Our Story
Quench Arts was conjured up by Liz Viggers and Nic Briggs in September 2012. Through our previous employment at Sound It Out Community Music, we both built up a strong passion and understanding of the value of community arts and an excellent range of artistic, community and strategic contacts. Quench Arts uses our complementary skills and experience to promote and deliver quality, in depth, participatory arts activity.
Liz Viggers (née Ralls)
Co-founder & Director
Liz brings over 23 years of knowledge and experience of community arts in the West Midlands and a history of strategic partnership work across youth, wellbeing, cohesion and training/development sectors. She has developed good relationships with local musicians and has a strong track record in project fundraising from places such as the Big Lottery Fund, Comic Relief, Government Bodies (e.g. DfE, Home Office), Heritage Lottery, v (the national youth volunteering agency), Youth Music and many trusts and foundations.
As a trained primary teacher she has education experience and is a working and performing musician.
Liz's motivation for co-founding Quench Arts was fuelled by a strong desire to advocate for the role of community arts and music and gain more recognition and support for our field.
Nic Briggs
Co-founder & Director
Nic has over 19 years experience of managing and coordinating community arts projects across the formal and informal education sector, health and wellbeing settings and with a focus on community cohesion and professional development. With previous experience as a secondary school music teacher, she has a passion for working with disadvantaged young people and has been instrumental in developing volunteering programmes and supporting emerging artists.
Developing quirky projects is of particular interest to Nic, as highlighted by her 'Tamperine' fundraising initiative.
Nic believes that Quench Arts provides a fantastic opportunity to fill a gap in provision and to use our experience gained in previous roles to benefit local communities and other arts organisations.
Ernon Campbell
Non Executive Director
Jo Neale
Non Executive Director
Ernon sits on our board as the representative of our Quench Arts Advisory Board (the QAB), which is a group of 12 stakeholders including participants, partners, music leaders and parents/carers with experience of our work. Since July 2021 the QAB has met quarterly in advance of our quarterly formal Board of Directors meetings to help steer the organisation, in particular supporting programme direction, reviews and ideas and helping with reviewing and devising our policies and processes. We think that it is incredibly important for our beneficiaries to be able to input and have a voice at a strategic level and so in July 2024 we introduced a QAB role onto our formal board, with the person appointed by QAB vote every 3 years.
Ernon says, “I have worked in the third sector in a variety of roles and have had the opportunity to represent others views on Boards at various points in my life. I have always had a passion for music and understand the positive impacts it plays on our mental health and wellbeing. As well as taking part in Quench Arts projects I also enjoy singing in a local community choir, playing the guitar and writing songs.”
We are delighted to welcome Jo as a volunteer non-executive director from May 2025. Jo worked for the NHS for the whole of her 37 year career until her early retirement in 2015. For most of this time she worked in mental health services with her last post being Head of Performing and Creative Arts for Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust. In this post she developed a range of services including a Wellbeing Choir and commissioned Quench Arts to provide the lottery funded Musical Connections project.
Jo is passionate about the power of music and the arts to improve people’s mental health wellbeing. She is a musician herself playing saxophone, bangolele, ukulele and piano and has played in several bands. Many of the bands she has been involved in have had members who have lived experience of mental health issues and used mental health services. Jo says, “It is an honour to be a Non-Executive Director of Quench Arts and to support the development of community arts wellbeing projects. I firmly believe that the arts can significantly improve people’s wellbeing”. She hopes she will be an asset to the organisation.
The Quench Arts Advisory Board (QAB)
As well as our formal board of directors, Quench Arts also has a Quench Arts Advisory Board (QAB) of stakeholders that have been meeting since June 2021 to help to reflect on and steer our strategic direction, programme design and policy development. This group also meets quarterly, normally a fortnight prior to our formal board meetings. The QAB include a varied range of stakeholders across our 4 strands of activity, including participants, parents/carers, music leaders/trainers and project partners.
Our current members are:
Claire Batty (Heart of England Music Hub)
Helen Brookes (Birmingham Music Education Hub)
Ernon Campbell (Participant and QAB Representative on our formal board)
Paul Carroll (Music Leader)
Liam Fitzgerald (Participant)
Meldra Guza (Music Leader, Trainer, Industry representative)
Holly Radford-James (Soundabout)
Jameela Rose (Musical Connections Project Volunteer/ previous Early Years Trainee Practitioner)
Tracey Rose (Parent - no relation to Jameela!)
Katie Stevens (Music Leader)
Kirsty Taylor (Forward Thinking Birmingham)
Claire Terrington (Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust/ Birmingham & Solihull Community Mental Health Transformation Programme)
We would like to take this opportunity to thank previous QAB members for their time and support:
Elizabeth Birch (Participant, Music Leader)
Jess Birch (Parent/ Carer)
Sue Buntin (Trainer & Early Years specialist)
Nicola McAteer (Music Leader)
Lakhvir Rellon (Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust)
Harjit Singh (Birmingham Music Service)
In addition, to the QAB, the majority of our longer term projects also strongly value user voice. For example, we have a Members Advisory Group that meets quarterly for our Musical Connections project, as well as a variety of member volunteer and peer support roles on this programme and our Wavelength (youth) programme. The Musical Connections Members Advisory Group can be seen here: www.musicalconnections.info/who-s-who
Previous Non-Executive Directors:
Bryony Willis
Non Executive Director (Resigned May 2025)
Bryony Willis joined us as a volunteer non-executive director from 18th December 2016 and resigned in May 2025. We are hugely grateful for the support that Bryony gave to Quench Arts during this time of growth. Bryony worked with us, alongside our project steering groups, stakeholder and member/ participant advisory groups, to help steer and oversee our work, as well as to give advice on our organisational and accountany practice.
Bryony is a senior auditor for a local authority as well as a qualified accountant. She has a history degree and 2 young, energetic children, who she has encouraged musically from an early age. Bryony played violin at school and believes in the power of music and the arts. She loves all kinds of music and continues to support Quench Arts' vision. She was delighted to be able to help support the organisation and Director during her time on the board.
