Our Board of Trustees
About the Board of Trustees
Our Trustees are:
- A mix of Executive and Non-Executive Trustees, elected by the members of our network at our AGM, who are individuals or organisations that share our vision and values;
- Responsible for supporting the Stove Team, which is composed of staff members who work on various projects and events related to creativity, community and place-making;
- Supportive in delivering both strategic aims and governance of The Stove Network, which means they oversee the direction, performance, quality and accountability of the organisation.
Lynsey Smith | Non-Executive Trustee | Chair
Lynsey is a creative economy consultant with almost 20 years of experience. She has gathered expertise from working in high-profile roles for the British Council, Nesta, The Lighthouse and Creative Edinburgh. Lynsey has strong strategic and leadership skills and is bold in her thinking, building an international network and reputation for her pioneering work with creative hubs.
Lynsey has gained an invaluable international perspective on the global creative economy after leading on the development of more than 100 projects and programmes in more than 40 countries across Africa, Europe, South America and Southeast Asia, in order to advocate or support sustainable creative economies. She spearheaded the creation of the Creative Hubs & Communities portfolio, a brand-new global portfolio for the British Council, which she led and internationalised.
Previously, Lynsey was co-founder and Executive Director of Creative Edinburgh, one of Europe’s largest creative hubs for the creative, cultural and tech sectors of Edinburgh. Lynsey has been responsible for shaping numerous enterprise programme offers for organisations like Nesta, the Eden Project, the British Council, Creative & Cultural Skills and Creative Spark. Most recently, she co-designed a brand-new global leadership programme in partnership with Clore Leadership. Lynsey is an RSA Fellow and alumna of Future Leaders.
Erica Judge | Non-Executive Trustee | Treasurer
Erica is a Director of Funds at Inspiring Scotland, which provides financial and practical support to more than 700 of Scotland’s third-sector organisations. She was instrumental in launching Creative Communities and Rural Communities Ideas into Action, two community-led development programmes. She brings with her over 20 years of experience in change management, financial strategy, and commercial delivery roles.
A US native from New York City, Erica holds an MBA from the Wharton Business School and began her career as a diplomat with the US Foreign Service. She has subsequently worked with a variety of FTSE 50 companies, most recently in the banking and retail sectors. Passionate about community-led change, equity, and improving access to opportunity for all, Erica is motivated by a desire to make the world better by helping people and organisations achieve their objectives.
Erica has lived in the UK for over two decades, with half that time in Scotland. She was previously a trustee of the Curiosity Collective, a charity working to give children the freedom to explore the world of learning beyond the classroom. She enjoys reading and exploring the outdoors with her two sons and adopted greyhound.
Jodie Barnacle-Best | Non-Executive Trustee
Jodie Barnacle-Best is a knitwear practitioner and community arts facilitator based in Glasgow. While completing her master’s in fashion and textiles at The Glasgow School of Art in 2021, Jodie joined the Creative Spaces team at The Stove. She took thematic ideas from her knitwear practice—investigating building connections between maker and wearer—into her community arts facilitation work, creating and running events for young people within Dumfries and Galloway. A passion for community and environment is integral to her creative practice and is also the reason why the work of The Stove is so important to her.
Jodie currently works as a studio assistant at Hilary Jane Keyes, a knitwear design, consultancy, and production studio based in Ayrshire. Jodie also takes on a variety of independent textiles projects and commissions. She has been a recipient of the Postgraduate Welcome Scholarship from GSA, a Textile Society Student Award winner, was selected as a British Council Research Fellow in 2020, and has been a member of the Craft Scotland advisory board since January 2021.
Linny Oliphant | Non-Executive Trustee
An authority in luxury brand development, PR, and marketing, Linny’s 25-year career spans tourism and hospitality, fashion and textiles, luxury automotive, and premium spirits.
Linny, the former fashion editor of The Sunday Herald Magazine, is a contributor to several lifestyle titles and is regularly quoted in the press. Having served as a director at University of the Arts London, Linny is an ambassador for linking industry and education and remains a university external assessor.
During her eight-year tenure as brand manager at Johnstons of Elgin, she was credited with revitalising the historic cashmere and fine woollens manufacturer, bringing it to the forefront of the luxury market and founding the renowned collaboration with Scottish fashion designer Christopher Kane.
Returning to her home region of Dumfries and Galloway in 2014, Linny spearheaded the Annandale Distillery project, including developing the state-of-the-art visitor centre and arranging the official opening of the site by HRH The Princess Royal.
Particularly passionate about tourism and creativity, Linny is the product and destination development manager of the SSDA (South of Scotland Destination Alliance) and is proud to be on The Stove’s board of directors. With a love of classic cars, Linny is the founder and owner of The Love Bug D&G, South West Scotland’s classic VW company based in Lockerbie, which offers chauffeur-driven wedding cars, corporate promotions, mobile bars, and bespoke tours with door-to-door service. Popular food and drink itineraries include the VW Chocolate Tour and the VW Distillery Trail.
Tessa Gordziejko | Non-Executive Trustee
Tessa is a theatre-maker—creative producer, director, writer, performer—and a consultant specialising in organisational and creative development with arts companies.
She was a Fellow of the Clore Leadership Programme 2005–07 and has over 20 years’ experience in leadership roles in the cultural sector. These include Creative Programmer for London 2012 and Director of imove, a £3.2 million 2012 Cultural Olympiad programme comprising 32 projects across Yorkshire; Executive Director of Unlimited Theatre; and Chair of Red Ladder Theatre. In 2013, she established imove Arts as an independent production company that created socially engaged arts projects which connected groups of citizens and communities with a deep set of ideas or themes, framed through collaboration with artists.
Tessa has a passion for, and a wide experience of, making site-specific performances in unusual, mostly outdoor settings, and is engaged in networks of artists making work about climate and ecological breakdown. She is also a performing poet. Having lived and worked in the north of England for 30 years, she moved to Dumfries & Galloway in 2021, and since then she has worked as a producer for several Scottish companies. She is a founding member of The Forest Ridge Project, an arts-led, off-grid cooperative which embraces rewilding, growing food, and creative connections with land, nature, and communities.
Chris Wood-Gee | Non-Executive Trustee
Chris has a background—and current practical involvement—in farming but has concentrated for most of his working life on the rural and urban environment. Initially dealing with urban-fringe green space development with a strong community engagement focus, Chris spent 16 years working in the northeast of Glasgow, developing community woodlands, improving local access networks, enhancing wildlife habitats, and exploring placemaking in partnership with Greenspace Scotland. Many of the projects Chris worked on had elements of arts-based interpretation as integral components.
After moving to Dumfries & Galloway, Chris managed the Sulwath Connections Landscape Partnership, a £3.9 million programme of projects ranging from riparian habitat improvement to consolidation of historic churches and enhancement of visitor facilities at a range of RSPB reserves.
Before retirement, the latter stage of Chris’s career involved sustainability and climate change, setting up and leading the sustainability team for Dumfries & Galloway Council, developing its carbon management plan, and delivering climate mitigation projects, including a rooftop solar power programme. Chris’s work has been through a local authority context but with a strong emphasis on partnership working, project management, contract management, project development, and strong community engagement.
Partnership working has been critical to Chris’s working life, whether supporting small community groups to deliver their aspirations or as chair of the Sustainable Scotland Network Steering Group (which leads on public sector climate action and reporting across Scotland). Chris is passionate about the wider environment, our need to tackle the climate crisis, the quality of the wider farmed landscape, maintaining our resource of traditional buildings, and the crucial role that the arts and creativity have in improving and maintaining the quality of life for our communities.
Matt Baker | Executive Trustee
As CEO of The Stove, Matt has over 30 years’ experience as a socially engaged public artist, from hands-on delivery to capacity-building and strategy. He was a co-founder of The Stove, led the arts programme for the rebuilding of the Gorbals from 1999 to 2005, and the re-imagining of Inverness city centre from 2006 to 2011.
Matt served as co-chair of the National Partnership for Culture from 2020 to 2023 and continues to work with the Scottish Government and Parliament, supporting the implementation of the Scottish National Culture Strategy.
He has extensive experience of the cultural policy space—regionally, nationally, and internationally—leading on the development of creative placemaking practice through membership of boards and leadership groups, development of strategy and policy, and consultation and presentations.
Lindsey Smith | Executive Trustee
Lindsey Smith is the Finance Director with responsibility for providing strategic financial leadership, expert advice, and guidance on all financial matters across The Stove Charity and Trading Company. At an operational level, her team provides high-quality financial advice, along with robust financial processes and systems that support the staff team in delivering the strategic ambitions of The Stove.
Lindsey took up her role in December 2021, bringing considerable experience of the charity sector. She qualified as an accountant in 2005. She began her career working in commercial businesses but has spent the last 15 years in the third sector, 13 of those specifically working for arts and community charities. Lindsey provides oversight and advice on all aspects of finance, including tax, accounting, financial reporting, and compliance.
Graham Rooney | Executive Trustee
As Operations Director, Graham brings over 25 years’ experience in project management, organisational development, and high-performance cultures. After a serious injury ended his hopes of a professional football career, Graham retrained as a thermographer in his early 20s, spending two decades working with specialist design teams on multiple construction projects across the UK, Europe, and the Middle East before taking up his initial role as project manager with The Stove in 2018.
Graham thrives at the intersection of enterprise and community-led creativity, championing teamwork and collaboration as the engines of meaningful change. He brings deep knowledge of building resilient organisational systems, aligning strategic vision with practical delivery, and fostering high-performance cultures. Known for his ability to build strong, meaningful relationships, Graham cultivates partnerships that inspire trust, collaboration, and possibility.
