Ian Lancaster is a member of North West Surrey Synagogue (NWSS) where he has twice been Chairman as well as serving as Warden, Fundraising Chairman, Rites and Practices Committee Chairman and Green Team member. He has also served as NWSS’s representative on the Board of Deputies and together with his wife Anita, ran Reform Judaism’s L’Chaim adult education course for the community.
He chairs Renaissance Publishing, the charity that publishes Jewish Renaissance magazine and organises Jewish culture tours.
Ian has had a varied career, including being Drama and Dance Officer at East Midlands Arts, then Arts Director at the Gulbenkian Foundation. He became Chairman of the British-American Arts Association following a fellowship from the US State Department to survey the video and holographic arts fields in the USA.
He set up the UK’s first open-access holography studio at Goldsmiths College, where he learnt to make holograms, moving into work in holography and anti-counterfeiting. In 1982 he founded the first successful display hologram producer, Third Dimension Ltd, then moved to New York as the Executive Director of the Museum of Holography. In 1990 he co-founded Reconnaissance International which publishes business newsletters, organises related conferences and also publishes industry and technology reports, all in the field of security printing and combatting counterfeits. He was also a member of the International Organisation for Standards’ committees in this field.
He is MRJ’s nominee to the Board of Governors of Leo Baeck College.