THE TEAM

Ngaire Blankenberg founded Creative Repair Studios in 2024.

Prior to this, she was the Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and a globally renowned ‘museum doctor’. Named one of the most influential people in the art world in 2023 (Observer), she has advised more than 55 museums around the globe, is a TEDX speaker, author of 2 books and a regular speaker, lecturer and commentator on museums and transformation. 

Gilbert Balinda’s history is one that spans the vastly divergent cultural influences of East Africa and Europe, with the 1994 Rwandan genocide serving as the catalytic bridge between his childhood in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda, and his family’s eventual asylum in Belgium. He embarked on his professional career in South Africa, where he worked with celebrated architectural firm Mashabane Rose Associates until 2015 before co-founding Johannesburg-based interior-architectural studio Laterale with fellow St-Luc graduate Timothy Vandenbroeke. From 2017 onwards, he served as heritage specialist and head of architectural design on such lauded South African cultural and civic projects as Freedom Park in Tshwane (World Architectural Festival Winner with MRA), the Taung World Heritage Centre, the Nelson Mandela Capture Site and Mandela Exhibition at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.

Balinda is a regular visiting lecturer and critic at the University of Witwatersrand, the University of Johannesburg and the University of Pretoria. 

Vusi Mchunu is an author, historian, poet and cultural heritage practitioner. He holds a Master of Arts degree from the Free University of Berlin, is former cultural and heritage director for Military Veterans and is a pioneer of transformational cultural heritage in South Africa through activations including museums, exhibitions, public programming, tourism and governance.

Bronwyn Berry is an Emmy nominated, Peabody award-winning producer and director based in NYC. She produced feature documentary Love, Gilda (CNN Films/Magnolia), docu-series Durban Beach Rescue (Travel Channel), Wonderama (Discovery Family), Talk to Me (Sesame Workshop) and Sesame Street South Africa. Her narrative series include Gazlam, The Wild and Scandal. She is in post production on an untitled music documentary and a make-over series for the BBC. She is chair of the PGA East Non-Fiction & Documentary Committee and chair of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Film Committee .

Sula works at the intersection of restorative justice and reconciliation. Prior to the Institute for Creative Repair she was a project manager at Why me? - a UK-based NGO that delivers and promotes Restorative Justice. In this capacity she managed Project Articulate, a project aiming to widen access to Restorative Justice for people who speak English as an additional language, as well as the Youth Justice Project which aimed to widen access to restorative services for young people from minoritized backgrounds. Sula is a trained restorative facilitator who has worked with young people in schools delivering “conflict clinics'' aimed at addressing conflict between students, and upskilling them to address conflict in their own contexts.