Governance

Dr Oliver Cox

Dr Oliver Cox is Head of Academic Partnerships at the V&A, where he is responsible for building a global network of higher education partners to enable the V&A to deliver its mission to enrich people’s lives by promoting research, knowledge and enjoyment of the designed world to the widest possible audience.  

He also holds a British Academy Innovation Fellowship through to March 2024, which will enable closer collaboration between the V&A and the National Trust.

He joined the V&A in August 2022 from the University of Oxford where he was Heritage Engagement Fellow and Co-Lead of the Oxford University Heritage Network responsible for the University’s research and engagement projects with partners in the UK and international heritage sector.

Olly is a historian by training, and received his undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford. His recent publications include contributions to The Country House: Past, Present and Future, Sport and Leisure in the Irish and British Country House, along with journal articles exploring the politics of horseracing in eighteenth-century Britain, the importance of Jewish histories to country house studies, and the challenges of interpreting eighteenth-century spaces for twenty-first century visitors. He also writes regularly for Apollo.

Outside of the V&A he is a Trustee for Compton Verney House Trust, The Walpole Society, and was recently appointed by Her Majesty the Queen as a Trustee of the Churches Conservation Trust. He previously sat on Arts Council England’s Designation Panel, chaired The Heritage Alliance’s Digital Learning and Skills Advisory Group, and was a member of the ‘The Devonshire Inheritance: Unlocking the Chatsworth family papers’ Advisory Group for the Chatsworth House Trust.

Jon Sheaff

Jon is a Landscape Architect with over 25 years’ experience of developing and delivering strategy and design for the public realm and public open space. Jon has a degree in archaeology from Cambridge University and has been a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute for over 20 years.

Following work in private practice in Wales, Jon worked as Commissions Manager for the Cardiff Bay Arts Trust, commissioning public realm art works by William Pye, Felice Varini, Brian Fell and others.

Jon led Southwark Council’s Parks and Open Spaces department from 2001 to 2010, overseeing an investment of over £28 million in parks across the borough, including the restoration of Southwark, Peckham Rye and Dulwich Parks. Jon also created London’s first Park Trust at Potters Fields and new public open spaces at Burgess Park and Bermondsey Spa.

Returning to the private sector, Jon’s practice has developed award-winning natural capital and green infrastructure strategies for public and third sector clients and has led the restoration of a number of nationally significant public spaces including Greenwich Park, Eltham Palace and Hainault Forest.

Jon was a member of the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Committee for London from 2012 to 2018, determining the HLF’s investment in the capital’s heritage. Jon has been a member of the Design Council CABE Built Environment Panel since 2013, making regular contributions to the enhancement of public realm through design review and policy development.

Professor Paul Smith

Paul is director of Oxford University Museum of Natural History.  Prior to taking up the post at OUMNH he was head of the School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham but has worked in university museums for most of his career, starting at the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge before moving to the Geological Museum in Copenhagen.  At the University of Birmingham, Paul was curator, then director, of the Lapworth Museum of Geology before moving to Oxford in 2012.

He has wide-ranging research interests in the evolutionary origin of animals and the geology of Arctic areas, and has thirty years of expedition and field research experience in Greenland and Svalbard.  Within museums, he has particular interests in the application of digital technologies, the establishment of international partnerships to support natural history research and education, and public engagement in contemporary science issues.

Paul is currently co-chair of University Museums Group UK and president of the Palaeontological Association.

Peter Wilson

Peter has a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University. After two years working in industry he joined the Tate Gallery to train in art conservation before becoming involved in the management of its collection and exhibitions and became responsible for the planning of their estate. He later worked with Cornwall County Council on Tate Gallery St Ives which opened in 1993, followed by Tate Gallery Liverpool Phase 2 in 1998 and culminating with the delivery of Tate Modern in 2000 and Tate Britain Centenary Development in 2001.

He continued to work on plans for the second phase of Tate Modern and an extension to Tate St Ives until he was appointed by the Royal Shakespeare Company as Transformation Project Director for their Stratford-upon-Avon theatres in 2005. When the RSC project was completed, he became a freelance consultant specialising in advising on cultural buildings and from 2011 – 2017 was engaged in that capacity by the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority in Hong Kong, working on the Xiqu Centre for Chinese Opera, the M+ museum of visual culture, the Lyric Theatre and the masterplanning for the second phase of theatre development in the District.

He has also advised on arts projects in Norway, France, Italy, Abu Dhabi, South Africa and Singapore and has recently been consulting on arts projects in Australia, Beijing and Qatar. He just begun a part time role as Project Director for the Hall for Cornwall in Truro. He is Special Adviser to the Theatres Trust in the UK. He was awarded an OBE for services to museums in 2001 and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Lydia Thomas

Lydia has spent the majority of her career in public sector broadcasting, originally as a producer and presenter, and most recently for the BBC and the BBC Trust, the corporation’s former governing body. With wide-ranging interests in the arts and culture, she has both grant-making and fundraising experience in the third sector including setting up the former BBC Wildlife Fund. Based in Warwickshire for the last 25 years while raising her family, Lydia has also held public appointments with Ofcom, as Chair of the Advisory Committee on Older and Disabled People; and the Big Lottery Fund, as the Midland representative on the England committee. She has served on a number of advisory committees including the British Medical Association Patient Liaison Group and The Wellcome Trust arts and science funding committee.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a long-term member of the Spinal Injuries Association. Lydia graduated in History from University College, Cardiff.

Lydia is the Chair of the Nominations & Remunerations Committee.

Philip Bunt

Philip is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales with 40 years of experience in the UK and overseas in the accountancy profession and as a Chief Financial Officer or Chief Operating Officer in several businesses, charities and the public sector. He is currently the Chief Operating Officer of UK Anti-Doping.

Philip has served as Vice-Chair of Governors of two schools where he also chaired the finance committees and was a trustee of the associated charities. He was Deputy Chair and Treasurer of the Campaign for Learning. Before being appointed at CVHC he was the honorary treasurer of an international development charity.

Philip is the Chair of the Finance & Audit Committee.

Magnus Renfrew

Magnus is an international art fair organiser, and author.

Renfrew is co-founder of ART SG, a major new art fair for Southeast Asia which will have its inaugural edition in January 2023, and Tokyo Gendai which will debut in July 2023. In 2019 Renfrew co-founded the art fair – Taipei Dangdai – which has rapidly established itself as a key fixture on the international art calendar.

Renfrew was founding director of Art Basel in Hong Kong – serving as one of three members of Art Basel’s global Executive Committee, and was founding director of the fair’s predecessor ART HK: Hong Kong International Art Fair, which inaugurated in 2008 and which has been widely recognised as repositioning Hong Kong as a centre for art and culture.

In 2017 Renfrew’s book Uncharted Territory: Culture & Commerce in Hong Kong’s Art World was published by Penguin.

Renfrew has been recognized for his contribution by industry media and has been named twice in the ArtReview ‘Power 100’ as one of the 100 most influential figures in the art world. In 2013 he was honoured by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.

Renfrew holds a First Class MA (Hons) in Art History from University of St. Andrews.

Sipho Eric Ndlovu

Sipho is a Birmingham based Performance Artist, Writer & Workshop Facilitator who combines his practises to consult on youth engagement, deliver quality disability arts and celebrate communities. Sipho has been working within the arts and culture sector for over a decade and his experiences have allowed him to represent West Midlands youth based perspectives in positions such Member Board of Directors of Culture Central, Poet Laureate at the University of Sheffield Faculty of Social Sciences and most recently, Compton Verney House Charity as a Trustee & Director.

Ross Sleight

Ross is a digital strategist.  He is fascinated by the relationship between the exponential growth of digital technology, the adoption and evolution of customer behaviour and the transformation of business to adapt to these new landscapes. He has spent over 25 years immersed in digital as the world has evolved from desktop to social to mobile to AR, VR and AI and beyond.

Ross has been founding member of six influential digital businesses including Somo, Virgin Games and Tribal DDB. He has helped develop the first digital property for 10 Downing Street and has advised the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on interactive media development.  He’s won numerous creative and effectiveness awards for digital strategies and been voted in the top 100 digerati and top 50 in mobile by The Drum for three years.

Today Ross is Chief Strategy Officer at Somo, a Digital Product Accelerator, advising global brands such as Audi, HSBC and Lloyds Bank on generating product experiences that engage and delight customers and staff.  He is also an advisory board member to start-ups and scale-ups including inploi, yodomo, Molzi and One Question, and spent five years as a Director of Leamington Art in the Park Festival CIC helping this local arts festival to grow to over 45,000 visitors and a £1.8M economic impact for the area.  This breadth of experience allows Ross to frame digital transformation strategies from corporate, cultural and entrepreneurial perspectives.

Mark Armstrong

A Chartered Surveyor who has worked in the public, private and charitable sectors dealing with a wide range of property assets and landholdings. At the National Trust in West Midlands Region he delivered operational performance, major conservation and enhancement projects, strategic development and complex land transactions for properties which welcomed 2.5 million visitors annually and led on innovative acquisitions for instance the Backs to Backs in Birmingham.

He currently runs his own Heritage Management Consultancy providing a range of services to include; strategic asset property portfolio advice, the protection of heritage assets, project management for major grant aided and public/private partnership projects for clients such as the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the National Memorial Arboretum.

Mark is an HLF Mentor having worked on the resilience stream of funding to help small conservation charities develop strategy and business planning and after 10 years of service as a Trustee for the Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings, Mark was recently appointed Deputy Chairman.

Role of the Chief Executive Officer
Geraldine Collinge

The CEO is responsible for developing strategy with the board and the day-to-day operations of Compton Verney.  The CEO is recruited by the Board and responsible to the Board.