Spectroscope appoints Faye Stewart as Executive Director, strengthening leadership alongside founder and Artistic Director Cathy Mager
Spectroscope, the Bristol-based, deaf-led and disabled-led artist collective, today announces the appointment of Faye Stewart as Executive Director. She joins founder and visionary Artistic Director Cathy Mager as part of a new co-leadership model guiding the organisation’s new phase.
“Faye brings a rare combination of strategic insight, deep sector knowledge and lived experience. At a critical moment for the arts, her leadership will help us grow sustainably while continuing to create ambitious, award-winning work at an international scale. This partnership marks an important new chapter for Spectroscope.”
Cathy Mager, Artistic Director and founder of Spectroscope
In a short space of time, Spectroscope has established itself as one of the UK’s most dynamic disabled-led organisations. The collective creates ambitious, award-winning projection, sculpture and immersive multi-sensory artworks, combining haptics, sound, dance and visual design. Their work spans monumental building projections and 360-degree immersive dome experiences, transforming major public sites, galleries and festivals in the UK and internationally.
Recent projects include presentations at Wellcome Collection, Science Gallery, Bristol Light Festival and the Cunard Building in Liverpool, as well as internationally at SuHe Haus and Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai. Their work has been widely recognised as bold, beautiful and boundary-pushing.
Spectroscope creates large-scale artworks for public space, galleries and festivals—locally, nationally and worldwide—bringing hidden histories and marginalised perspectives into the light through powerful, emotive storytelling.
Faye Stewart joins Spectroscope from Arts Council England, where she has worked since 2010 across regional and national roles, most recently as Senior Project Manager for the Access Changemaker programme. She led national work on accessibility, including championing the adoption of the Social Model of Disability, making Arts Council England the first National Lottery distributor and non-departmental public body to formally adopt it.
“I’m joining Spectroscope because it represents what disabled-led organisations can achieve when ambition and access are embedded from the start. Their work is bold, internationally recognised and rooted in equity. I’m excited to build on that foundation—strengthening partnerships, growing the organisation and ensuring disabled-led innovation continues to shape the future of our cultural landscape.”
Faye Stewart, Executive Director, Spectroscope
Previously, as Relationship Manager in the South West, she supported and developed arts and cultural organisations with a focus on community engagement and place-based practice. She brings over 20 years of experience spanning disability arts, community practice and strategic development, and is a long-standing advocate of the Social Model of Disability.
Faye is also a member of Creative UK’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group (EDIAG), a trustee of the Centre for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People in Bristol, and a member of the Liverpool 2027 Steering Group for the Inclusive Sport and Culture Festival. Alongside her professional work, she is a competitive athlete, having competed in national-level Enduro mountain biking events including the Megavalanche in Alpe d’Huez, and more recently in British Dressage with the Riding for the Disabled Association (Avon), where she was 2025 Regional Champion, National Runner-up and a Grade 6 Para Champion at Hartpury. She is currently training for an Olympic-distance triathlon.
Together, Mager and Stewart will lead Spectroscope into its next phase—expanding its international reach while deepening its commitment to local and national partnerships, and continuing to push the boundaries of immersive, disabled-led art.