Meet the DD Day team
Delia Derbyshire Day has been in operation since 2011/12, a registered charitable organisation from December 2015. Most who work for DD Day, in a voluntary or paid capacity, are temporary due to the project based nature of our work thus far. We have worked with around 50 creative/heritage professionals and volunteers, so too many to feature here! Here’s our core team so far…
David Butler – chair of trustees
David Butler is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Film Studies at the University of Manchester. He has a particular interest in the role of sound and music in drama and teaches courses on audio feature-making, the history of film music and the fantastic on screen with a love of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop since childhood. David helped to bring the archive of Delia Derbyshire to Manchester in 2007 and, as one of its curators and a founder member of DD Day, he advises DD Day projects and artists on the archive’s contents and Delia’s wider life and work.
Jenna Ashton – treasurer
Dr Jenna C. Ashton is a Lecturer in Heritage Studies and an arts-practice researcher at University of Manchester, working on community heritage, ecologies, place, and social and environmental justice. She has a background in artmaking, exhibition curation, creative producing, and arts-education. She has been a trustee with DD Day since 2015 and contributes ideas and expertise in artists’ archives and feminist archival methods.
Mark Ayres – trustee
Mark Ayres is a composer, arranger, sound designer, mixer and mastering engineer. With a lifelong interest in film, music, and electronics, Mark wrote incidental music for Doctor Who in the 1980s and more recently wrote the music for, sound-designed and mixed the reconstructed ‘lost’ Tom Baker adventure, “Shada”, and a celebratory feature length version of the original 1963 “Daleks” serial transmitted on BBC4 for the 60th anniversary of the show. Mark was involved in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s final days and went on to become their archivist. A personal friend of Delia Derbyshire, he was entrusted with her personal archive after her death in 2001.
Sashwati Mira Sengupta – trustee
Sashwati Mira Sengupta is a creative producer, musician and ethnomusicologist. Her work is particularly focused on supporting Global Majority musicians, and strengthening the local, national and international arts ecology. One of her long term objectives throughout her work is ensuring accessibility for artists, participants and audiences from all backgrounds. As a musician she dabbles in various instruments like piano, synths, accordion, sitar and the theremin. She is also fascinated by collecting and experimenting with sound, methods of fieldwork, sound walks & soundscapes and grassroots activism in music.
Maya De Mello – trustee
Maya De Mello is a data analyst for Manchester City Council, working in education and training for young people. She has a background in drum tuition and sound engineering with a passion for engaging young people through music education. Maya joined us as a trustee in 2024 and wants to contribute ideas towards music education.
Caro C – instigator, project manager
Caro is primarily an electronic music artist – a composer, producer and performer since the late 1990’s. She’s also a teacher, podcast producer and creates music for theatre, dance, TV/film, the NHS and more. Caro arrived in Manchester, England, at around the same time that Delia’s archive did and had a strong suspicion that this heritage could be a rich source of inspiration and education. And so DD Day was born thanks to co-founders Ailis Ni Riain and Naomi Kashiwagi. Caro is passionate about unlocking creativity, the representation and recognition of women in electronic music (past, present and future) and overcoming barriers, for which she sees Delia a great role model.
If you’d like to get involved…
Do join our mailing list if you’d like to get involved with DD Day. You will then be the first to hear about any open call opportunities we can offer as an artist, trustee, volunteer or creative/heritage professional.