Initially unsure about how to put her art degree to good use, Shonagh Manson has forged a career centred on ensuring artists and creatives are well supported.
Shonagh completed her art degree in the early 2000s with her head and heart expanded, but with little practical understanding of how to be an artist. Her zig-zag career path has included regular jumps into the deep end but it has always been driven by a motivation to ensure artists and creatives are properly supported.
Development Officer then Schools Officer, Battersea Arts Centre
I failed to get a job interview in the arts for a year after I graduated, so I ended up working in manufacturing as a resource planner, delivering product supply chains for international markets. Don’t ask me how.
Three years later, still failing to get interviews with no professional arts experience, I started a part-time MA in Arts Policy and Management at Birkbeck, University of London. At the same time, Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) took a chance on me and offered me a Development Officer role. So I moved to London, a city which immediately swept me off my feet.
I wasn’t prepared to fall in love with theatre as I did. I come from a small market town with no theatre and little arts activity outside pub gigs but working at BAC landed me in an astonishing network of artists and producers leading new performance.
I arrived just as BAC lost £100,000 funding from Wandsworth Council. I worked with Sarah Quelch, then a producer and latterly BAC’s Associate Artistic Director, to raise money for the centre’s work for young people, which was to be cut entirely. It was hugely influential to learn from her dedication and determination. I successfully fundraised for BAC’s first ever outreach project on a local estate and have watched from afar as their work with minoritised young people has continued to grow.
Administrator then General Manager, Fuel
While I was at BAC, three of its producers – Louise Blackwell, Kate McGrath and Sarah Quelch – received funding from Jerwood Charitable Foundation (now Jerwood Arts) to set up their own producing company: Fuel was born.
I became its first employee, another dive into the deep end. I helped deliver UK and international tours, I developed education workshops, managed cashflows, wrote funding applications and fixed broken internet connections.
Fuel expanded fast. At first, we worked in a tiny freezing broom cupboard, then two broom cupboards, then a proper office. Being part of a start-up was hairy, but I loved every moment and I am super proud to have contributed to those crucial first years.
Arts Advisor, Wellcome Trust
It was hard to leave Fuel, but I aspired to this next role which I first come across when writing my MA dissertation on artists, identity and new technologies. At Wellcome Trust, I managed a £1m Arts Awards funding programme. It had grown from the legendary SciArt programme which shaped new discourse and practice between science and the (mainly visual) arts.
The role was a calculated risk covering maternity leave, but it was a welcome step into other artforms. I was able to increase Wellcome’s support of live art and performance and I came away with expanded networks and experience, as well as lifelong friends.
I’m immensely sad that Wellcome has stopped grant-funding work between artists and scientists. I think it’s a huge mistake. Its previous funding shaped a generation of different thinkers and actors and now, with the climate emergency increasing, it’s more important than ever to break down disciplinary barriers and support new ideas and ways of working.
Director, Jerwood Charitable Foundation (now Jerwood Arts)
When I started in this role, I was both overjoyed and overwhelmed. In every conversation for the first year I felt I was on the verge of being found out. But I loved building our team and programmes and I am proud of the growth we achieved for artists and for one another. We put artists at the centre of our policy and programme - unusual for funders. It was also my first experience of being employed by a Board.
I joined Arts Council England’s (ACE) London Area Council to advocate for more centring of artists and I was part of the early conversations that led to ACE’s Developing Your Creative Practice funding programme.
In these years the team started Jerwood’s first programmes explicitly aimed at increasing diversity: the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries and the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships – legacies I very much value.
This job included many firsts: being a leader, stewarding an endowment, running a visual arts gallery programme, public speaking and publishing. I asked for so much advice and have been happy to offer it back as my experience has grown. One motto stands out: ‘There is never a stupid question’. It’s a sign of good leadership to ask questions about what you don’t understand.
Assistant Director, Culture and Creative Industries, Greater London Authority
Having only worked in the private and charitable sectors until this point, I was at first bamboozled by everyone’s concern about the bureaucracy of the public sector. Now I understand!
I had wanted to work in a political environment supporting social and economic impact through culture, and I’ve not been disappointed. At City Hall, I have been able to think and act at significant scale and it’s fascinating to be part of a senior leadership team turning a big ship around and achieving so much.
I’ve doubled the size of our team and tripled its diversity. We’ve put the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square, engaged hundreds of thousands of people through London Borough of Culture, and fiercely supported grassroots organisations with millions of pounds of emergency funding during Covid.
It is one long hard chess game which can make your brain and your heart hurt, but I’ll never tire of working to make this city - the one I fell in love with two decades ago - a better, fairer place through culture.
Shonagh Manson is Assistant Director, Culture and Creative Industries at Greater London Authority.
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