Simon is Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where he is responsible for the National Collection of Theatre and Performance’s holdings post-1945.
He was responsible for the cataloguing of the Vivien Leigh Archive, David Cregan Archive and Questor’s Theatre Club Archive and managed the Heritage Lottery Funded Peter Brook: Archive to Action! project after the Museum acquired the Peter Brook Collection in 2014. Simon is currently working with the Tommy Cooper Collection, of which a selection of material went go on display in Autumn 2016. Further press coverage of the announcement can be found here: Guardian,Telegraph, BBC, ITV, BBC Radio 4, WhatsOnStage, The Stage,iNews, Chortle.
Simon is responsible for the Theatre & Performance permanent galleries at South Kensington, manages the department’s curators and organises all industry and post-16 higher education group visits and workshops.
He is a member of the academic advisory board for Blackpool Museum Project and Head of Performance on the prestigious RCA / V&A History of Design Masters course.
Below you will find a list of upcoming and recent events and projects that Simon is and was involved with:
2019:
- Display: Carry on Laughing? From Rule Britannia to Brexit Britain (March onwards)
- Display: Comic Iconography (February)
- Rotation and re-display for the Theatre and Performance Galleries, including new interactive (February onwards)
- Exhibition: Ivan Kyncl: Captured (February – July)
2018:
- Lunchtime Lecture: Panto at the London Palladium (December)
- Lunchtime Lecture: Censored!: Stage, Screen, Society at 50 (November)
- Exhibition: Censored!: Stage, Screen, Society at 50 (July 2018 – January 2019)
2017:
- Carry on Curating: Stand Up at the V&A (April)
- Brexit the Stage: What Next for British Theatre and Europe? (April)
- Intersections Conference: Performing References / Referencing Performance (January)
- Celebrating Bowie at 70 (January)
2016
- Pantomime Study Afternoon (December)
- Oh Yes It Is: The Great British Panto – Q&A with Toyah Willcox (December)
- Lunchtime Lecture: 12 Dames of Christmas (December)
- Display: Tommy Cooper: Just Like That! (November)
- You Say You Want A Revolution? The 70s: What’s Not To Love? (October)
- Archiving Amateur Dramatics (September)
- The 60s Explosion: The Decade that Changed the World (July)
- Garuda – Celebrating Ram Gopal (July)
- Musical Theatre Study Day (April)
