What is it that you do? How I went from Barbara Hepworth to business planning

Barbara Hepworth outside her studio, St Ives

I’ve recently noticed that when I meet another professional and they ask ‘what do you do?’ I struggle to describe my work beyond being an ‘independent consultant’. Often I find myself explaining ‘I used to be a curator…’ then trying make a post-hoc rationalisation of my apparently incongruous career choices since I stopped shuffling sculpture around in 1999 – over a decade ago.

So why do I refer to being an ex-curator when it was something I did a long time ago and for a relatively short period? Partly it’s because people understand what a curator does, and I confess it’s perhaps partly because it’s quite a glamorous, and authoritative role. (Although this often back-fires when I tell people what I do now – which is often to do with business models or business plans – and their face shows incredulity that I would trade the interesting and creative stuff to become an ‘administrator’.)

But actually, when I think of what I do now it’s very similar to what I did when I was a curator and I enjoy it just as much.

As a curator I used to work with artists to produce and show their work to audiences by raising the funds, finding the right opportunity, marketing the project – very much like a producer works in theatre. Now I do the same on a bigger scale – helping arts organisations become more effective and resilient so they can in turn support artists. In both roles, I deal with the business end of things, to enable the artistic to flourish.

Throughout my career I’ve been concerned with how best to support artists, and enable them to engage with audiences. Sometimes this has been as an exhibition curator, but also as a funder, by working in organisational development in the charity sector or latterly as an independent consultant.

My interest in business models emerged from the period when I first began working with artists, having recently completed a MA in History of Art (Sculpture). I was struck by the huge gap between the terms in which art historians wrote about of the career of an artist such as Barbara Hepworth (whom I’d studied) and my direct experience of the professional aspects of being a practising artist. For example, some argue, Hepworth’s move away from direct carving of wood and stone into casting in bronze was prompted less by an artistic imperative so much as the professional and financial need to move into the market for public sculpture where her great rival Henry Moore was excelling. Or looking at the radical post object sculpture of the late 1960s, we see sculptors such as Richard Long or Gilbert and George, who were experimenting with formats which couldn’t easily be exhibited or sold, developing a parallel ‘gallery practice’ to this ends.

With sculpture, more so than painting, the opportunities to produce and present work are closely bound up with patronage, and increasingly since 1946 (in the UK) the public art institutions. I became fascinated in how public support for the arts affected the type of work artists made and how their work was understood and written about. So I went on to research a PhD on this topic, part-time, alongside working as a curator. What I wanted to understand and enable – as a researcher, a curator, then as a funder and still today – was how to make sure the opportunities we offer artists don’t unduly constrain or influence artistic practice. The business tail shouldn’t wag the artistic dog.

So, after three years curating, when the opportunity arose to work for London Arts Board (as was, now Arts Council England London office), in a role where I responsible for strategy to support London’s many individual artists, I moved into the arts funding system. I’d thought I’d go back to curating – but I loved funding, arts development and strategy. Later this interest in the development side of the role led me to work for NCVO (the National Council for Voluntary Organisations) where we helped thousands of charities develop new income streams through developing an entrepreneurial culture and trading skills – so they could better achieve their missions, rather than endlessly chase project funding.

Today, as an independent consultant I continue to facilitate artistic practice, the way I know best – by ensuring the organisations which support artists and enable audiences to engage with their work – are working as best they can.

And it leads me to believe that the division between so-called ‘creatives’ and arts managers in the arts is unhelpful. We all have the same aims – we just employ different skills in bringing those aims to fruition. We need arts managers (whether we called them administrators, Executive Directors, producers, or General Managers) to create the resources – the time, space and money – artists need to create innovative, work of the highest quality.

I’m not sure whether this leads in terms of what I call what I do, suggestions are very welcome, but I’m very clear about its purpose and its value. It’s not as important as the art, but without it the art would be poorer.