I used to be a contemporary dancer and the international touring I did in the early '80s was with the British Council. As I travelled to places like Hong Kong, Thailand and Indonesia, I got really interested in the job that the British Council people did in each country. So, as my career progressed over the next ten years or so, and I did more travelling, I had an eye on the fact that one day, when the dancing was done, I wanted to work for the British Council.
In the mid-90s I did an MA in Arts Management at City University at the Barbican and went on to be Programme Manager at Dance Umbrella. Then in 1997 a job came up in (what was then) the British Council’s Drama and Dance Department and I had a very happy three years there looking after Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. I really wanted to do an international posting, but the British Council was starting to scale down those kind of opportunities for arts specialists and nothing came up. So I left, went to run a dance organisation in Australia, came back to be producer at Northern Stage in Newcastle and then ran the Point in Eastleigh where we built a residential creation space, opened by Akram Khan in November 2009. Then, in 2011, Graham Sheffield was appointed Director Arts, these regional arts lead jobs were created, and I thought it might be time to come back. I'd say it's the best decision I've ever made.
If I'm at the Wider Europe regional base in Istanbul, a typical day will start with fielding emails that have come in early from Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan where there's a time difference, and from colleagues anywhere whose preferred work time is late evening (once the kids are settled and a nice bottle of wine is open, I am reliably informed). Then when London comes online, there's usually a conversation with one or more of our regional advisors, a catch-up with country arts managers or a check in with my regional team Valentina Vorobyova and Volodymyr Sheyko. I touch base with our Regional Director Michael Bird at least once a week and with our Director of Programmes, Marketing and Partnerships, Clare Sears, most days. I'm lucky that I have a lot of contact with artists and producers outside the organisation and I intend to keep it that way, although, the majority of the time I am dealing with internal reporting and compliance.
I travelled quite a bit in my first year in the job and while I do less now I really believe that you cannot beat face-to-face meetings for making things happen. It’s great that we have so much technology to draw on for the functional, logistic aspects of our work (although teleconferences are mostly distancing, alienating and draining), but I know that most of what I have achieved with the team in the last two years is the result of being in the room with the idea.
In our regional posts, although we have access to a desk and are part of a country team, we're not expected to be in the office every day. I have fantastic flexibility around when I work and I find that, as a former artist used to flying around a studio at all hours or performing at night, this makes me more productive. The ideas and the energy don't necessarily come at 9 in the morning, it might be earlier or later, and I love just seizing the moment when it’s right and then keeping going until I run out of steam. What I've really loved about returning to the British Council and this job is the trust and the flexibility. I’m working with grown-up people who expect you to behave like a grown up. When the theatre I ran – which was owned by a local authority – decided to introduce a ‘clocking in’ system I knew it was time to leave.
I learned a lot from working in Australia for three-and-a-half years. The pace is more laid-back there but there's also a very strong sense that if you put the right things in the right place for something to happen, and if you take care of the process, it will happen. It’s like sowing a seed and nurturing the plant in the right light. Hurrying is considered largely fruitless – although this spirit has its challenges when running a team. At the end of three years there we had put secure state funding in place for a new choreographic research centre in a designated building and next year it celebrates it first decade. The time we took in developing the idea, the programme and the trust in investment made all of our partners certain it was a long-term prospect. But it took that time.
In terms of exporting things from the UK – in addition to our innovation and creativity, of course – the main thing would be our rigour around strategy and planning. A lot of the conversations I have with external contacts in the region, particularly in the museums and galleries sector, are about the way they perceive us to understand and have developed good practice around participation, the visitor experience, and how you can enhance the brand of the museum or collection through special events or merchandising. In the performing arts, it’s around talent development – a particular concern in countries with lumbering, Soviet style ensembles in the major theatres and therefore no spare cash to bring on new people or ideas.
And then audiences: one of the things we do really well in the UK is to think about audiences and to get to know them. In many countries in our region decades of generous state subsidy has meant that cultural institutions didn’t have to think about whether people actually came to the event, and now that this subsidy is being drastically reduced or withdrawn they are really suffering. This is something we explored with our very successful Behind the Scenes workshop programme. So now the conversations we have with partners are very different and, for me, much more exciting. A beautiful collection or production is fantastic, but if no-one's coming to interact with it then what's it for? One Serbian arts manager told me that politicians “don’t care about culture”. I suggested that they do care about voters, who are audiences, and that if the cultural institutions got audiences the politicians would start to take notice.
The best thing about my job? The people I get to work with and to meet, the extraordinary art I get to experience on my travels, the freedom to be really creative within a huge, multi-faceted organisation, and the privilege of living in the wonderfully confusing, occasionally maddening but always inspiring city of Istanbul.
Gregory Nash was talking to Eleanor Turney.
