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 20 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 16 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.
Bryony Willis
Non Executive Director
Bryony Willis joined us as a volunteer non-executive director on our Board from 18th December 2016. Bryony works 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 as we grow.
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 supports Quench Arts' vision. She is delighted to help support the organisation as it grows and develops.
Ernon Campbell
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. This group meets 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 have introduced a QAB role onto our formal board, with the person appointed by QAB votes 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.”