at The Exploratorium – the museum for the science, art and human perception San Francisco USA working for their Global Studios which creates new science museums worldwide; Strategic Consultant and Creative Partner of the new Cavendish Arts Science Programme at Cambridge University UK; and the Founder and Producer/Curator of the annual Earth Water Sky environmental arts and science residency and commissioning programme at Science Gallery Venice, based at Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice, Italy.

Her curatorial work includes as curator of Backlight – the Nordic Photography Trienale 2020 whose theme that year was ‘Related Realities – art, science and technology’;  co-curator of  ‘Real Feelings: Emotion and Technology’ which opened at HEK (House of Electronic Arts), Basel, Switzerland, Autumn 2020, and MU – Hybrid Art House, Eindhoven, Netherlands Spring 2021; curator ‘Entangle: Physics and the Artistic Imagination’ Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden (2018-2019) and ‘Keith Tyson: The Matter of Painting’ Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, France.

Ariane is also a writer and editor, and gives papers, lectures and chairs conferences internationally on science, art, creativity and imagination, and is on the cultural boards of the European Commissions’ Joint Research Centre’s environmental arts and science programme, Science Gallery Venice and Cavendish Laboratory Cambridge. She is on the Global Advisory Board for the Edgelands Institute (Harvard/Geneva) which is dedicated to reforming the social contract in the digital age and on the board of ETH Zürich for the International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2021. She was policy advisor to the European Commission’s ICT Directorate DG-CNNECT until 2018, helping frame the Horizon 2020 programme.

Vanessa has also served as the Head of Development at the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts and as a Creative Producer for Art for Amnesty. Prior to this she worked in film and television production with a focus on music programming (live concert films, documentaries and music videos) for the boutique production company Dreamchaser Productions as well as on feature films as a freelance Production Coordinator. At the beginning of her career she worked as a Production Assistant at Treasure Films and as Assistant to the renowned sculptor Barry Flanagan.

Notable past projects include: spearheading Really Helping Artists, a public fundraising campaign to provide emergency, no-strings-attached, grants to visual artists during the initial stages of the Covid-19 pandemic; creating and producing RHA X, a ground-breaking international art and fashion collaboration between Roland Mouret and award-winning visual artist, Dragana Jurišić; producing the popular Hennessy Lost Friday events at the RHA; producing Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Awards honouring recipients Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson, and Václav Havel; and working as co-executive producer on Instant Karma a charity album of John Lennon covers with Warner Brothers Records and iTunes which raised over $4m worldwide and reached No.1 on iTunes in five countries.

Vanessa’s ambition has always been to utilise her skill-set in order to produce work of meaning and import. She has a reputation for working on thought-provoking and complex projects with the aim of broadening audience engagement with, and access to, different art forms. As she gained more experience and took on more pivotal roles, she was keenly aware of both the real and perceived barriers to accessing certain types of art, and many of the projects she’s worked on aim to address this.

Vanessa has a strong track record across multiple areas of work, including developing and leading project creation and strategy, specialised event production and management, and relationship management of corporate and strategic funding partners. Having worked with some of the world’s most celebrated artists, creatives and political figures, she brings a high level of energy, innovation, and integrity to projects from concept to completion.