Shivani has been Chair of Board at SAPAC since spring 2023. Professionally, she is a senior manager in the higher education sector and an Associate Professor. Shivani also has experience as a trustee of national charities. As a British Asian, dance and music has always featured in Shivani's connection with Indian cultural heritage. In her mid 20’s, she began learning Kathak dance and has pursed this passion alongside her career. An advocate for the power of performing arts as a driver of well- being, Shivani has been teaching and performing Kathak in Wiltshire for the last decade including novel presentations on themes related to equity and inclusion.
Merging her varied experiences, Shivani plays a key role in working with the board to align SAPACs strategy with the regional and national arts landscape, alongside income generation and impact evaluation.
Indu has always had a keen interest in dance and music. Born in India , she grew up arraigning dance and drama programmes with kids in the neighbourhood. She comes from a family with keen interest in music, drama and dance and has won music and drama competitions at University level in India.
Indu came to the UK after marriage and inevitably got busy with raising her two sons and demanding career at BT.
After retiring from a long and successful career at senior management in BT, she set up her own consultancy in advertising blue chip companies in how to get value for money from advertising budgets.
In 1999, she decided to give up work and learn Hindustani classical music but as there was no provision in Swindon or in Wiltshire , she had to travel to the Bhavan in London.
Travelling to London was time consuming and expensive so she thought of starting the classes locally and was successful in getting grants from the local borough council and the Community Foundation of Swindon and Wiltshire. SAPAC could , then, offer classes locally in Hindustani Vocal and Tabla arranging teachers from the Bhavan to travel to Swindon.
Indu has worked tirelessly with other founding members , Chan Chitroda and Ram Thiagarajah to grow and keep SAPAC alive in the face of many social and financial challenges.
Applying for grants from the ACE to host events added another dimension to SAPAC’s offerings. Currently , SAPAC hosts events in diverse dance and music and supports independent teachers running Indian classical and modern dance and music.
The partnership approach has served SAPAC well over the years. These include local dance and creative organisations like Swindon Dance , Create and independent dance schools as well as local media eg BBC Wiltshire Radio, Swindon Community Radio and Swindon Advertiser, SAPAC is now well recognised as a diverse art organisation.
Indu’s current passion is to grow SAPAC in to a well recognised diverse art organisation beyond Swindon and Wiltshire.
Sonny's career is broad, attaining the position of Vice President of the Kvaerner Group p.l.c., lecturing at Brunel and London South Bank Universities, and was appointed as Her Majesty’s Government Commissioner to the H. & S. C. taking a Confederation of British Industry Brief.
During retirement, Sonny has contributed towards several Community Organisations including serving on the Swindon Mela Organising Committee for over ten years. During the later three years of his term he served as its Chairman. In March 2016, Sonny, as part of the Swindon Mela Team, was one of the honoured recipients of the Pride of Swindon Award.
Junab was born in Bangladesh and moved to the U.K at the age of 4. Since then he has lived in the Wiltshire and Swindon area with his wife and children. Junab is an entrepreneur, running his own business since the age of 18. Alongside this he has been a Councillor on the Swindon Bourough Parish Council for the past 12 years and served as Mayor of Swindon from 2018 to 2019. Junab is the Vice-Chair of the Wiltshire Police Crime Panel and Trustee for the Wiltshire Community Foundation. The importance of education has always been important to Junab, so much so that he founded and help setup the “Bangladesh Female Academy,” a school for girls who otherwise wouldn't receive an education.
Raymol Nidhiry, a Civil Engineer, has been working with Swindon Borough Council as IT Technical Consultant over the last two decades. Right from childhood, Raymol has always given priority to contributing, excelling and winning a multitude of Art, Culture, Speech and Dance competitions in addition to her excellent Academic skills. Raymol was a founder Leader of the Wiltshire Malayalee Association and a founder Leader of the Indian Women Engineers - South West, connecting the Indian women Engineers. In addition to performing on several Dance stages of various Genres – Classical, Contemporary, Cinematic etc. for multiple Communities, Associations and Charities, Raymol has also prepared performers to do their best. She has also been part of the Editorial Board of Social Journals and Magazines. Additionally she has been Principal of the 11plusLeap team in Swindon, preparing students for the Grammar School Entrance exam and continues to delve deeper into the field of education.
Raymol has been active within the field of sports and is currently the Captain of Stratton Polska Badminton Club Ladies Team who are Division 1 Swindon District champions. ‘When the going gets tough the tough get going’ – Raymol proved this old adage right during the time of the pandemic by Virtually Connecting and organising Virtual Performance Stages in association with Cochin Kalabhavan London which has been the budding platform for many of the present day Bollywood Film stars and Musicians. Along with the help of Famous Stars who voluntarily appeared, the platform eventually managed to help out upcoming artists who were facing psychological and financial stress during the pandemic.
Nicky started her career with HSBC and came to Swindon in 1991 on secondment to Great Western Enterprise for 1 year. Almost 30 years later she is still involved with the company, now called Business West as a non-executive Director.
Nicky is Chair of Swindon Domestic Abuse Support Service and is a founding member of the Swindon Cares Fund Raising Appeal. She is non-executive Director at Business West, an active in the Rotary Club of Swindon and a Deputy Lieutenant for Wiltshire and in 2018/19 was High Sheriff of Wiltshire.
She is married to Pete, has 2 step daughters, and is Nanny Nick to 2 gorgeous grandsons.
Marie was born and grew up in London. She started dancing in the Watford area, followed by professional training at Arts Educational School (London) and London Contemporary Dance School.
She then moved to Swindon when her husband's job relocated to the town in the late 60's and initially set up her own dance school in the Park North & Nythe area.
In the late 70's Marie became involved in the emerging TCA (Thamesdown Community Arts) project, which led to the establishment in 1979 of Swindon Dance based in the Old Town Hall. Since then until her retirement in 2016, Swindon Dance, under her leadership as Artistic Director, has become recognised as one of England's leading National Dance Centres.
Marie has always had a passion for dance from diverse cultures and over the years has programmed Community and school projects. Over the years she has introduced Swindon to many dance artists and companies from the Asian Diaspora; these include the Akram Khan dance Company and Shobana Jeyasingh at the Wyvern Theatre. Also Sonia Sabri, Seeta Patel, Aakash Odedra and Vidya Thirunaryan at Swindon Dance. In recent years Marie has been delighted to get to know and develop an ongoing partnership with SAPAC. She looks forward to collaborating on many more exciting projects moving forward.
Mark Powell is Artistic Director of Swindon’s Prime Theatre, making both professional and youth theatre productions for, by and with children and young people.
Mark is the Vice Chair for Theatre for Young Audiences: UK and a recent member of the Arts Council’s South West Board. He is Chair of Governors at Drove Primary, Swindon’s largest and most multi-cultural school. He is a theatre writer and director.