Paul Heritage

Paul Heritage is a professor of drama and performance at Queen Mary University of London, UK. For over three decades, Paul has created cultural projects as an investigation of the power of the arts in social change, including award-winning HIV/AIDS, education and human rights work. He is noted for his prison projects in Britain and Brazil and for his work with AfroReggae in Brazil and the UK from 2001-2012. He was the executive producer of Rio Occupation London (London, 2012). In recent years, he has focused increasingly on the relationships between arts and wellbeing, creative economy, preservation and artistic exchange between artists and cultural agents in Brazil and the UK and indigenous communities in Central Brazil. His research includes a partnership with the Kuikuro community as co-curator of an artistic residency and exchange program which recently created an immersive digital experience for London museumgoers; arts-based engagements with women's experience of gender violence; as producer for a group of homeless choirs, Corais Uma Só Voz; and as the link between the Agência de Redes program in Rio, which supports young people to set up social enterprise projects, and The Agency across the UK. In 2004, Paul was made a Knight of the Order of Rio Branco by the Brazilian government.