ArtsProfessional reveals the career paths of the sectors senior managers.
Executive Director, Spitalfields Festival (19882007)
One of my first achievements at Spitalfields Festival was to found its Education & Community Programme, which now involves up to 10,000 people per year. Every festival includes performances generated by the programme, which works with local schools as well as with hospitals, organisations such as the homeless charity Cardboard Citizens, and with the many communities that give the Spitalfields area its character.
I also nurtured the Festivals commitment to new music, including its New Music Commission Fund, set up in 2000 by then-Artistic Director Judith Weir. The fund is well on the way to its target of £200,000, which would allow it to commission a new work annually (the first, Original Version by Morgan Hayes, premièred at the Festival last June). Even before the fund was established, the Festival had a proud record of commissioning new works: over 30 in the past 10 years, including its most ambitious community project, On Spital Fields by Jonathan Dove, the Festivals Artistic Director from 2001 to 2006. In 2006 On Spital Fields won a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award and a British Academy of Composers & Songwriters Award. I am also proud that, in 2007, the Festival as a whole won an RPS Music Award.
From 1996 to 1999 I was vice-chair of the executive board of the British Arts Festival Association and in 2007 received the first-ever BAFA Award, in recognition of my work at Spitalfields and within Britains wider arts festival scene. After 19 years with the Festival, it seemed like a good moment to go freelance again.
School governorships (1986present)
My children were educated in the state system and, like many parents, I became involved in school governorship, first in South London and then, more recently, at Mulberry School for Girls in Tower Hamlets. The experience had a profound impact on the way I felt about Spitalfields Festival and its responsibilities to the local community.
Early music management (19771988)
During the heyday of the British early music movement, I worked with many of the ensembles who changed the way people listened to music written before the 19th century. For nine years I managed the Taverner Consort and also worked with London Baroque. Shortly afterwards I did some work for the conductor Richard Hickox, then Artistic Director of Spitalfields Festival. One day he gave me a lift, and during the journey I casually asked, Whos running the Festival? He said, You can if you like. It was the easiest job interview I ever had..
Promoting concerts (19661975)
Between 1966 and 1971, while studying at the Royal Manchester College of Music, I got involved in running student union concerts. Among my achievements was the first Manchester performance of music by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and guest appearances by college alumni Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle. That led to a period of work with the agency Harrison Parrott, promoting concerts outside London by such luminaries as Vladimir Ashkenazy and Radu Lupu.
I have always been aware of the need to make music available in unconventional venues, and between 1972 and 1975 I was responsible for organising performances in three major galleries: the Arnolfini in Bristol, and the Chapter Arts Centre and National Museum of Wales, both in Cardiff.