Trustees and Directors

 We founded Polygon Arts in 2003 in a shared belief that the arts have a direct role to play in raising political consciousness, encouraging social debate and creating change.  It now functions as a forum in which we can develop practice using other artists and facilitators thereby supporting our own research and development work.

 

Gabrielle Lobb - Director

Gabrielle Lobb is a co-founder and Director of Polygon Arts. She has extensive experience as an educator and in developing and managing community arts projects. Her work focuses on how to discover personal resonance and meaningful connections with other people, experiences, faiths or cultures and on how, in so doing, we are led both to action and to seek social change.
Gabrielle gained her MA in Applied Theatre from Central School of Speech and Drama during which she developed her interest in the debate surrounding the concept and teaching of Global Citizenship. She graduated from the Fellowship in Holocaust Education at the Imperial War Museum, through which she developed arts-based Holocaust Education with young people excluded from mainstream schools. In a freelance capacity Gabrielle is a Creative Educator at the British Library working with visitors to the Library’s exhibitions. She has been commissioned to write many education resources, as well as Polygon Arts, clients have included iceandfire, DASH Arts, Border Crossings, The Red Room, JCore and World ORT.

Joel Chalfen - Trustee Chair

Joel is a lecturer in Theatre and Drama Education at Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln. He has recently been researching the role that museums play, through their visitors, promoting human rights and creating acts of citizenship.

Joel read English and Anthropology as an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius College , Cambridge. He subsequently trained with Jacques Lecoq in Paris and in Classical Acting at LAMDA. After graduating from there, he worked with a number of theatre companies, principally as an actor but also as a director.

Television and film credits include: Keen Eddie (Paramount Pictures); Mail Gaze (Laughing Buddha); Bonsai (Mercenary Films); and Song of Songs (Wild Horses Productions).

Joel has also been a regular workshop leader with a number of theatre companies