State of the Arts Conference

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Journalist, The Independent

Journalist, The Independent

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown came to the UK in 1972 from Uganda after being awarded an exceptional first-class degree in English from Makerere University. She went to Oxford as a postgraduate student and was awarded an M.Phil in literature in 1975. She is a journalist who has written for the Guardian, the New York Times, Time, Newsweek and the Daily Mail and is now a regular columnist on The Independent. From 1996 to 2001 she was a research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, which published True Colours on the role of government on racial attitudes. Yasmin has authored books including Who Do We Think We Are?, examining the state of the British nation, and After Multiculturalism, which looks at the globalised future. She advises various key institutions on race matters and works as a diversity adviser to global companies and organisations. She is also a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company and is on the board of the innovative arts organisation Metal. In 2001 she was appointed an MBE for services to journalism in the New Year honours list. She returned it in 2003 as a protest against the war in Iraq.

Candace Allen

Author, political and cultural commentator

A native of New England, Candace Allen became the first African-American female member of the Directors Guild of America after graduating from Harvard and attending the New York University School of Film and Television. Moving to Los Angeles, she worked as an assistant director on feature and television films and later as a screenwriter. During her time in Los Angeles, Candace was a founding member and leader of Reel Black Women, a professional organisation for African-American women in film. Abandoning the film world for new climes, in 2004 she published her first novel, Valaida, based on the life of entertainer and jazz trumpeter Valaida Snow. Consequent to her campaign-long commitment to the election of Barack Obama, she became a newspaper and broadcast commentator on American politics, race and culture. A second book, Soul Music: Meditations on Music and Cultural Identity, will be published by Gibson Square Books in autumn 2011. She has resided in London since 1994.

Peter Bazalgette

Media consultant and digital media investor

Peter Bazalgette is chairman of MirriAd, and a non-executive director of MyVideoRights, Nutopia, YouGov and DCMS. He advises two of Sony’s UK television divisions and is also a member of BBH’s advisory board. Between the years of 2004 and 2007 he worked as chief creative officer of Endemol. He brought Big Brother to the UK, and has personally devised several internationally successful TV formats, such as Ready Steady Cook, Changing Rooms and Ground Force. He is also a former board member of Channel 4, and his book about the business of TV formats, Billion Dollar Game, was published in 2005. Peter also serves as deputy chairman of the English National Opera, president of the Royal Television Society and is a trustee of Debate Mate.

Gillian Beasley

Chief Executive, Peterborough Council

Gillian Beasley commenced her career in local government in 1983 as a trainee solicitor for Leeds City Council, having first worked in the private sector. An expert in children’s law, in the early 1990s she worked for a number of government departments, supplying guidance for the Children Act 1989. She also worked for national bodies in the health and social care arena and lectured nationally for the Law Society on children’s law. Following that, she worked as a lawyer in local authorities including Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council and Cambridgeshire County Council, leaving in 1997 to become director of law and administration for Peterborough City Council. Chief executive of Peterborough City Council for eight years, she leads a council that has received national awards for financial management, efficiency and waste management. Gillian is currently chair of UNITAS, helping young people access and participate in mainstream education and training through the arts. She received an OBE in the Queen’s 2009 New Year honours list for services to local government, and received an honorary doctorate of business administration for services to local government the same year. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Deborah Bull

Creative Director, Royal Opera House

Deborah Bull danced with The Royal Ballet for 20 years before taking up a new position at the Royal Opera House, specifically focused on developing new art, new artists and new audiences. Her areas of responsibility include audience engagement strategies, planning for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Main Stage Summer Season programming, Big Screen programming, ROH On the Road, ROH Collections as well as ROH2, the Royal Opera House’s contemporary producing arm. She has presented on television and radio, appearing in the award-winning BBC series The Dancer’s Body, and has published three books: The Vitality Plan, Dancing Away and Faber’s Guide to Classical Ballets. Deborah has received honorary doctorates from Derby, Sheffield, Kent and the Open University and was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1999. She has served on the board of Arts Council England and as a governor of the BBC.

Clare Cooper

Co-Founder and Co-Director, Mission Models Money

Clare Cooper’s career in arts management started at the British Council in 1981. Between 1991 and 2001, she specialised in partnership development and fundraising with a diverse portfolio. Her largest client in this time was Laban, where she led the first five years of the development of their award-winning Hertzog & de Meuron building. In 2001 she joined Arts & Business, taking the role of director of development before becoming their first director of policy and communications. In partnership with Roanne Dods of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, she initiated the Mission Models Money (www.missionmodelsmoney.org.uk) programme, leaving in 2005 to focus full time on its independent development. Over the last 15 years, she has served as a trustee on the boards of a number of arts organisations and higher education institutions. She now focuses her volunteering in broader community settings, primarily around the role of cultural and creative practice in building awareness of and responses to resource scarcity and climate change. She was born and brought up in East Africa and currently lives and works between Scotland and London.

Caoimhín Corrigan

Cultural Broker, ILEX Derry~Londonderry

Caoimhín Corrigan is the cultural broker with ILEX, the urban regeneration company for Derry~Londonderry, who are one of the main partners leading 2013 UK City of Culture. The regeneration company was instrumental in the development of the bid and in articulating how the City of Culture designation would help Derry~Londonderry to deliver a range of step changes within the regeneration of the city. Prior to taking up the post with ILEX, Caoimhín worked across a range of artforms in the Republic of Ireland. From 2003 to 2009, he was chair of the Irish Association for Youth Drama. He has led the development of two significant new arts venues, VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art in Carlow, which is the largest new centre to be built in Ireland in recent years, and The Dock in Leitrim, a multi-disciplinary centre where he was the founding director/curator from 2005. In 2009, he was appointed to work on behalf of the Irish Government as Commissioner and Curator for Ireland’s representation at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, the Venice Biennale.

Alan Davey

Chief Executive, Arts Council England

Alan Davey was appointed chief executive of Arts Council England in November 2007. He was director for culture at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport from 2003 until December 2006. In an earlier stint at the Department of National Heritage, he was responsible for designing the National Lottery. Alan has also worked at the Department of Health, where he led the modernising division and held the post of secretary to the Royal Commission on Long Term Care. He has been a visiting Fulbright/Helen Hamlyn Scholar at the University of Maryland and has degrees from the universities of Birmingham, Oxford and London.

Gloria De Piero MP

Shadow Minister for Culture

Gloria De Piero was elected to serve Ashfield at the 2010 general election. Before being elected as an MP aged 37, Gloria was GMTV’s political editor. She has previously worked as a journalist on the BBC’s Politics Show. Gloria graduated from the University of Westminster with a first class honours degree in social sciences and completed an MSc at the University of London. In October 2010, Gloria was appointed to a junior role in the shadow Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport team.

Andrew Dixon

Director, Creative Scotland

Andrew Dixon started his career as administrator and youth projects director of the Major Road Theatre Company. After five years as an arts officer in local government, he moved to Northern Arts, where he progressed to become its chief executive and worked to raise the profile of the region through advocating for, and finding partnership funding for large projects such as the Baltic, The Angel of the North and The Sage Gateshead. He was also a member of the national executive board of Arts Council England for three years, before taking up the chief executive role at NewcastleGateshead Initiative, where he ran a public-private sector partnership with 176 members, promoting cultural festivals and events and managing tourism and conference marketing for the ‘twin cities’. He led the bid to host the World Summit on Arts and Culture in NewcastleGateshead in 2006 and was programme director for the summit, attracting delegates from 70 countries to the North East. Andrew was voted Alternative Businessman of the Year in 2005 for his public sector work in North East England, and in 2008 received an honorary doctorate from Northumbria University.

Ekow Eshun

Writer and broadcaster

A writer and broadcaster of national repute, Ekow Eshun is chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group for Trafalgar Square and sits on the board of Arts Council England. From 2005 to 2010, he was artistic director and, more latterly, executive director of the ICA, overseeing a rise in audience numbers of 38 per cent during that period. A leading voice on the arts, he is a regular contributor to BBC 2’s The Review Show and Radio 4’s Saturday Review, among other programmes. He is a broadcaster of award-winning documentaries for BBC2, Channel 4 and BBC4 and a contributor to publications including the Financial Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman. His first book, Black Gold of the Sun, was nominated for the Orwell Prize for political writing in 2006.

Alex Farquharson

Director, Nottingham Contemporary

Alex Farquharson has been director of Nottingham Contemporary since 2007. Since opening its doors in November 2009, the centre has welcomed 325,000 visitors and acquired an international reputation for the quality of its exhibitions of contemporary art. Previously, Alex was an independent curator. He has written on contemporary art and other subjects for a range of books and art magazines, and taught curating on the Curating Contemporary Art MA at the Royal College of Arts from 2001 to 2007.

Andy Field

Co-Director, Forest Fringe

Andy Field is co-director of Forest Fringe, an artist-led organisation making space for risk and experimentation at the Edinburgh Festival and beyond. Forest Fringe’s innovative community-led approach to supporting and collaborating with artists has made it home to some of the country’s most exciting and radical new performance work. It has hosted works-in-progress, one-on-one encounters, audio encounters, installations, durational performances, workshops, playful experience and much more besides. Andy is also an artist in his own right; his unusual interactive encounters have been seen at the Battersea Arts Centre, the Southbank Centre and the ICA amongst others. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian’s theatre blog and writes a regular column on experimental theatre in The Stage.

Dame Liz Forgan

Chair, Arts Council England

Following an early career in newspaper journalism, Liz Forgan moved to television – becoming director of programmes at the new Channel 4. In 1993, she joined the BBC as managing director of BBC Radio, where she remained until 1996. In April 2001, she joined the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Heritage Lottery Fund as chair, standing down at the end of her term in October 2008. She is a trustee of the British Museum, a patron of the St Giles Trust, a vice- patron and former chair of the Churches Conservation Trust and also former trustee of the Phoenix Trust. She is also chair of the Scott Trust, the non-profit organisation which owns the Guardian Media Group. In 2006, Liz was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire for services to broadcasting and heritage. She was appointed chair of Arts Council England in February 2009.

Don Foster MP

Co-chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Policy Committee on Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport

Don Foster has been the Member of Parliament representing Bath for 18 years. An experienced and well-respected MP, he is also currently co-chair of the Liberal Democrat back bench committee for Culture, Media and Sport. Born in Preston, Lancashire, and educated at the Lancaster Royal Grammar School, Don studied at Keele University where he was awarded a bachelor of science degree in physics and psychology in 1969. He became a science teacher at the Sevenoaks School in Kent, before becoming a science project director with the Avon Education Authority and a lecturer in education at the University of Bristol in 1980. Don became the MP for Bath after he was elected at the 1992 general election, when he famously beat then-chairman of the Conservative Party, Chris Patten. In parliament Don became a spokesman on education under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown in 1992, in which capacity he remained until 1999. He has authored several publications including From the Three Rs to the Three Cs: A Personal View of Education in 2003.

Shreela Ghosh

Director, Free Word Centre

Shreela Ghosh is the first director of Free Word, the UK’s first centre for literature, literacy and free expression, which launched in September 2009. Shreela began her working life as a performer, becoming the director of Aditi, a national dance, agency before joining Arts Council England in 1994. Five years later, she was appointed head of arts at London Borough of Tower Hamlets before moving to the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, one of the largest independent funders in the UK, becoming its first programme director for arts and heritage. In 2006, Shreela launched the Louise T Blouin Institute with an exhibition by James Turrell, which led to an invitation from Iniva to help launch Rivington Place, a visual arts centre designed by David Adjaye. Shreela has an MA in European cultural policy and a diploma in history of art. She has served on a committee for the National Endowment of Science Technology & Arts (NESTA) and was a member of the Greater London Authority’s Mayor’s Commission on African and Asian heritage. She is a member of the Heritage Lottery Fund (London Committee) and sits on the board of the European Cultural Foundation.

Emma Gladstone

Producer, Sadler’s Wells

As artistic programmer and producer at Sadler’s Wells, Emma Gladstone has been instrumental in helping the organisation’s transition from a receiving house to one that commissions and produces new dance work. Her focus includes programming experimental work in the Lilian Baylis Studio and commissioning and producing off-site performances at the Tate Modern, Trafalgar Square, and Latitude Festival. She directs the Jerwood Studio at Sadler’s Wells research programme, test driving new ideas and collaborations with a variety of artists for the main stage, with six shows in the current season benefitting from this programme. Prior to working at Sadler’s Wells, Emma performed, getting her Equity card at 17 with Arlene Phillips, before co-founding Adventures in Motion Pictures and subsequently dancing with The Cholmondeleys. She was associate director at The Place Theatre between 1997 and 2003, leaving to co-direct production company Crying Out Loud, and working freelance for organisations including Dance Umbrella, the South Bank Centre, and Arts Council England. She has been an advisor for numerous arts bodies, and lectured internationally for Visiting Arts and the British Council. She is a trustee for Candoco, the integrated dance company working with disabled and non-disabled dancers.

Peter Gregson

Cellist and composer

Born in Edinburgh in 1987, Peter Gregson is a cellist and pioneer of contemporary music. He has performed widely in Europe and the US at venues ranging from The Royal Albert Hall, London to The Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh, from the Twitter Offices in San Francisco to Le Poisson Rouge, New York. He works regularly with cutting edge technologists, most recently including Microsoft Labs, UnitedVisualArtists and the MIT Media Lab. Performance highlights for 2011 include opening the MIT150 FAST Festival in Boston, the Cross-Linx Festival in the Netherlands, SXSW in Austin, Texas, ‘Eclectica’ at LSO St Lukes and a world tour of his new album with The Sandbox Network. Peter Gregson plays a Colin Irving acoustic cello and a custom five-string Eric Jensen electric cello. He is an Apogee Electronics Artist and Native Instruments Artist, the 2010/11 Creative in Residence at The Hospital Club and a Made-By Ambassador. His music is published by Mute Song.

Melanie Howard

Chair and Co-Founder, the Future Foundation

With more than two decades of social forecasting under her belt, Melanie Howard has a long-term research interest in the role of cultural capital in individual self expression and well-being, and how it functions in creating cohesive and dynamic societies. Specific projects have included The Future of Entertainment and The Future of Heritage, as well as content development workshops for a number of the UK’s leading media owners and broadcasters. Last year she ran a social innovation forum with YouGovStone for Camelot, operators of the National Lottery, working with stakeholders to identify creative new engagement strategies for the organisation, and undertook research with integrated communications agency TCA exploring how to market effectively across the generations. In 1996, she co-founded the independent Future Foundation, a global insight consultancy and online trends provider, through which she recently published a report Future of Insight. She is a visiting business fellow in the innovation team at the Royal College of Art, a trustee of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation, and an advisor to Clearlyso.com, a leading social business enterprise hub.

Razia Iqbal

Special Correspondent, BBC

Razia Iqbal is a special correspondent for BBC News, reporting on a variety of foreign and domestic stories for the Six O’Clock News and Ten O’Clock News. She also presents her own books programme, Talking Books, on the News Channel. Between 2003 and 2009, she was the BBC’s television arts correspondent. She has presented on the BBC News Channel on Radio 4, including the PM programme, Woman’s Hour and Front Row, as well as on the World Service and 5LIVE. She has also been a foreign reporter for the BBC in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Baba Israel

Director, Contact Theatre

Baba Israel was raised in New York by parents who were core members of the Living Theatre. As a young artist, he explored spoken word, hip hop, and experimental performance, and lived and worked in Australia, working on major community theatre projects and festivals. He has toured across the US, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia, performing with artists such as Outkast, The Roots, Rahzel, Ron Carter, Afrika Bambaataa, Vernon Reid, and Bill Cosby. Previous directorial work includes the Project 2050 with New World Theatre, Maxwell Golden and Sharpening Sawds. He was co-founder and artistic director of the Playback NYC Theatre Company, which brought theatre to under-represented communities. As an educator he has worked internationally developing projects with a focus on young people. He is the artistic director of the pioneering Contact Theatre in Manchester, and holds an MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard in the United States.

Tabitha Jackson

Commissioning Editor, Arts, Channel 4

Tabitha Jackson is Channel 4’s commissioning editor for arts. Her brief also includes arts on More 4 and any cross platform/transmedia arts projects. After 15 years making films in the UK and the US, Tabitha joined Channel 4 in 2007, becoming editor of More 4 and running the award-winning international documentary strand True Stories. She wants Channel 4 arts to innovate, to provoke, to delight, and to creatively express what it is to be alive today.

Luke Johnson

Chairman, RSA

Luke Johnson is the chair of the RSA. He has served as chairman of Channel 4 Television since 2004 and as principal of Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm, for the last eight years. He is an owner and chairman of Giraffe Restaurants, Patisserie Valerie and Synarbor, the UK’s largest teacher recruitment business, and has also owned companies in dentistry and retailing. Previously, he built up Pizza Express and worked as a stockbroking analyst with Kleinwort Benson. He studied at Oxford University and has written a weekly column on business for eight years, which currently appears in the Financial Times. He served as a governor of the University of the Arts London for six years until 2006.

John Knell

Leading cultural policy strategist

John Knell is an independent consultant who has worked widely across the arts sector, and the author of reports including The Art of Dying (2005), Whose Art Is It Anyway (2006) and The Art of Living (2007). In The Art of Living, John surveyed the challenges and opportunities facing funding practice across the whole sector. In a thorough and stimulating survey of arts and cultural organisations and all four funding communities, this is the first synthesis of all the funding issues the sector faces. It concludes with the proposition of a powerful cultural compact, analogous to the Kyoto agreement.

Ivan Lewis MP

Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

Ivan Lewis has been a Member of Parliament for Bury South since 1997, and was born, raised, and has lived all his life in the constituency. He began his political career in 1990, when he was elected as a local councillor in Sedgley ward, Prestwich. Prior to being elected an MP, Ivan worked in the local voluntary sector for Outreach, Contact Community Group and as chief executive of the Manchester Jewish Federation. Ivan’s work in parliament has included the following appointments: Minister for Education and Skills (2001), Minister for the Treasury (2005), Minister for Care Service in the Department of Health (2006), Minister for International Development (2008), Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (2009).

Ruth Mackenzie

Director, Cultural Olympiad

Ruth Mackenzie joined the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in January 2010, following a spell as an expert adviser on broadcasting and cultural policy for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. She was seconded to the department by the Manchester International Festival, where she had been appointed the first general director in 2006. Ruth has previously worked as artistic director of Chichester Festival Theatre (2002–06), general director at Scottish Opera (1997–99), executive director at Nottingham Playhouse (1990–97) and head of strategic planning at the Southbank Centre (1986–90). Her involvement in theatre dates back to 1980, when she set up the Moving Parts theatre company, and she has also worked on a consultancy basis for the Barbican Centre, the Tate, the BBC, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Young Vic. She was special adviser to two Secretaries of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith and Tessa Jowell between 1999 and 2002, has advised the Vienna Festival as a consultant dramaturg since 2007, and is visiting professor for cultural leadership at the City University. Ruth was awarded an OBE for her services to the theatre in 1995.

Anne McElvoy

Public Policy Editor, the Economist

Anne McElvoy is also a columnist in the Evening Standard and presents the Radio 3 Arts and ideas programme, Night Waves. She graduated from Wadham College, Oxford with a first-class honours degree in German and Philosophy, and also studied at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, specialising in East German literature and effects of censorship. After joining The Times as a graduate trainee in 1988, she became a foreign correspondent, reporting on the fall of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany and the break up of Yugoslavia. In 1992 she became the paper’s bureau chief in Moscow. From 1995, she was Deputy Editor of The Spectator, also working as a columnist on the Daily Telegraph and joined the Standard as executive editor and political columnist in 2002. A regular broadcaster, Anne appears on Newsnight, Question Time and the Moral Maze and makes documentaries for radio 4. Her books on Germany include The Saddled Cow: East Germany’s Life & Legacy (Faber). She was co-author of the best-selling memoirs of the spymaster Markus Wolf, Man Without a Face.

Miranda McKearney

Director, The Reading Agency

Miranda McKearney is founder-director of The Reading Agency, an independent charity with a mission to inspire more people to read more. The agency’s work includes policy, research, advocacy and national programmes, with an emphasis on innovation. Since The Reading Agency came into being in 2002 it has led some powerful national library initiatives, including the Summer Reading Challenge. Miranda is passionate about reading. She has worked as an activist in the field for 20 years, helping to found the three smaller development agencies which were later merged to form The Reading Agency. She has a background in marketing, the arts and literature. She is married to a teacher and spends spare weekends walking on Hardy’s Eggardon Hill in Dorset. Miranda is an honorary member of the Youth Libraries Group. In 2005 she was awarded an OBE for her services to libraries and education.

Kerry Michael

Artistic Director and Chief Executive, Theatre Royal Stratford

Kerry was appointed the artistic director and chief executive of Theatre Royal Stratford East in September 2004 after being the associate director for the past six years. Kerry has vowed to uphold the theatre's commitment to develop new work and to provide a platform for those voices underrepresented in the ever-changing communities of the East End of London.
His debut play as artistic director was The Battle of Green Lanes written by Cosh Omar. Set amongst London's Cypriot community, it provided an early example of Kerry's commitment to those unheard voices. More recent Stratford East directing credits include various new plays including Jamaica House by Paul Sirett, which had a site specific performance on the top floor of a tower block in Stepney, new musicals Make Some Noise and One Dance Will Do, Sammy and Come Dancing by Ray Davies.
Other credits include co-directing the Jonzi D hip hop show Aeroplane Man and an adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. His recent directing credit, The Harder They Come has obtained wide critical acclaim transferring to the Barbican Theatre, West End and Internationally. Most recently he directed the Barbican co-production of the John Adams’ Opera I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw The Sky. He has also has credits at the Edinburgh Festival; the King's Head, the Gate Theatre, a season of new work at Theatro Technis, programming the re-opening season at Greenwich Theatre and a residency at the Contact Theatre in Manchester.
In 2007 the theatre won an Olivier Award for Boy Blue Ent's Pied Piper and in the same year the theatre was also nominated for ‘presenting a powerful season of provocative work that reaches new audiences'. (In 2008 Kerry's production of Cinderella was also nominated for an Olivier). For many years now the theatre has seen its work both transfer and tour nationally and internationally.
In 2008 Kerry lead a consortium partnership to pilot the International Festival for Emerging Artists (IFEA) which saw 48 emerging artists from all over the world come together in East London to collaborate.
In 2009 he launched OPEN STAGE a landmark initiative giving audiences complete power over the theatre’s programme for the first six months of 2012.
He is a board member of Stratford Renaissance Partnership, a public/private partnership regeneration board; a trustee of Discover, which provides creative, play and learning opportunities for children and their carers in Stratford; a member of Equity's International Committee for Artists Freedom and chair of Stratford Rising, a consortium of Arts, Education and Cultural organisations based in the area working within the 2012 agenda.

Jonathan Mills

Director, Edinburgh International Festival

Jonathan Mills took up the post of festival director and chief executive of the Edinburgh International Festival in October 2006. Before this appointment, he held posts including the vice-chancellor’s fellow at the University of Melbourne, director of the Alfred Deakin Lectures and artistic advisor to the new Melbourne Recital Centre and Elisabeth Murdoch Hall. One of Australia’s most experienced festival directors, he has held posts at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Melbourne Federation Festival, the Melbourne Millennium Eve celebrations and the Brisbane Biennial International Music Festival. As a composer he is regularly commissioned in Australia and increasingly in Europe and the UK. Sandakan Threnody, his composition for solo tenor, choir and orchestra, won the Prix Italia in 2005.

Andrew Nairne

Executive Director, Arts, Arts Council England

Andrew Nairne was director of Modern Art Oxford between 2001 and 2008, where he curated exhibitions by established and emerging artists from the UK and around the world. Abolishing the admission charge at the gallery in 2002, Andrew initiated long-term partnerships with schools and the local community and contributed to national debates around the role of the arts in education and society. Previously, he was the first director of Dundee Contemporary Arts, visual arts director of the Scottish Arts Council, and exhibitions director at CCA Glasgow, during which time he supported the rise to international prominence of a new generation of Scottish artists and co-curated the British Art Show 1990, which toured to the Hayward Gallery, London. A fellow of the RSA, Andrew is also former chair of the Visual Arts and Galleries Association and trustee of the Pier Arts Centre, Orkney.

Sandy Nairne

Director, National Portrait Gallery

Sandy Nairne took up the post of director of the National Portrait Gallery in November 2002. He worked as director of programmes at the Tate for eight years, and was also directly responsible for the development of international and digital programmes, the Tate Partnership Scheme and the co-ordination of Tate public programmes as a whole. Previously, he held posts including assistant director at Oxford’s Museum of Modern Art, director of exhibitions at the ICA and director of visual arts for the Arts Council of Great Britain. Sandy has worked as a curator and writer and is well known for his innovative 1987 television series and book State of the Art and co-edited 1996 anthology Thinking about Exhibitions. He has curated and co-curated exhibitions including Objects and Sculpture, British Sculpture in the 20th Century, American Realities and the first retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs. In 1993 he was awarded a senior research fellowship by the J.Paul Getty Trust, and in 2007 was a visiting fellow at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 2005/06 he chaired the National Museum Directors’ Conference working group on cultural diversity. His most recent book is 2006’s The Portrait Now.

Jesse Norman MP

MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire

Jesse Norman was elected as Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire in the last general election. Jesse was educated at Oxford University, and has a Masters and PhD from University College London. He worked for, and later ran an educational project giving away medical and other textbooks in Eastern Europe between the years of 1988-1991. In 1991, he went to work at Barclays, mainly on Eastern Europe and other emerging markets, leaving in 1997 in order to teach and do research in philosophy at UCL and later at Birkbeck College. He has been school governor for an inner city comprehensive and has worked for nearly a decade with the Roundhouse arts centre and urban regeneration project which has so far helped over 12,000 disadvantaged young people. He is a trustee of the Kindle Centre in South Wye in Hereford City, and of the Friends of St Mary’s in Ross-on- Wye. He has acted as a policy adviser to George Osborne MP, then shadow chancellor, and to the shadow work and pensions team, and took time out to advise Boris Johnson on his successful campaign to become Mayor of London.

Tony Nwachukwu

Music Producer

Tony Nwachukwu is a renowned music producer, lecturer and founder of Burntprogress, a music-centric production company that creates innovative opportunities for creative professionals. ‘CDR – ‘The Night of Ideas and Tracks in the Making’ is one such opportunity, grooming some of today’s most forward-thinking artists and producers. To many, Nwachukwu is also known as producer of Attica Blues and project guises NEPA Allstar and The Wach, whose diverse production and remix credits include Macy Gray, The Cinematic Orchestra, Duran Duran and U.N.K.L.E. His lecturing and learning expertise have been utilised by companies and organisations including Red Bull, UEL and Apple.

Julia Peyton-Jones

Director, Serpentine Gallery

Julia Peyton-Jones studied painting at the Royal College of Art, London, and worked as a practising artist in London and a lecturer in fine art at Edinburgh College of Art. She moved to the Hayward Gallery in 1988 as curator in the Exhibitions Department. In 1991, she became director of the Serpentine Gallery, where she has been responsible for both commissioning and showcasing the groundbreaking exhibition, education and public programmes as well as the annual architecture commission, the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, which she conceived in 2000. Serving on numerous committees and panels, she was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1997. In 2003 she was made both an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and appointed an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. In 2008 she was made professor at University of the Arts London, and senior fellow of the Royal College of Art in the same year. Amongst other global conferences, she is regularly invited to attend the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland.

Diane Ragsdale

Promovendus, Erasmus University, Cultural Economics

Diane Ragsdale is currently attending Erasmus University in Rotterdam, where she is researching the impact of economic forces on US non-profit regional theatres since the ‘80s and working towards a PhD in cultural economics. Prior to moving to Europe, Diane worked in the performing arts program at The Andrew W Mellon Foundation, where she had primary responsibility for theatre, dance, and technology-related strategies and grants. Before joining the foundation, Diane served as managing director of Seattle’s contemporary performing arts centre On the Boards and executive director of a destination music festival in the resort town of Sandpoint, Idaho. Diane is a frequent panelist and keynote speaker at arts conferences within and outside of the US, with notable addresses include ‘Surviving the Culture Change’ and ‘The Excellence Barrier’. She has contributed articles to several publications, including ‘Recreating Fine Arts Institutions’, which was published in the autumn 2009 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. She holds an MFA in acting and directing from University of Missouri-Kansas City and a BS in psychology and BFA in theatre from Tulane University.

Clare Reddington

Director of iShed and Pervasive Media Studio, Watershed

Clare Reddington is director of iShed and the Pervasive Media Studio, both part of the Watershed arts centre in Bristol, UK. She works with industry, academic and creative partners to deliver collaborative research around digital technology and the creative industries. Before joining Watershed, she organised the Cheltenham Festival of Science, an annual five- day festival exploring, promoting and encouraging debate around contemporary scientific development. Joining Watershed in 2004, she worked with HP Labs on utility computing animation project SE3D. In 2007, Clare set up iShed CIC, to initiate and support creative technology research and development. Projects include the R&D investment scheme Media Sandbox, Theatre Sandbox, a new national commisioning scheme and Light Up Bristol, which mapped 400 foot high projections on to Bristol’s Council house. Clare is a member of the advisory boards of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Advisory Board, Capsule and Hide&Seek. She was a finalist in the British Council’s UK Young Interactive Entrepreneur 2009 and featured in Wired magazine’s 100 people who shape the Wired world. She likes developing talent, supporting great projects, showcasing new ideas and playing games.

Professor Phil Redmond CBE

Creative Director, The Institute of Cultural Capital and National Museums Liverpool

Phil Redmond is probably best known as the creator of three of Britain’s longest-running drama programmes: Grange Hill, Brookside and Hollyoaks. He has also written extensively for radio, television and stage and is currently a regular columnist for the Liverpool Daily Post. Phil was awarded the honorary chair of media at Liverpool John Moores University in 1989. Since 1993 he has also been a fellow and member of the board of trustees, as well as founding and chairing the International Centre for Digital Content also based at LJMU. Phil was a founder member of the first regional branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in Manchester and in 1996 was elected as fellow of Royal Society of Arts. In 1997 he was appointed vice chair of the newly created North West Film Commission, becoming a patron in 1999. He was awarded a CBE for services to drama in June 2004. In November 2006 Phil joined Liverpool’s Capital of Culture board and became deputy chair. He was appointed creative director in September 2007.

Marcus Romer

Artistic Director, Pilot Theatre

Marcus Romer is artistic director of Pilot Theatre, the national touring theatre company based at York Theatre Royal. He is also the founder of the Shift Happens conference in the UK, focusing on technology and the arts, which has now run for two years. He set up the artsfunding hashtag on Twitter, and created the artsfunding.ning.com networking site, which now has almost 1200 members. He is a regular speaker and presenter on digital technology in the arts circuit.

Josie Rourke

Director, Bush Theatre

Josie Rourke is the artistic director of the Bush Theatre. She has worked professionally in theatre for 10 years, training with directors Peter Gill, Michael Grandage, Nicholas Hytner, Phyllida Lloyd and Sam Mendes. Before coming to the Bush, she worked for five years as a freelance director, and was the associate director of Sheffield Theatres and trainee associate director at the Royal Court. At The Bush, Josie has directed How To Curse by Ian McHugh, Tinderbox by Lucy Kirkwood and Like A Fishbone by Anthony Weigh. Recent work outside The Bush includes Twelfth Night and Taming Of The Shrew for Chicago Shakespeare Company, Here by Eve Ensler for Sky Arts, and Men Should Weep for the National Theatre. Forthcoming work includes Much Ado About Nothing with Catherine Tate and David Tennant for Sonia Friedman productions at the Wyndhams Theatre.

Clary Salandy

Artistic Director, Mahogany Community Ventures Limited

Clary Salandy is a carnival artist, theatre designer and three-dimensional design tutor, specialising in large-scale body sculptures. She studied at Wimbledon School of Art, and has presented spectacular performances at the Notting Hill Carnival and at other carnivals worldwide over the last 20 years. Her work has featured on TV arts documentaries and in prestigious world events, such as the opening and closing ceremonies of the first Afro-Asian games in Hyderabad, India and the grand finale of the Millennium celebrations in Singapore. Her work for the musical Carnival Messiah won the Cacique award for outstanding costume design. As artistic director of Mahogany Community Ventures Limited, she has established a centre of excellence for carnival, designed to raise awareness of the arts in her local community in Harlsden. She was artistic director of the creative performance for the opening ceremony of the Special Olympics in Leicester, and was one of the artists shortlisted for the Arts Council’s Artists taking the lead project. She has taught on the Art Foundation Course at Central Saint Martins School of Art, and has lectured on arts courses, both nationally and internationally.

Marcelle Speller

Founder and Owner, LocalGiving.com

Marcelle Speller is the founder, chief executive and funder of Localgiving.com, an organisation that enables philanthropic giving to small local charities and community groups in the UK. After 10 years spent at advertising agencies in London and Amsterdam and working on the MBA programme at INSEAD, Marcelle held various director and board-level marketing positions with multinational companies, including American Express, Avis and Inter-Continental Hotels. In 1996, she co-founded Holiday-Rentals.com which became Europe’s leading website for advertising private holiday homes. The company was sold to Homeaway Inc in 2005. In 2007/8 Marcelle attended the Institute for Philanthropy’s Philanthropy Workshop, which gave her the inspiration to found Localgiving.com She was the sole owner of the company since its start up in 2008, and in April 2010 transferred all her shares to the Community Foundation Network and the Ardbrack Foundation, a personal foundation whose mission is to enable philanthropic giving to local charities and community groups. She is also a trustee of Community Foundation Network.

Gavin Stride

Director, Farnham Maltings and caravan

Gavin is a director and producer of new theatre, predominantly in new spaces for new audiences. He now leads Farnham Maltings, a South East-based organisation that encourages the most people to see and make the best art that they can. He is also the director of Caravan, a biennial showcase of new English performance to an international audience. Gavin has an affection for the everyday, for 1960s Tupperware and for the ordinariness of art.

Martin Sutherland

Chief Executive, Royal & Derngate Theatres

Martin Sutherland has been chief executive of Royal & Derngate, Northampton for three years, having spent the previous four years as director of The Corn Exchange and New Greenham Arts in Newbury, Berkshire. Prior to this, Martin worked as an independent producer and general manager, touring over 50 theatre, comedy and circus productions throughout the UK and internationally. Early career was spent working with commercial theatre producers, including Elton John’s Rocket Theatre on West End and Broadway musicals. Martin is a fellow of the RSA and a trustee of Oxford Playhouse, Unlimited Theatre, and The Malcolm Arnold Society.

Matthew Taylor

Chief Executive, RSA

Matthew Taylor became chief executive of the RSA in November 2006. Prior to this appointment, he was chief adviser on political strategy to the Prime Minister. Matthew was appointed to the Labour Party in 1994 to establish Labour’s rebuttal operation. His activities before the Labour Party included being a county councillor, a parliamentary candidate, a university research fellow and the director of a unit monitoring policy in the health service. Until December 1998, Matthew was assistant general secretary for the Labour Party. During the 1997 general election, he was Labour’s director of policy and a member of the party’s central election strategy team. He was the director of Britain’s leading centre left think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, between 1999 and 2003. Matthew is a frequent media commentator on policy and political issues, and has written for publications including the Guardian, the Observer, New Statesman and Prospect.

Vanessa Trevelyan

Head of Museums, Norfolk Museums

Vanessa Trevelyan came to Norfolk in the early 1970s, where she studied art history at the University of East Anglia and volunteered at a local museum. She worked at the Victoria & Albert Museum as a curator of children’s costume and toys, before moving to the South Eastern Area Museums Council providing advice and support to museums throughout the south east. After five years with the Museums and Galleries Commission, where she was responsible for the successful UK Museum Accreditation Scheme and developed standards for audience development, disability access and marketing, she joined the Norfolk Museums and Archeology Service in 1999. Vanessa is currently president of the Museums Association after serving for many years as convenor of its Ethics Committee. She is also a governor of Norwich University College of the Arts, a member of the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council’s Leading Museums Leadership Group, and a founder member of the Women Leaders in Museums Network.

Ed Vaizey MP

Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries

Ed Vaizey MP was elected as the Member of Parliament for Wantage and Didcot in May 2005. Born in 1968, Mr Vaizey attended Merton College, Oxford. After university he spent two years working as a political researcher, before training and practising as a barrister. In 1996, he became director of a public relations company, becoming a political speech writer in 2004. He was shadow Culture and Creative Industries minister between 2006 and 2010.

Graham Vick CBE

Artistic Director, Birmingham Opera Company

Graham Vick CBE is one of the foremost opera directors of our times. His productions have been seen at La Scala in Milan, Metropolitan Opera in New York and Mariinsky Opera in St Petersburg. His production of Verdi’s Falstaff opened the newly re-furbished Royal Opera House, and between 1992 and 2000 he was director of productions at Glyndebourne. His career began in his early twenties at Scottish Opera, when he founded a touring company to take opera to remote communities in the Highlands and Islands. In the 1980s he worked with unemployed young people to bring to life Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story in an abandoned Yorkshire mill, and in 1987 he came to Birmingham, founding a company with help from Birmingham City Council and Arts Council England. He views his work in Birmingham as complementary to his international career, insisting excellence and accessibility are not at odds. Graham is a Chevalier de L’Ordes des Arts et des Lettres, honorary professor of music at the University of Birmingham and was visiting professor of opera studies at Oxford University. He was awarded the CBE for services to opera in June 2009.

Mark Wallinger

Artist

Mark Wallinger’s installation State Britain, displayed at Tate Britain in 2007, was described in Artforum magazine as ‘one of the most remarkable political works of art ever’. Educated at the Chelsea School of Art and Goldsmiths, where he also worked as a tutor, his work is represented in important museum collections in Europe, the USA and the Far East. His sculpture Ecce Homo was the first project chosen for the vacant Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, and he represented Great Britain at the 2001 Venice Biennale. He has been nominated twice for the Turner Prize, winning in 2007, and his video work Via Dolorosa is permanently installed in a crypt in the Duomo in Milan. Of his many major national and international exhibitions, the most recent took place at the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo last year, and exhibitions are planned for Museum De Pont (2011) and Baltic Gateshead (2012). Meanwhile, his proposal for a 165-foot high White Horse was the winner of the Ebbsfleet Landmark Commission, and is soon to be constructed. He is represented in London by the Anthony Reynolds Gallery.

Ed Whiting

Founder, WeDidThis

Ed Whiting is the founder of www.WeDidThis.org.uk, a new ‘crowdfunding’ platform for the UK arts sector. Launched in January 2011 with a portfolio of projects drawn from diverse artforms, sizes and types of organisation from across the UK, WeDidThis is an arts-led social enterprise aiming to offer high quality, unique rewards to funders of exciting, compelling art. WeDidThis.org.uk is an arts-only space for arts organisations to bring their audiences and supporters together to form a ‘critical mass’ of funders of the arts. By rewarding every donation with a personalised gift that including exposure to the creative process and involvement with arts projects as they develop, they believe arts organisations can become more open and more resilient. During 2011, WeDidThis aims to launch over 50 arts projects into the WeDidThis marketplace, from grassroots ‘crowdsourced’ artists and organisations to prestigious productions from large arts and cultural institutions.

Erica Whyman

Chief Executive, Northern Stage

Erica has been chief executive of Northern Stage in Newcastle upon Tyne since 2005. As a theatre director, she has 17 years experience, having directed for the National Theatre, Oxford Playhouse, Streetwise Opera and Sheffield Crucible. She was previously Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill and of Southwark Playhouse, and was one of the first fellows of the Clore Leadership Programme. Northern Stage is the North East’s largest producing theatre, with three flexible stages, and a diverse programme both of performances and opportunities to make and discover theatre. Northern Stage tours nationally both on the small and large scale and has a distinguished reputation for inviting international artists to the UK. Erica has overseen the completion of major capital redevelopment, enacted significant cultural change, and launched a new repertoire which has brought the company much critical acclaim.

Mark Williams MBE

Artistic Director/CEO, Heart n Soul

Mark co-founded Heart n Soul in 1986 having already experienced a career as a full-time musician and DJ. Disillusioned with the cynicism and overriding commercial focus of the music industry, he embraced the opportunity to work with older people, children and young people and people with disabilities, running freelance music-making sessions with a number of different agencies such as SHAPE, Artsreach, Age Exchange and the Lewisham Academy of Music. Mark founded the arts organisation Heart n Soul, working with musicians to develop a new arts aesthetic informed by collaborative working with learning disabled artists. From Heart n Soul grew the Beautiful Octopus Club, an innovative clubbing experience that has helped Williams share his passion for entertaining and educating. Heart n Soul has since grown from a locally-based touring company to an internationally respected creative organisation. Mark was awarded an MBE for services to disability arts in the New Year honours list 2010.

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