Alison Chitty OBE

(Elected 2010)

Alison Chitty OBE is an award-winning production, set and costume designer who has worked with some of the biggest names in theatre, including Mike Leigh, Francesca Zambello and Sir Peter Hall.

She was resident designer at the National Theatre for eight years, and is now the director of the Motley Theatre Design School in Drury Lane, London, the only independent postgraduate school of theatre design in the world.

Alison studied at Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design, and was subsequently resident at the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent. She has designed for theatres and opera houses all over the world, including the English National Opera, Royal Opera House and Santa Fe Opera, and has twice won the Olivier Award for Best Costume Design, in both cases for productions at the Royal National Theatre; first in 2001 for Remembrance of Things Past at the Royal National Theatre and again in 2007 for The Voysey Inheritance.

In 2008 she won both the Young Vic Award, which is presented annually to a theatre professional who through their life’s work has inspired a younger generation of theatre people, and the Misha Black Award for distinguished services to design education.