Liz Pugh

Co-founder of Walk the Plank, Liz leads teams working on festivals, parades, and site-specific performances. She is one of 12 Advisers to Europe’s most exciting contemporary performing arts network, IETM, and sits on the board of outdoor arts agency Xtrax, and the City of Salford’s Culture and Place Partnership board. 

As a director of large scale outdoor performances that have participation at their heart, she is currently working with artists from across the north of Norway to produce Midsummer Mischief for Bodø2024, EU Capital of Culture. She staged Wales’ largest outdoor bilingual performance for the Wales Millennium Centre (2015), supported by pan-Wales outdoor arts training schools, the Awen Schools; and worked with Cypriot artists to create the opening for Pafos: EU Capital of Culture 2017. Liz led the team that produced the Manchester Day Parades (2010-22) and its linked talent development programme Elevate, supporting choreographers, makers, designers and carnival artists. As Creative Producer (Wales) for Green Space Dark Skies in 2022, she shaped the events at Mynydd Parys and Amlwch, celebrating the geology and music of this most northern part of Ynys Môn/Anglesey, as shown in the BBC Wales: Green Space Dark Skies documentary. With curator Michael Trainer, Liz produced the UK’s first Art Car Parades, which saw artists commissioned to transform vehicles into mobile works of art. Her projects are united by a desire to build diverse platforms which offer the chance for meaningful exchange between artists and new audiences in public space. 

As well as creating ambitious transnational events, Liz has worked with British Council’s Cultural Skills team to lead Festival Management Training in West Africa, the Caribbean and Ukraine; co-designed two European training programmes: School of Participation (2019-21), School of Spectacle (2017-19); and has worked for the British Council worldwide.