Professor Michael Keith

Professor Michael Keith will be stepping down as our Chair, and from the Board of Rich Mix, for medical reasons – effective immediately.

Michael has been part of Rich Mix for over 30 years, working tirelessly from our inception in the 1990s to making Rich Mix a reality when we opened our doors in 2006, and has steered the Board with integrity and commitment for the last 15 years. We are proud to have had him as our Co-Founder and Chair, enabling us to realise our role as a cultural hub in the heart of Tower Hamlets – a place where the communities of the world can come together to create, debate, and enjoy and share culture.

We wish him well and thank him for his dedication, insight and, ultimately, for his vision in founding Rich Mix, an organisation centred on intercultural understanding and dialogue.

Outside of Rich Mix, Michael is a respected Professor at the University of Oxford where his research has focused on migration-related processes of urban change. He is currently Director of the Peak Urban Research programme. Michael is also a long-standing resident of Tower Hamlets and has served on the boards of numerous community organisations, including Whitechapel Art Gallery, and was an active local councillor in Tower Hamlets in the 1990s and 2000s, including Leader. He has founded several urban regeneration schemes, and acted as a Chair for the Thames Gateway London Partnership.

We look forward to keeping Michael updated on the next chapter of Rich Mix as we continue to deliver Culture for a Changing City.

Sangna Chauhan, our current Vice Chair, and Jackie O’Sullivan will lead Rich Mix as Co-Chairs on an interim basis. We will look to recruit a new Chair over the coming months and will share plans in due course. If you are interested in finding out more, please contact us at chair@richmix.org.uk.

Judith Kilvington, CEO says:

‘I am grateful for the significant support and advice Michael has provided over the five years I have been CEO at Rich Mix. His understanding of the wide-ranging issues affecting the arts sector, as well as the wider political environment in which Rich Mix operates have been invaluable – particularly as we have navigated the unprecedented nature of the last three years with the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. From all the team at Rich Mix, we extend our huge thanks and warmest wishes.’

Sangna Chauhan and Jackie O’Sullivan, Co-Chairs, say:

‘We will miss Michael’s expert leadership tremendously.  Quite simply, Rich Mix would not exist if it wasn’t for him and our whole community owes him an enormous debt of gratitude.’