About

I like to help people to make a ruckus and make positive change happen.  In November 2020 I became co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust as a job share with the highly talented Sara Wajid.

Before this role I was Head of Transformation for the Culture & Creative Industries Service at Bristol City Council.

You can introduce yourself by emailing me about work zak.mensah@birminghammuseums.org.uk  or my personal email zakmensah@hey.com

In my lifetime:

  • 1983: Born in Bristol, England
  • 1999: Started to use the internet – the first website I recall visiting was a WWF wrestling site
  • 2001: Moved to Coventry and started to tinker on the web make digital things
  • 2002: Started to to odd bits of freelance and voluntary work for more digital things
  • 2003: Lived in Wolverhampton to become the IT guy at a secondary School
  • 2005: Graduated from Coventry University and lived briefly in Nottingham
  • 2006 to 2008: Moved to Leicester to work at the University of Leicester to teach staff how to use technology in education – secondlife was a thing there but I swear it wasn’t me!
  • 2008: Moved back to Bristol to work at the University of Bristol in the R&D department for a national service called Jisc Digital Media
  • 2013: Got a job for Bristol City Council’s Museum service as the digital guy
  • 2014: Got promoted to Head of Digital
  • 2015: Promoted to Head of Transformation
  • 2018 -Chair for the Association for Cultural Enterprises  South West England
  • 2019: Became Trustee for the Association for Cultural Enterprises
  • 2020: Got the job as co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust
  • 2021: Became an honorary fellow of the University of Leicester and trustee for Culture24

I think the cultural and creative industries sectors have a key role in improving citizens’ lives both through collections but also collaborative engagement. To be effective we must act as a cultural business which means focusing on real citizens’ needs by creating and running great services that connect them with culture.

The work on this site is licensed as follows – This work by Zak Mensah is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What I’m working on now

Find out on my now page.

Speaking events

I learn a lot during public speaking engagements and try to present at least a handful of times every year. You can find out more on the speaking page Full list of speaking engagements.

Professional Writing

I regularly get asked for biographies so below are several you can use and amend as you see fit:

100 Words

Zak Mensah is co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust. I’m excited about helping our  service make a ruckus by focusing on the needs of our 1 Million+ visitors. I’m focusing on helping us to become a cultural business and embedding digital and emerging practice throughout the service. You can follow me on twitter at @zakmensah
How can I help?

or

Zak Mensah is co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust. I’m excited about helping our  person service to make a ruckus by focusing on the needs of our 1 Million+ visitors.
I’m encouraging us to become ‘digital by default’.
My mission is to ensure our people, skills and services are adaptable to the rapidly changing landscape as a cultural business. We’re experimenting with different ways of doing things including business models, partnerships, KPIs in the arts, and sharing as much as possible publicly.

My background is in staff development and digital and I’ve been on the web since the late 90s and have watched the web permeate every corner of our lives. You can follow me on twitter at @zakmensah

Before coming to the arts sector in 2013, I helped small businesses, charities, Jisc, Universities and the Heritage Lottery Fund to ‘do’ digital well.

I want to make a ruckus.