Briana Pegado is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and is an award-winning social entrepreneur, activist, and author with a decade's experience as a senior manager in the creative industries in Scotland.
She is the cofounder of the Black Filmmakers Community Network (BFCN) in partnership with Glasgow Film Festival. She is the Filmhub Scotland and British Film Institute (BFI) Film Audience Network (FAN) EDI Champion.
She is a critical friend of NEUK Collective’s Leadership and Creative Development Programme for Neurodivergent Artists Spectra, funded by Creative Scotland.
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.
Senior 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 was Creative Director of Fringe of Colour Films in 2021. 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.
Festivals Founded by Briana Pegado
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 - Creative Director and Community Engagement Producer
She is currently the Cofounder of the Black Filmmakers Community Network (BFCN) in partnership with Glasgow Film Festival. She is the Filmhub Scotland and BFI Film Audience Network (FAN) EDI Champion with her two cofounders of BFCN - Liz Chege and Balenji Mwiche. 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.
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 Cabaretat 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 Oneexploring 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.
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.
The Collective Scotland - Intersectional Feminist Consultancy
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.
From 2024-2025, she was Chair of the Scottish Government’s Independent 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 Edinburgh Award (2021-2023), the Bruce Millar Graduate Fellowship (2022-2024), Converge Challenge Awards (2025-2026), and the Innovation Seed Fund Grant at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Innovation Studio (2026) amongst many other initiatives like many strands of Creative Informatics Programme funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). 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
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.
In August 2025, Briana received her Reiki Attunement I from Courtney Ama as part of the Dr Mikao Usui lineage. She is training for Jessica Maguire’s Nervous Vagus Nerve Programme Certification, which is a certification in understanding the Vagus Nerve and Nervous System Regulation. In 2022, she trained as a theta energy healer completing her foundation courses with Jennifer Main.
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.
