David Drake

David Drake has 35 years experience in the visual arts and media sector, since 2009 as Director of Ffotogallery, the national agency for photography and lens-based media in Wales, and founder Director of the biennial Diffusion: Cardiff International Festival of Photography, which has completed four editions.

As Director, he has curated and produced 200+ solo and group exhibitions and 20 publications featuring artists from five continents.

Ffotogallery has been the lead agency for two pan-European cooperation projects, European Prospects and A Woman’s Work. He was Project Director for Wales’ pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2015. In 2017/18, Ffotogallery collaborated with the Nazar Foundation on a project called Dreamtigers, as part of the UK-India programme. David is Curator of The Place I Call Home, the UK-Gulf photography project commissioned by the British Council and touring seven countries in 2019/20.

His varied career has included extensive curatorial, publishing, arts management and media production experience for organisations as diverse as Watershed, Arts Council England, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Public Art Online, FIVE magazine and Pimlico Arts and Media. During the 1980s he established and ran for ten years a groundbreaking media centre in London delivering industry standard photographic, video and graphic design training programmes. More recently he was curator and producer of Electric Pavilion, a three year online project showcasing international artists’ work linked to the city of Bristol.