Post: Co-ordinator
Organisation: BAFA (British Arts Festivals Association)
Length of service: 12 years ? if you include the early years of one day a week
Address: 3rd Floor, The Library, 77 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
Email: bafa@netcomuk.co.uk
What does your organisation do?
BAFA is a meeting point for UK arts festivals. We market and publicise festivals, carry out research, and organise events for festivals to come together, talk and learn.
What does your current job involve?
Right now I?m planning the winter programme of meetings and courses - most of our activity is concentrated in the festivals? off-season. Next will be to recruit a new wave of festivals to join and add to the diversity of membership. We published ?Festivals Mean Business? this year, and want to build on that research and database. Our strategic development plan includes more research, training and artistic networking.
Who did you used to work for and what did you do?
As my work at BAFA is a part-time freelance role, I?ve been able to combine it with other things, often to do with contemporary music or arts education, such as running the Michael Tippett Musical Foundation, and research consultancy work in music education. Before BAFA I managed John Eliot Gardiner?s Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists.
What do you enjoy most about your present post?
I love working with independent-minded people and the festivals scene has a fantastic mix of imaginative, resourceful individuals.
What do you find most difficult in your present post?
Keeping membership and activity growing at a rate faster than our resources
What is your career ambition?
First of all to put this organisation on to a new level of operation, and eventually for myself to work closer to the notes.
Who has influenced your career to date the most ? and why?
Pierre Audi, who used to run the Almeida Theatre and Festival, because he showed that high artistic standards are non-negotiable.
If you could have done any job in the world, what would you like to have done?
Jazz pianist.
If you have three wishes for the future of the arts, what would they be?
? For festivals to be taken more seriously within the arts profession.
? For the arts to be accepted as a valuable part of ordinary life.
? For arts politics to take second place to arts production.