Trustees

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Producer, Messiah

Kirsty Hopkins is a freelance producer and soprano and has joined Wild Arts to produce their tour of Handel’s Messiah in association with director Tom Morris.  Previously Artistic Director of West Green House Opera in Hampshire and producing many shows there, other producing credits include a podcast project for Charles Court Opera and Little Radio. She is the beneficiary of an ACE grant to develop projects to attract new audiences to classical music.

As a singer she enjoys a versatile career performing all over the world with some of today’s most renowned ensembles and is a proud member of The Sixteen.

Passionate about staged work, recent performances include Purcell The Fairy Queen: Three Wishes for OAE at Queen Elizabeth Hall, First witch in Purcell Dido and Aeneas at Grange Festival; the immersive one-woman show The Apple Tree for OAE Tots; soprano soloist in The Sixteen and Streetwise Opera's The Passion - a staged version of Bach's St Matthew Passion broadcast on BBC4; playing Ruth Ellis in Charlotte Bray's opera Entanglement; Betrayal, I Fagiolini's murderous fusion of renaissance music and contemporary dance and Thomas Tallis at The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Outreach Manager

Vicki is passionate about facilitating creative opportunities for young people, expanding audiences, and finding inventive ways to help schools and communities showcase and celebrate the creativity of children.

Alongside her work as a theatre designer, Vicki worked extensively on education initiatives for schools and community groups, including London Symphony Orchestra and Welsh National Opera. More recently, under the name Treefrog Art, she has devised and delivered projects for Hampshire schools, working with groups of up to 1000 children.

Vicki trained as a set and costume designer at Bristol Old Vic theatre school and at the Slade School of art.

Associate Producer

Sam Hayward is a London-based producer and actor whose career spans theatre production, administration, and creative development. Drawing on lived experience both on stage and behind the scenes, he brings a wide range of experience to coordinating projects and supporting artistic teams.

Before joining Wild Arts as an Associate Producer, Sam worked with Royo Entertainment, Glass Half Full Productions, Jorg Betts Associates, and The Old Vic, where he supported script development, casting, and administration. He has also worked as a script reader for BAFTA, Eleven, Studio Hamburg UK, and Red Planet Pictures, experiencing projects from their earliest drafts, through to delivery.

Sam holds an MA in Contemporary Theatre (Acting) from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and a BA in Philosophy & Theology from the University of Nottingham. As an actor, he portrayed Lieutenant Colonel Howfield in The Wipers Times (Watermill Theatre / Arts Theatre / UK tour). Other productions include A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Rift Theatre / Alexandra Palace), and Spike (Watermill Theatre, UK tour).

 Marketing and Community Engagement Manager

Bethan began her career in marketing and fundraising for Rambert Dance Company and then worked for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Proms and London's Barbican Centre before developing a freelance career with clients including The Academy of Ancient Music,  Hertfordshire Music Service and The Yehudi Menuhin School.

Bethan read music at the University of Leeds and was a member of the National Youth Choir of Great Britain before moving to London and joining Chantage with whom she won the BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year Competition. She then joined Hertfordshire chamber choir the Lea Singers, performing in a semi-staged production of Bach's St Matthew Passion directed by Thomas Guthrie and sung entirely from memory, so she feels a particular affinity with Wild Arts' Messiah.

Development Officer

Glerren Bangalan is a London-based Creative Producer, Writer, and Development Professional with experience delivering live performance projects across the UK and the Philippines. Her background spans creative development, fundraising, and marketing – with a particular focus on projects led by underrepresented voices.

Alongside her work for Wild Arts, Glerren has held producing and marketing roles with organisations such as Collide Theatre, and various independent performance groups in the Philippines. For nearly a decade, she has also led long-running cultural programmes including GeekFight! and Deus Sex Machina, where she oversees creative planning, event management, artist coordination, and audience engagement for niche and community-driven performance events.

Glerren completed an MFA in Creative Producing at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama as a Michael Grandage Scholar. She also served on the School’s Governing Board and held the position of Postgraduate Officer for the Central Students’ Union. She holds a BA in Communication from De La Salle Lipa.

Fixer / Orchestral Manager

Will McGahon is an energetic violinist enjoying a varied musical career as a historical performer, chamber musician and orchestral player, performing in the UK and across Europe.

Will enjoys regularly playing with some of the UK’s leading historical orchestras, including Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Solomon’s Knot and The Hanover Band. He is also a freelancer in some of the UK’s finest ensembles such as Scottish Chamber Orchestra, United Strings of Europe and Manchester Collective.

Will is a member of the Bloomsbury Players and the Wild Arts Ensemble.

As a child, Will memorised the entirety of the ‘Revolting Rhymes’ by Roald Dahl, and would recite them at family events. His great grandfather invented prawn cocktail flavouring for ‘Skips’ crisps!

Gloucestershire Consultant

Deborah has introduced Wild Arts to several Gloucestershire venues, all of which agreed to welcome opera to their grounds for the first time. As Wild Arts returns for its fourth year in 2026, she hopes to build on their popularity in the region with a belief in the far-reaching benefits of delivering high quality opera with an underlying ethos of performance sustainability.

Deborah trained as violinist with the founder of the Purcell School, before reading Music at Durham University; followed by an MSc. She then commenced a career in the finance industry and was posted to the Middle East, remaining for several years. She went on to work in project management & fundraising with not-for-profit groups; bringing together embassies, corporate sponsors and local arts organisations.

Based in Cheltenham, Deborah is part of the Cheltenham Arts Council; a board trustee of the Gloucestershire Academy of Music (GAM); a member of the Cheltenham Chamber Orchestra and various chamber ensembles. As a descendent of Henry Purcell, Deborah has a keen interest in the music of this period.

Patron

Starting his career as a presenter in 1982 on BBC-Radio 3, Donald was head of presentation there for four years. In 1996 he took up the challenge of setting up and presenting Through the Night, Radio 3's first 24-hour broadcasting service. He has presented more proms than he cares to remember, and he has covered the widest imaginable spectrum of music, continuing to present Composer of the Week every morning.

His musical education was fairly rudimentary - his piano teacher gave up on him at the age of 8, telling his parents that he was wasting their money! - but he kept listening to Radio 3 and would ultimately become the voice of it.

Donald has won awards like The Voice of the Viewer and Listener for Excellence in Broadcasting for Best Music & Arts Programme. He was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music by St. Andrews University. 

Patron

Theatre director, lyricist and translator of plays and opera libretti as well as a composer, orchestrator and musical director, Jeremy Sams is the ultimate polymath. He studied Music, French and German at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Piano at the Guildhall School of Music.

 Jeremy's directorial credits include The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the London Palladium and Noises Off for the National Theatre. His translations include Mozart’s Figaro’s Wedding, La Boheme, The Magic Flute and Wagner’s The Ring Cycle for ENO, and The Merry Widow for the Royal Opera House.  

Jeremy's soundtracks include the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and the 2005 film of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, for which he won a BAFTA and an Ivor Novello award respectively.

He wrote the libretto for This Enchanted Island (Metropolitan Opera, New York).

Patron

Roderick Williams is one of the UK’s most sought-after baritones and an established composer, working regularly with the BBC Singers. Opera engagements have included major roles at the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Dutch National Opera, Dallas Opera, the Bregenz Festival and Oper Köln.

 He is a regular performer at the BBC Proms, featuring as the soloist in the Last Night in 2014, and most recently appearing in the St Matthew Passion in 2021, and the world premiere of Matthew Kaner’s ‘Pearl’ in 2022. This season’s engagements include tours of Japan with the BBC SO, of Europe with the RIAS Kammerchor, and of North America with Bach Collegium Japan.

In 2016 he won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer of the Year award, and in June 2017 was awarded an OBE for services to music. He also performed at the Coronation of King Charles III in 2023.