William Wells runs one of the most innovative art spaces in the Middle East region: The Townhouse Gallery in Cairo combines a highly-regarded contemporary art gallery with an extensive outreach program. The over-arching mission is to make the arts accessible to everyone without compromising creative practise. Creativity, development and education have been a constant threads running through Wells’ career.

A student of Ancient History and Fine Arts in London, Wells went on to obtain a post graduate degree in fine arts and teaching. On graduating, he took over an abandoned luggage factory in London and transformed it into a space with twenty-five studios and a gallery. He was simultaneously working with the British Arts Council, travelling with exhibitions, holding workshops and giving lectures. In the mid 1980s Wells moved to Egypt, a place he’d first visited during his university years.

During the 1990s Wells played a crucial role in nurturing and supporting creativity in Egypt – he co-founded a successful design studio, lived in and documented life in a Bedouin village and assisted several development agencies in the western desert region. At the end of the decade he returned to Cairo to head up the British secondary school in Heliopolis and assisted in setting up an art department in the Gulf that opened in 1998.

That same year, Wells found a space in the downtown area of Cairo where he opened his own independent gallery, The Townhouse. The gallery aims to reflect the city’s cultural scene, focusing on contemporary art by emerging local and regional artists. Alongside exhibitions the space supports film screenings, music shows, theatre productions, seminars and offers studios to local and foreign artists to work on projects. With a strong sense of social commitment it runs and hosts workshops for underprivileged communities such as refugees, children with disabilities and working children.

Over the past decade of operations, Wells has and is currently involved in curating several high-profile projects with museums and galleries world wide, attended several international art fairs as a sponsored gallery and has succeeded in nurturing and promoting local and regional networks to create a sustainable independent cultural movement.