Project Leaders & Founders – Science
The project has been founded by, and will be led by, two Cambridge physicists, Professor Val Gibson and Dr Harry Cliff, who have been exploring the potential and permissions for the Old Cavendish Experience for a decade.
Image: Val Gibson & Harry Cliff
Professor Val Gibson OBE FInstP
Val is one of the UK’s leading physicists. She is a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge and was Head of the High Energy Physics Research Group in the Cavendish. She works on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN with special interest in ‘Why our universe is made of matter’? and new types of gravitational wave detectors. Val was awarded an OBE in The Queen’s 2021 New Year’s Honours List “For services to Science, Women in Science and to Public Engagement.” She enjoys science communication and is Patron of the Gravity Fields Festival held in honour of Sir Isaac Newton.
Dr Harry Cliff, Particle Physicist and Author
Harry is a particle physicist at the University of Cambridge working on the LHCb experiment at CERN near Geneva. He shares his love of physics with the public through writing, speaking engagements and curating exhibitions. From 2012 to 2018 he held a joint post between Cambridge and the Science Museum in London, where he curated two major exhibitions: Collider (2013) and The Sun (2018) and was the Science Programmer on the Gravity Fields Science and Arts Festival. He was awarded the Lise Meitner Medal for public engagement by the Institute of Physics in 2023.
Project Leaders – Creative & Heritage – Rosa Productions
Between 2012 and 2018 Creative Producers Jeremy James and Rosemary Richards (Rosa Productions) worked closely with Val and Harry on the arts and science Gravity Fields Festival, which celebrated the life of Sir Isaac Newton. They are experts in presentation of theatre, heritage, arts, digital, media and festival experiences.
Image: Newton’s Cradle at Gravity Fields, Rosa Productions
Rosemary Richards, Festival Director, Creative and Digital Producer
Rosemary is Director of Rosa Productions and Festival Director of Bloomsbury Festival in London which takes place each October in the heart of London, involving numerous partners including University of London, UCL, Moorfields Eye Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital. She is joint lead on the national arts and environmental coastal project Beach of Dreams which features 8 new arts commissions around the UK in a large-scale public participatory events and digital project exploring coastal change supported by Arts Council England and Historic England.
Rosemary is also Chair of Shademakers UK, a leading international arts and carnival organisation based on the Isle of Wight, and is supporting their £2.5 million capital development project Department, Ryde, a cultural centre for the community funded by the Cultural Development Fund, Arts Council England, Historic England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Previously she worked for the BBC as Editor of Video Nation and Editor, BBC Interactive and Outreach, and she is also a film-maker with awards for TV documentary and programme making. For the BBC she led national projects in film-making and participatory media production both while based at the BBC and through Rosa Productions, and has been commissioned to be part of major BBC series and landmark events, such as the coverage of the 100th anniversary of WW1 and the Britain in a Day BBC2 feature film, involving individuals and communities across the UK and beyond.
She now produces large scale arts, media, heritage projects, celebratory and commemorative events across the UK including, including from 2011 to 2018 Gravity Fields Festival, a science and contemporary arts biennial festival exploring the science and life of Sir Isaac Newton.
Jeremy James, Creative Producer and Theatre Director
Jeremy is a theatre and outdoor events artistic director and creative producer. He is a regular member of the Rosa Productions team and directs theatre, outdoor arts, heritage, community and education projects. With Rosa Productions he has produced large scale outdoor spectacle events at the Gravity Fields Festival from 2012 – 2018, commissioning outdoor artists from across the UK and Europe to tell the story of Sir Isaac Newton’s connection to south Lincolnshire and Cambridge.
For Rosa Productions Jeremy has also been artistic director of Green Fields Beyond, an outdoor theatrical and filmed event commissioned by BBC North, telling the story of the introduction of the tank in WW1, the women left behind to work in the factories and the men who went to war. Other outdoor productions include the Magna Carta related Steep Hill Stories and the award-winning BBC commissioned LipDub Lincoln – a one take choreographed film involving 800 participants. As a freelance artistic director Jeremy has worked on many high profile outdoor events such as the visit of the giant puppet Amal in Oxford (commissioned by the Story Museum Oxford) and is now working on a range of freelance projects including the development of outdoor events and levelling up place-making projects in Somerset. He has a particular specialism with young people and diverse communities. Until March 2024 he was CEO/Artistic Director of Tramshed Woolwich for 20 years (formerly Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre).
Images: Colossus, Giant of Science, Gravity Fields Festival; Newton and the Planets, Gravity Fields Festival