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Title Honorary Vice-Chair

Organisation The Maltings Arts Centre

How long in post? Six years

What does your organisation do?

320 seat performing arts venue with an intensive programme of professional and community use, as well as hosting and promoting youth and community arts.

What does your job involve?
The Maltings is a charity with a professional staff and a voluntary Board of directors, who are responsible for strategy and overall financial control. As a very small organisation, each director also has an area of special interest - finance, personnel etc. I am especially concerned with encouraging youth and community participation through our programme of outreach activities.

Who do you work for and what previous posts have you held?
Seven years ago I became a bookseller and opened Bridge Street Bookshop, which retails new and antiquarian books. For many years before that I had worked as a lecturer, with a special interest in access courses for mature students returning to higher education.

What do you enjoy most about your role?
Seeing things happen that otherwise would not, and building new audiences for the arts.

What do you find most difficult in your role?
Unduly long meetings and the occasional ?newspeak? of arts professionals.

Who has most influenced your career to date the most and why?
William Morris and Raymond Williams for their sense of varied and complementary cultural identities, and their insistence that the arts are central to everyday life, not just a desirable extra.

If you could have done any job, what would it be?
Clerk to Azdak?s court.

If you had three wishes for the future of the arts, what would they be?
? Inevitably, better funding and also greater autonomy for regional arts strategies
? Coherent strategies for the arts across central and local government with better integration between education and the arts
? A younger audience for jazz!