The Illuminated River Foundation team
The Illuminated River Foundation is a registered charity based in the offices of the Rothschild Foundation who provide administrative support.
Sarah Gaventa, MA (RCA)
Director
Sarah, Hon. Fellow of both RIBA and the Landscape Institute, is a public space and public art expert and curator, and was previously Director of CABE Space at the Commission for Architecture and Built Environment. She was Chair of the Elephant and Castle Regeneration Forum for five years.
Richard Dye
Finance Director
Richard is a Chartered Accountant, previously the Finance Director at Disasters Emergency Committee. He brings career experience of managing finance, resources and projects in the arts and not-for-profit sector.
Trustees
The project is governed by an independent Board of Trustees including Hannah Rothschild and Fabia Bromovsky, and chaired by Neil Mendoza.
Neil Mendoza
Chair
Neil Mendoza is Provost of Oriel College, Oxford University, and Commissioner for Cultural Recovery and Renewal. In May 2020 he was appointed by the government as Commissioner in response to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the cultural sector.
Neil is a non-executive director of the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. He led two government reviews in 2017 — The Mendoza Review of museums in England and a Strategic Review for the Cabinet Office covering the national museums. Additional government appointments include being a Commissioner of Historic England and a member of the review panel looking into the sustainability of English churches and cathedrals. Neil is also a director of Meira GTx, a gene therapy company, listed on Nasdaq.
Neil is Chair of The Landmark Trust. Previously, Neil was Chair of Children and the Arts, a nationwide charity dedicated to using cultural work to help children in disadvantaged communities and hospices. He was also Vice-Chair of Soho Theatre and a trustee of the Shakespeare Schools Festival and has twice been on the judging panel for the Laurence Olivier Awards.
Early in his career Neil co-founded and ran a publishing company, Forward, that was sold to marketing group, WPP.
Hannah Rothschild
Hannah Rothschild is a writer, filmmaker, company director and philanthropist. She has made films for the BBC, HBO and others. Her books have been published in twelve languages. The Improbability of Love won the Bollinger Wodehouse best comic novel and was runner up to the Bailley Women’s prize for fiction in 2015. Her new novel House of Trelawney will be published in February 2020.
In 2015 she became the first woman to chair the National Gallery. She serves on the boards of charitable foundations in the UK and abroad.
She is a Non-Executive Director of RIT Capital Partners Ltd and Windmill Hill Asset Management Ltd.
In 2018 she was made CBE for services to Literature and Philanthropy.
Fabia Bromovsky
Fabia Bromovsky is Chief Executive of The Rothschild Foundation. After graduating in Mathematics at Somerville College, Oxford, she joined Lord Rothschild’s office in 1985. During this time she worked on a portfolio of private business investments including Clifton Little Venice, Robert Day Flowers and Clifton Nurseries. In 1990 she led the project to restore Waddesdon Manor, a Rothschild House owned by the National Trust and now managed and opened to the public on their behalf by the Rothschild Foundation. She became Managing Director of Rothschild Waddesdon Ltd, the trading company established to run the commercial operations at the Manor in 1994 and alongside this, in 1995, was appointed Chief Executive of Waddesdon Manor. She was appointed Chief Executive of The Rothschild Foundation shortly after its incorporation in 2011.
Project Team
The project team combines the expertise of numerous companies. They include:
Atelier Ten
Beckett Rankine
Caro Communications
Colt Technology Services
Core Five
FM Conway
Iceni Projects
Jackson Coles
Leo Villareal Studio
Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands
London Wildlife Trust
Montagu Evans
MSA
Price & Myers
RNLI
Temple Group
Thomson
Signify
Project Partners
Illuminated River has been developed in consultation and collaboration with over 50 organisations on and around the river, including the Port of London Authority, Historic England, Transport for London, Network Rail, London Wildlife Trust, Zoological Society of London, Cross River Partnership, seven local authorities (City of London, Tower Hamlets, Westminster, Southwark, RBKC, Lambeth, Wandsworth) from whom 30 planning permissions and 18 listed building consents have been granted.
Illuminated River aims to be a model of best practice and collaboration, demonstrating how different sectors and boroughs can work together to support cultural initiatives that make the city more attractive and accessible for everyone.
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