Dr Samina Zahir (FRSA) is a is a freelance arts / community consultant and Creative Producer who has been working in the arts and community sectors for almost twenty years. Samina works with clients to develop ideas from aspiration (project development) to realisation (product delivery) and evaluation. She is people focused and supports communities, organisations and individuals. Clients cross business, third sector and the creative industries. She works with clients to engender learning and innovation journeys that set the ground for fresh insight and new ideas.

She draws together her academic training with her experience as a creative producer in the belief that the development of communities and the power of individuals should define strategy and policy development. In keeping with this she is a firm believer in action research as a research methodology having long-term benefits beyond the researcher.

Much of Samina’s work is based on creative action research - individual learning and growth effects social change and leads to organisational development, but always with creativity built in to invigorate, challenge and inspire.

She has senior level experience in delivering both research (Arts & Refugees, The Elephant in the Room, Sustainable Communities/ Living Places) and programme production (British Summertime, Changing Views, Fragment, Inhabit).

Samina has published work in a range of journals and books, both academic and arts sector led Contemporary Black British Culture (Ed Alison Donnell, Routledge, London, 2002); South Asian Women in the Diaspora, (Ed: Nirmal Puwar & Parvati Raghuram, 2003); Fashion Theory (Ed Nirmal Puwar, 2003). She has also been both Chair and Secretary of the Black History Foundation.