Nicola Shipley is a Curator, Producer, Mentor and Consultant specialising in contemporary photography. She is co-founder and Director of GRAIN Projects, UK. She trained as an art historian, has an MA in History of Art, and a background in the visual arts, including in commissioning, curation, project management and artists professional development.
In her capacity at GRAIN Projects she has developed an organisation that practices inclusive photography, collaborating with partners regionally, nationally and internationally, to support and grow photography opportunities for practitioners, participants and audiences. Recent work has included collaborations with British Council Pakistan, Historic England, Photoworks, FORMAT International Photography Festival, GLAZ Festival, Creative People & Places, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, GAIA Foundation, Birmingham 2022 and Coventry UK City of Culture. As an integral part of commissioning new work for exhibition and publication Nicola is interested in community engagement, socially engaged practice and developing opportunities for photography in the public realm. Over the last few years she has worked with numerous practitioners on a broad range of projects included Aaron Schuman, Anthony Luvera, Arpita Shah, Ayesha Jones, Edgar Martins, Jonny Briggs, Lydia Goldblatt, Mark Neville, Maryam Wahid, Ming de Nasty and Roo Dhissou.
Nicola has developed opportunities for emerging photographers and has devised and delivered a range of professional development programmes. She has reviewed work at Portfolio Review events, in festival and education contexts, and has been a selector for a number of awards including ‘Portrait of Britain’ (2021), Source magazine BA Photography Awards (2020), and the Taylor Wessing Photography Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery (2019). She is a board member of Photofusion.