Neil Kenlock’s archive is managed by his daughter Emelia Kenlock, who is a creative director and consultant. Her career in the creative industries began in radio when she trained as an assistant advertising traffic manager at Choice FM, the station her father co-founded in 1990. She then went on to create the UK’s first black glossy teen music magazine titled Young Voices for the print media pioneer Val McCalla, founder of the The Voice newspaper. Then in the late 2000s she made the transition to digital media and delivered campaigns and projects with brands such as Samsung, the NHS and Shell.
As the creative director of the Kenlock Archive, she spends her time working with her father, overseeing a range of business including curation, licence agreements, partnerships and PR opportunities. She has curated exhibitions and events with his collection in partnership with brands like the Black Cultural Archives, Tate, National Portrait Gallery and Sky TV.
In the last few years, she acquired support and funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and other organisations to deliver Neil’s dream Expectations Project. She lead a team of more than thirty freelancers, volunteers, contractors and agencies across the UK to work on the project. Her mission was to capture her fathers vision as well as curate the first photography ‘building take-over’ at the Black Cultural Archives. Following the success and positive feedback, the project is now in the legacy phase.
Today Emelia works closely with a range of clients including, media companies, publishers, galleries and researchers who seek archive materials. She has worked with the BBC, ITV and Sky Arts for a number of years licensing images for various news and documentary programmes. She also spends much of her time participating in research and PR interviews, discussing the world of art management and archives.
For more information on Emelia please visit her website Kenlock Arts or if you would like to contact her please visit our Contact Us page.
For updates on Neil’s collection please visit Emelia’s archive diary on the News page.