Title: Audience Development Officer
Name of organisation: Bury Art Gallery & Museum
How long in present post? Since 1998
Phone: 0161 253 5882
Email: s.latimer@bury.gov.uk
What does your organisation do?
Bury Art Gallery & Museum is a local authority-run gallery displaying the Wrigley Collection of Victorian art and a wide-ranging programme of contemporary exhibitions.
What does your current job involve?
Audience development in the widest sense ? using marketing, events, interpretation, hands-on activities etc. to encourage people to give art and museums a go.
At the moment my priorities are:
? encouraging adults to discover the Gallery through their children in our Wriggly Stories exhibition for under 5s
? working with Early Years colleagues to demonstrate how the Gallery can link to the Early Learning goals
? developing new permanent family-friendly provision.
Who did you used to work for and what did you do?
? Saddleworth Museum & Art Gallery ? a small voluntary-run independent museum where I got great hands-on experience in everything from plumbing to management.
? Pendle Heritage Centre ? another small independent ? and another ideas test-bed.
What do you enjoy most about your present post?
There?s a can-do attitude and a willingness to change which allows new ideas to be developed.
What do you find most difficult in your present post?
So many ideas and opportunities?so little time?
What is your career ambition?
To deliver family-friendly concepts to galleries in France.
Who has influenced your career to date the most - and why?
All the colleagues whose ideas I?ve pinched, particularly members of Arts About Manchester.
If you could have done any job in the world what would you like to have done?
Fashion designer
If you had three wishes for the future of the arts, what would they be?
? that everyone, whoever they are, believes the arts are for them
? that the media makes the effort to get out of London and helps to spread a positive message about access to the arts and museums
? if we must have performance indicators for the arts, let them be qualitative and comparable, and relate to current priorities.