Join us for a day of discussion and workshops exploring the ideas, ethics, and relationships between collections, artists, and communities.

Running order:

10:30 Tea and coffee
10:45 Opening statements
11:00 Conversation between Melanie Grant (Wellcome Collection) and Sarah Lloyd (Artist, Fourth Wall Folkestone)
12:00 Activity session 1: Reimagining Collections
12:30 LUNCH
13:15 Presentation by Francesca Telling (Artist, Croydon Young Archivists)
14:00 Conversation between Shaz Hussain (Tate) and Keith Clapson (Artist)
15:00 Activity session 2: The Future of Collecting
15:30 Closing remarks

We’re aiming to make the event as accessible as possible. Please see our access page for more information, and contact us if you have specific requirements. If you require a BSL interpreter, please let us know by Friday 30 May. 

There will be regular breaks throughout the day. For those joining the livestream, captions will be available, and a transcript can be provided following the event. A recording of the talks will be sent to all ticket holders following the event. 

A Bethlem Gallery event supported by Arts Council England. See the Bethlem Gallery Art Collection on your visit in our current exhibition or online here.

Participant Biographies

Shaz Hussain 
Shaz Hussain is a Loans Out Collection Registrar at Tate where she is responsible for overseeing the management and safe movement of artworks from Tate’s collection to exhibitions and institutions around the world. Her work supports Tate’s mission to increase public understanding and enjoyment of art by making sure that the collection is cared for and accessible to the public. 

Shaz is also an advocate for widening participation in the arts sector, with a strong interest in inclusion and equitable access. She has served as an Executive Committee member of Museum Detox, a professional network for people of colour in museums, and through public speaking, consultancy, and mentoring she has contributed to the development of anti-racism museum practices and the support emerging professionals from underrepresented backgrounds. 

Keith Clapson 
Keith Clapson is a practicing ceramic artist. 

He currently volunteers as a mentor and explores exposure response prevention art with patients at The Bethlem Hospital’s Anxiety Disorders Residential Unit (ADRU), where he was an inpatient for four months in 2017. Keith has also facilitated art classes at River House and Bethlem Gallery. 

In the artist’s words: ‘I am continuing a journey of self-discovery. Ceramics has helped me maintain my recovery from OCD, it has enabled me to express my feelings through the medium of clay, it has given me focus and, importantly, given me immense pleasure. Starting my career in art in 2017 opened a new world for me. More than ever before I have a desire to see and to learn. I try to view life and my work with humour and compassion.’ 

Keith previously studied on the CityLit Foundation in Art and Design 2018/9 and CityLit Ceramics Diploma 2019-23 

He has shown previously at The Menier Gallery, CityLit Gallery, The Ortus Centre at The Maudsley Hospital, The Department Store, Brixton, and had his first solo show at The Bethlem Gallery in 2023.   

Keith continues to provide talks about his lived experience to students and trainees at Bethlem Museum of the Mind and recently at Kings College Denmark Hill campus.

Sarah Lloyd
Sarah Lloyd (Carpenter) is an artist, researcher and designer with a specialism in public engagement. Her work focuses mainly on the subject of mental health . She has worked in this field for almost 12 years.

Sarah has worked with and continues to work with institutions and organisations who are leaders in this field such as the Bethlem Gallery, Shape Arts, Outside In, Artistic UK, King’s College London (specifically the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience), The Biomedical Research Centre and Maudsley Charity. Over 100 pieces of Sarah’s work can be found in the Wellcome Collection archive, she has had work published with The Psychologist, The British Medical Journal and the Lancet Journal of Psychiatry and was the cover artist for 2018.

Through Fourth Wall Folkestone Sarah seeks to reimagine the art world as a more inclusive and accessible place, where an artist’s role is to inspire and facilitate creative thinking.

Francesca Telling 
Francesca Telling is an artist, facilitator and youth worker from London. Working across photography, print, language and time-based media, she is interested in how institutional and anti-institutional knowledge is produced – between the archive, classroom, family and community. Often developed in collaboration with children and young people, Francesca’s work uses creative ways of listening, documenting, mapping and storytelling as tools for reimagining the hierarchies and separations found within systems young people navigate. Her practice has emerged through experiments in archival research, intergenerational conversations about our relationships to time/place, and explorations of interpersonal threads on the margins of history-making. 

Between 2024-2025, Francesca facilitated the pilot youth programme ‘Young Archivists’ at Croydon Archives, which brought local 14-18-year-olds from Global Majority and migrant backgrounds into dialogue with the borough’s collections. The project resulted in a wide range of co-created outcomes including an exhibition, an events programme and an archive collection that reinterpret local histories from young people’s perspectives. 

Melanie Grant  
Melanie Grant (she/her), Collections Development Lead (Librarian) has been part of the Collections Development team at Wellcome Collection for over 8 years. Wellcome Collection is both a public museum and library in London that explores the past, present and future of health in a world where everyone’s experience of health matters. Melanie has a wealth of knowledge relating to acquisitions and at Wellcome Collection builds models of ethical collecting and advocates for inclusive practice that recognises and respects the lived experiences of those who continue to be silenced, erased and ignored. 

Beth Hopkins 
Beth Hopkins is a Croydon-based artist, researcher, and educator. She works with artists who face barriers to the art world and in artist development. Her own artistic practice is rooted in collaborative research practices, and encompasses analogue photography, drawing, found objects, sculpture, and is rooted in conversation and community. 

Karim Sultan 
Karim is responsible for exhibitions, artist development and programmes at the gallery and alongside the team. Karim is a curator and artist, and has worked on and developed numerous international exhibitions and programmes focusing on modern and contemporary art often left out of the art historical canon. Some of his areas of interest and work include: modernism in art and architecture between cities in the Arabic-speaking world, music and sound practices and performance, mental health, critical approaches to animation and games, and photographic practices. As an artist working with music and sound, Karim has presented and performed internationally. 

About Bethlem Gallery workshops/events

Under 16’s must be accompanied by an adult. Concessions are available for SLaM service users, people over 60, students, people receiving ESA, people registered disabled and their carers. We often take photos at our workshops to use on social media – please speak to the facilitator if you do not want to appear in any photos.

If you are unable to attend the event, please contact us to cancel your place. We often have a waiting list.