Artistic Director and Producer of Hip Festival, Brenda Edwards is an Independent Artist/Teacher, Consultant and Producer. Her Artistic professional career spans over 19 years as a professional dancer and choreographer. She has been nominated twice for The Cosmopolitan Woman of the Year and for her outstanding achievement in Dance.

Brenda Edwards worked as an Associate Producer through the Arts Council of England’s Artistic Leadership Programme at Nottingham Playhouse under the directorship of Ruth McKenzie and later became the Producer for African/Caribbean Arts before going on to develop Hip. In recent times she has been the consultant on Innervision in Swindon, and the Assistant Creative Producer of Cultureshock, the Commonwealth Games 2002 Arts Programme for the North West.

Edwards has a diverse background in the arts and her qualities as an active performer and producer helps to maximise her vision of the arts. She has worked with English National Ballet as a soloist under the Artistic Directorship of Peter Schaufuss where she became one of a few women to dance the leading role in Maurice Bejart’s Bolero and historically became the first black woman to work in a British Ballet Company. She has also been a member of London Contemporary Dance Theatre under the directorship of Robert Cohan and the Martha Graham Dance Company, New York. She often work’s in France with Hungarian Born dancer Eszter Salamon where she is able to explore her artistic craft.

She is an accomplished dance teacher in many dance discipline as well as a choreographer and Arts Consultant. Brenda has performed in many videos and films, and made her West End debut in John Caird’s Children of Eden, choreographed by Matthew Bourne.

She is a recent Graduate in Dance Theory at the De Montfort University in Leicester. As well as Hip she is currently working with several dancers in Derby, artistically producing a regional dance platform and initiative for dancers, she divides her time by performing and teaching in Europe and extending her artistic vision and qualities in Britain.

Brenda was awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours list 2005, for services to dance.