This year we welcome four more wonderfully talented and highly committed Fellows: Will Gompertz, Claudette Johnson MBE, Professor Olivette Otele and Russell Tovey.
City Lit Fellowships were established by the Board of Governors in 2015. City Lit Fellowships are awarded to individuals who have shown a significant commitment to adult education in the United Kingdom and who have provided support and inspiration to City Lit and our students.
Will Gompertz - Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum
“I am honoured and thrilled to be invited to become a City Lit Fellow. It is the most incredible organisation, which I look forward to serving and supporting.”
Will Gompertz is the Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, a post he took up in January 2024 to provide strategic leadership of one of the world’s most exceptional and admired house museums.
Prior to joining the Sir John Soane’s Museum, Will was the Artistic Director of the Barbican Arts Centre where he oversaw an award-winning programme that included presenting the world premiere of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s theatrical collaboration with Studio Ghibli, My Neighbour Totoro, which ran alongside the highly acclaimed retrospective of the twentieth century American portrait painter Alice Neel.
In 2009 the BBC appointed Will as its first Arts Editor, a senior journalistic role in which Will spent eleven years reporting on the arts from across the globe.
Claudette Johnson MBE - Visual Artist
A founding member of the Black British Arts Movement, Claudette Johnson MBE is considered one of the most significant figurative artists of her generation. For over 30 years she has created large-scale drawings of Black women and men that are at once intimate and powerful.
Johnson started her career as part of the newly formed BLK Art Group, which she joined in 1981 while she was a student at Wolverhampton University. While still a student there, she became a founder member of the BLK Art Group and took part in their second show at the Africa Centre, London, in 1983. Her talk, and seminar, at the First National Black Arts Conference in 1982 is recognised as a formative moment in the Black feminist art movement in the UK
In September 2023, The Courtauld Gallery presented Johnson's first monographic exhibition at a major public gallery in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Drawn Out, Ortuzar Projects, New York (2023) Still Here, Hollybush Gardens, London (2021).
Professor Olivette Otele - Distinguished Professor and Historian
“I am incredibly touched and honoured. Hope, perseverance and kindness are essential to unlock the treasures buried in our souls. City Lit embodies those qualities beautifully. I'm very proud to now be part of the City Lit community.”
Olivette Otele is a Distinguished Research Professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at SOAS, University of London. Her area of research is colonial, post-colonial history and memory studies. Olivette holds a Ph.D. in History from Université Paris La Sorbonne, France and received an honorary doctorate in Law from Concordia University in Canada in 2022. She is a Fellow, a former Vice President of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. She was the recipient of several prestigious national and international research grants.
She is a broadcaster and a consultant for films and documentaries such as Chevalier (2023), on Disney+ and African Queens airing on Netflix (2023). Her latest books include an edited volume, Post-Conflict Memorialization: Missing Memorials, Absent Bodies (2021) and African Europeans: an Untold History (2020). She works with policy makers and other institutions to engage with the histories of colonial slavery and restorative justice strategies (Welsh Government Audit on Slavery and Colonialism and the Guardian Newspapers project Cotton Capital).
Russell Tovey - renowned actor, playwright, and screenwriter
With an extensive background in film, television and theatre, award winning actor, Russell Tovey can next be seen in Feud: Capote Vs The Swans; created by Ryan Murphy, Jaffe Cohen & Michael Zam for FX. He recently wrapped on Jeff Pope’s Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes for Disney+. Most recently he has been starring in Ryan Murphy’s FX horror anthology American Horror Story: NYC, as well as BBC Three’s new drama Juice. Russell was nominated for a 2020 Critic’s Choice Award for best supporting actor for his role in the critically acclaimed BBC/HBO Drama series Years and Years.
Russell is a passionate art collector and co-hosts art podcast, Talk Art, with friend and gallerist Robert Diament, where they interview leading artists, curators, gallerists, and celebrities. Their first book Talk Art: Everything You Wanted To Ask About Contemporary Art But Were Afraid To Ask has been listed as one of The Sunday Times’s Top Ten Bestsellers, and their second book will be released this May.
Learn about the City Lit Fellows
The City Lit Fellowship Programme acknowledges those extraordinary individuals who, throughout their careers, have been pioneers who have challenged convention and demonstrated a conviction to improve lives, and the quality of life, through the opportunity and experience of learning.
City Lit Fellowships were established by the Board of Governors in 2015.
