Sarah Perks

Prof Sarah Perks is an internationally renowned curator specialising in interdisciplinary relational curatorial strategy based at Teesside University, which includes UK-leading contemporary art gallery and museum MIMA. Sarah leads the MIMA Research Unit, that addresses the role of creative practice in topics including nature recovery; heritage action; digital museum, learning and experience design; cultural policy; equitable environmentalism; storytelling democracies and inclusive cultural activism. Sarah uses relational curatorial strategies to build engagement and empathy for nature recovery and other challenges, designing collaborative and future visioning projects for inclusive creative social action. These new curatorial methodologies combine creative practices (contemporary art, performance, creative writing and filmmaking) with science- or humanities- based explorations (ecopsychology, quantum physics, artificial intelligence, history and heritage) to investigate equitable and non-hierarchical human and non-human partnerships.

One of Creative Review’s 50 Creative Leaders in 2017, they are course leader for the innovative programme MBA Cultural and Creative Leader with learners on programme from Tate, IWM, ACE and many more regional, local and national cultural organisations. Sarah has led major participation, performance and curatorial projects with international artists including AL and AL, Rosa Barba, Judith Barry, Phil Collins, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Stanya Kahn, David Lynch, Rachel Maclean, Noorafshan Mirza & Brad Butler, Rashid Rana and Qasim Riza Shaheen. Previous group exhibitions included The Return of Memory exploring the post-Soviet ‘New East’; La Movida responding to 40 years since the first elections in Spain; Imitation of Life: Race and Melodrama in the 21st Century, co-curated with Dr Omar Kholeif. Developing her career in education at Cornerhouse, Manchester, she became the inaugural Artistic Director (Visual Art) of HOME and Professor of Visual Art at Manchester School of Art (MMU) in 2014.

Current research projects include AHRC Green Corridors North East with National Trust and the Universities of Durham and Newcastle on connecting people with natural and cultural heritage, and Tilery Park: Curatorial and creative methodologies for communities’ engagement in local green space and nature recovery with Dr Paul Stewart commissioned by Natural England and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council. Their Forms of Circulation research-based artistic practice is also currently a part of Brent Biennial 2025. 

Recent projects also include Tomorrow exhibition with Freedom Women Collective (August 2023, Hull), The Ignorant Arts Schools (2022-2024, British Art Network Research Group), and Natural Futures, researching inclusive creative nature recovery with Borderlands, Tees Valley Nature Partnership and Natural England.

Sarah has published extensively including setting up the experimental HOME Publications for new forms of exhibition catalogue combining creative writing and cultural theory. A specialist in art and experimental film, Sarah was co-editor of Artists Moving Image in Britain Since 1989 with Dr Erika Balsom and Dr Lucy Reynolds (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art & Yale University Press, 2019); co-founder and director of Feature Expanded with Leonardo Bigazzi, a trailblazing development programme for visual artists making feature films, and programme advisor for BFI London Film Festival. Sarah is a trustee of Alchemy Film & Arts and Art Post21, and co-editor of the Engage Journal (the international journal of visual art participation and engagement).

In the School of Arts and Creative Industries, Sarah co-wrote MA Curating and Doctorate in Professional Practice (Curating and Creative Practice) with Dr Paul Stewart, and is leads the MBA Cultural and Creative Leadership programme. The MA and MBA are also Level 7 apprenticeships and can be accessed across England with government funding. 

• relational curatorial strategies
• interdisciplinary and collaborative practice 
• creative social action and inclusion
• artist moving image