Meet Me.
Briana Pegado is an award-winning social entrepreneur, activist, and author with nearly a decade's experience as a senior manager in the creative industries in Scotland. In 2010, she helped set up the University of Edinburgh first ever Black History Month. She was elected Edinburgh University Students Association's (EUSA) first black woman President in the union's 130-year history in 2014. In 2015, her social enterprise the Edinburgh Student Arts Festival (ESAF) won the Inspiring Youth Enterprise Award from Social Enterprise Scotland and in the same year was named one of Scotland's Top 10 Social Innovators by Third Force News. In the same year, she hosted TedXUniversityofEdinburgh. In 2016, she was shortlisted to win the Social Enterprise Champion Award. In 2017, she was named one of Scotland's 30 Under 30 Inspiring Young Women. Briana is a long time contributor to BBC Radio Scotland’s Tuesday Review part of the Afternoon Show from (2017-2024) and Sunday Morning Show with Cathy MacDonald, Janice Forsyth, and Tony Kearney (2017-2025).
Education & Work in Academia
She has a Master of Arts with Honours in Sustainable Development from the University of Edinburgh and studied for an MBA at the University of Arts London Central Saint Martins College of Art in 2017. She received the only Sundstrom Scholarship for Women’s Leadership to CSM in 2017. In 2018, she designed and co-produced an Executive Education Programme for Tesco Bank alongside the Chair of Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh Chris Speed, focusing on Data-Driven Design Education. In 2018, she also co-founded Povo, a ‘conductancy’ that supported collaborators to use play to better understand their creative processes, problem solve, and strategise, she channeled creative methods into problem-solving tactics. Working with the Church of Scotland, Hub of All Things, and the University of Edinburgh Living Labs.
Previous Roles in the Cultural Sector
She has worked across festivals like Imaginate - International Children’s Book Festival as a Venue Manager, the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) as Front of House Staff, the National Theatre of Scotland in various roles from the Department of Artistic Development to the Creative Learning Department project managing the theatre’s Year of Young People 2018 programme Futureproof. She worked as business development manager at Custom Lane - Scotland's Centre for Design & Making, community engagement officer at Voluntary Arts Scotland (now Creative Lives), and within the contemporary art world specifically producing Visual Arts Scotland’s 2021 Annual Exhibition.
Experience in Leadership Roles
In 2019, she became Chief Executive of Creative Edinburgh and a Co-Director of Creative Informatics, an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project to invest in data-driven innovation in the creative industries across the Lothians in partnership with the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, and Codebase the largest tech cluster in Europe. She is now a data-driven innovation ambassador for the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
She was co-director of We Are Here Scotland CIC, an organisation that supports Black and POC creatives into the creative industries in Scotland from 2021-2023. She worked as the Grant Manager for the Black Queer Travel Guide (2021-2022) helping the founder secure funding to expand the team, establish a steering group, and grow. Then she became interim CEO of YWCA Scotland - the Young Women's Movement, an intersectional, feminist charity that supports young women's leadership, offers consent-based sexual education, and provides women from marginalised communities with work opportunities.
Festival Experience
After founding and running the Edinburgh Student Arts’ Festival (ESAF) from 2015-2017, then becoming Creative Director of Fringe of Colour Films in 2021, Briana co-produced Creative Riot at Leith Theatre, a boom project two-day immersive festival featuring artists, performers, and musicians from North Edinburgh, which was part of the Architecture Fringe Festival 2017.
Briana co-produced and co-founded Rise Up! Festival in Aberdeen. Rise Up! festival hosted by Aberdeen Performing Arts showed top black and people of colour musical and creative talent in Scotland. With live performances, workshops, and talks this festival continued to run until 2024.
Experience in Film
She was creative director of Fringe of Colour Films in 2021, incorporating FriCO as a community interest company and securing Screen Scotland funding for the festival for the first time since its inception. She was the Community Engagement producer for the short film OMOS, a 2022 project that explored the hidden black history of Stirling Castle which toured across the UK in Berlin and Brazil. Running workshops on movement and creative writing for young people at Dunoon Grammar School, Dunoon Burgh Hall, and the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. She is currently working with Glasgow Film Festival to develop the Black Filmmakers’ Community Network (BFCM) set to launch in 2025 after two years of developing the Black Filmmakers’ Luncheon in partnership with Glasgow Film and Africa In Motion (AiM) Festival, now solely a Glasgow Film partnership.
Creative Practice: Performance Art and Artists’ Moving Image
She performed her first piece The Artist is Mourning Part One as part of a live performance attached to OMOS Shades: A Queer Cabaret at the MacRobert Arts Centre in Stirling and the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in 2023.
Her debut moving image multimedia work The Artist Is Mourning: Part One exploring themes of grief, loss, burial, and ritual in the digital age combining found footage with spoken word showed at Embassy Gallery in 2022 as part of Biscuit Tin 2022 Artists’ Moving Image Festival. This audio for this piece was a collaboration with Edinburgh based musician Edwin Mclachlan.
She was featured in the Making It: Women In Film podcast series Episode #70 Our Lives Shaped By Film With Producer Briana Pegado in February 2023.
Modelling
Briana is currently represented by Diversecity Models in Berlin. She walked in Melisa Minca’s Berlin Fashion Week (BFW) 2025 Show (R)evolution Irresistible. She hand modelled for Ellen Catherine’s 2025 Collection creative direction by Cat Ellen and photography by Ellie Morag Photography. She has hand modelled for AKT London campaigns. She previously hand modelled for Reek Perfume’s 2019 campaign launch. She has worked as an extra for commercial advertisement campaigns for the Royal Bank of Scotland’s Visa Women’s World Cup and wider Royal Bank of Scotland campaigns for Crew Scotland.
Intersectional Feminist Consultancy and Anti-Oppression Work
She worked as a consultant and member of The Collective Scotland from 2021-2023, a feminist social policy and research collective that specialises in consultation, policy reviews, and training. The Collective Scotland was formed in 2020 as a research consultancy centring intersectional and feminist analysis, co-production, and participation while challenging systemic inequality. She has also delivered training on Intersectionality in Practice and Power, Participation, and Lived Experience in collaboration with colleagues at The Collective.
Governance and Anti-Racism Consultancy
She is a governance and anti-racism specialist conducting anti-racism training audits, stakeholder reviews, grievance support, anti-racist recruitment, and training to organisations who has worked with the Scottish Policy and Research Exchange (SPRE), the Universities Policy Exchange Network (UPEN), Africa in Motion Film Festival (AiM), Be United, Glasgow Museums, Glasgow International Festival, Glasgow Life, Stellar Quines Theatre Company, Rape Crisis Scotland, The Common Guild, Craft Scotland, the Scottish Music Industry Association (SMIA), and Kinfolk Network. She provided specialist executive and anti-oppression coaching to organisations like the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC). She provides intersectional equity workshops for organisations working to take an anti-oppression approach to their work.
She is currently designing an anti-racist induction training programme for the Rape Crisis Network after delivering training, anti-racism reviews, and intersectionality reviews for network staff, their Early Prevention Programme in schools across the country, and their Equally Safe in Colleges and Universities First Responder Programme. She also works as a consultant for tialt (there is an alternative) as an intersectional researcher, evaluator, and critical friend for two of Creative Scotland's programmes: HR for Creatives and Create:Inclusion Funding Programme.
Board and Governance Experience
She has served as chair of the board of Edinburgh University Students' Association (2014-2015) and the Young Women's Movement (2020-2022). She has served as Vice Chair of the Young Women's Movement (2018-2020). She has also served on the board of the University of Edinburgh University Court, the University of York's Governing Body University Council (2020-2021), the Edinburgh Students Charities' Appeal ESCA (2014-2016), as a member of Culture Secretary's National Partnership for Culture (2019-2021), Culture Counts, the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Post Covid-19 Futures Commissions - Public Debate and Participation Group and the Edinburgh Colonialism and Slavery Review Group briefly in 2020.
She is currently Chair of the Scottish Government Culture Fair Work Taskforce, appointed by the Cabinet Minister for Culture Mr Angus Robertson to chair a task force to create recommendations for and design a Fair Work Charter for the entire cultural sector and creative industries in Scotland in line with the Scottish Government’s ambition to be a Fair Work Nation by 2030. She is also the Leadership and Equity Faculty for the UK Creative Community Fellowship Programme delivered in partnership with Derby Museums and NAS (USA).
Roles as A Judge in the Cultural Sector
Briana was a judge for the Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award in 2024. She has been a judge for the Creative Edinburgh Awards (2015-2016), the Calouste Gulbenkian UK’s Civic Arts Award (2021), the We Are Here Scotland Creators Fund Award (2021), the Edinburgh Award (2021-2023), the Bruce Millar Graduate Fellowship (2022-2024), Converge Challenge Awards (2025) amongst many other initiatives like the Creative Informatics Connected Innovators Fund. She continues to be a judge for the Write to End Violence Against Women Awards (WEVAW) as a steering group member (2019-present).
Advisory and Artist Business Development Experience
As an advisor to emerging artists and creative practitioners Briana has worked with Glasgow School of Art’s Working Space Creative Network delivering workshops on how to write a funding application and how to write a good pitch (2021-2022), the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s, Glasgow School of Art’s, and Queen Margaret University’s SHIFT programme as a speaker (2023-2025), and the V&A and Design Dundee’s Working Progress programme. She has also run one-off bespoke workshops for the Scottish Artist Union (SAU) and Glasgow Open House Arts Festival (GOHAF) among other organisations to support them on topics ranging from ethical governance to securing funding.
She currently works for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Creative Enterprise Development Office (CEDO) as a Career Advisor supporting students and graduates to consider how to have a sustainable creative career and consider income streams to support their creative practice.
Recent Book
Briana published her first book Make Good Trouble: A Guide to the Energetics of Disruption with Watkins Publishing in April 2024, which was published in French by Le Lotus & L'Elephant (an imprint of Hachette Livre) in early 2025. The book is available on Audible and will be available more widely on all audiobook platforms in July 2025.
Writing Credits
She contributed a chapter to The Modern Craft: Powerful Voices in Witchcraft Ethics edited by Alice Tarbuck and Claire Askew, published by Watkins Publishing in 2021. Her chapter 13 ‘You Cannot Heal Others Until You Heal Your Own Stuff’ led to her book deal for Make Good Trouble.
She has written for Psychologies Magazine, Bella Caledonia, the Common Weal and various academic journals including Big Data & Society on ‘The value of mass-digitised cultural heritage content in creative contexts’.
She continues to employ these methods to discover values-driven solutions to all sorts of innovation challenges, from anti-racism to governance consulting and organisational design. Her background in sustainable development and training as a trauma-informed facilitator enables her to bring a health, wellness, and wellbeing focus to all of her work to support the dynamic development of company culture.
