The British Council is appointing six senior roles within its overseas arts team to build closer links with the UK
The British Council is “putting its money where its mouth is”, according to its Director of Arts, Graham Sheffield: despite suffering an overall reduction in funding it is appointing six new senior roles within its overseas arts team. The British Council’s work was recently re-structured into just three business areas – English Language, Arts, and Education and Society – placing the arts at the core of its mission.
The new appointments will mean that UK arts specialists will be based in Europe and the EU, South Asia, China, India, East Asia, the Americas, Sub Saharan Africa and the Middle East, with the aim of stimulating ideas and looking for opportunities – especially partnerships, opportunities for exchange and other mutually beneficial international projects. Sheffield told AP: “This balances the British Council’s offering in terms of the arts. In the past there has been a danger of skills being patchy, but by expanding the team across the world we can be sure of identifying key issues. Their engagement with the team in London will mean that we can also build knowledge of the UK in those regions.” He sees the new appointments as the starting point for wider collaborations linking thousands of artists and cultural institutions around the world: “Over time the knowledge gained will feed into the UK arts sector and bring new economic and creative opportunities to UK institutions.” One of the mechanisms for this will be enhanced web-based services, with a major digital upgrade underway to create the widest possible access to the market intelligence that the new expert network will be developing.
Sheffield is currently working on plans to clarify the British Council’s role, both in the UK and overseas, and this will culminate early next year with “an intensive period of consultation and engagement with the UK arts sector”. Other significant initiatives over the coming year will include UK Now, potentially the biggest ever celebration of British arts held in China; and UK Brazil, a programme of events and exchanges. While these will both be major showcases for the UK arts sector, Sheffield hopes that they will also mark the start of longer and more embedded relationships: “At the heart of all these initiatives is a commitment to working with UK institutions and artists to reach a global audience”.