There are currently eight trustees on the board of The Blake Cottage Trust:
CHAIRPERSON – Doug Nicholls – Doug is a writer and poet and was formerly General Secretary of the Community and Youth Workers’ Union (1987/2011) and then the General Federation of Trade Unions (2012/2023).
COMPANY SECRETARY – Jonathan Mullard – Jonathan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and a Chartered Town Planner. He has expertise in the renovation of historic sites and listed buildings and is also a natural history author.
COMPANY TREASURER – Steve Orchard – Steve is a former senior executive in the media industry. He coaches organisational leadership and serves in a non-executive capacity as a director and trustee on a number of company and charity boards.
TRUSTEE – Sharyn Wortman – Sharyn is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a practicing contemporary artist. She has worked previously as an Art Director in advertising and loves solving problems.
TRUSTEE – Camila Oliveira – Camila is an international lecturer on William Blake with an expertise in his influence on contemporary music. Born in Brazil, her translation of Jerusalem into Portuguese was published in 2024.
TRUSTEE – Antonia Lloyd-Jones – Antonia is a literary translator from Polish. Her work includes Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk. The title is a quotation from William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell. There are further quotations from Blake throughout the novel, in which he inspires some of the central characters.
TRUSTEE – Richard Clemmow – Richard Clemmow is a media executive, documentary producer, television and radio journalist and drama producer who has worked in the UK and the USA. He is also a trustee of the brain tumour charity OurBrainBank.
TRUSTEE – David Clarke – David is a culture and heritage project planner and co-chair of Heritage Crafts, the charity for traditional craft skills, co-chair of Metropolitan Arts Centre Belfast and a director of Sing Up, which exists to encourage singing in schools in the UK; has been inspired by Blake from his youth.