Rehayn King
A week in the life
Sunday Times July 27
Tall ships in the docks, ex-Beatles on stage and scores of other cultural highs. Liverpool is halfway through its party year as European Capital of Culture and making it all work is surely challenging for those behind the scenes.
For Rehayn King it’s an especially busy time. She became director of art galleries at the National Museums Liverpool just over a year ago. King, 43, who manages the flagship Walker Art Gallery together with Sudley House and the Lady Lever Gallery, is also overseeing judging for the 25th John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize this September and helping steer the Liverpool Biennial.
“I suspect this year’s John Moores’ may prove quite controversial” she says. It’s had a record entry but the jurors – including the art provocateurs Jake and Dinos Chapman – have selected fewer works for the shortlist.
King took up her £50,000 a year post after a decade curating in Birmingham with previous experience in Coventry and Boston. Born in Edinburgh, she lived in Tanzania and Surrey before studying art history at Oxford.
“Gallery going wasn’t in my family background, but I was dropped off for a morning at the National Gallery of Scotland when I was 16 and thought – ‘this is a whole new world’. It made a big impact. I wanted to share the pleasure I get from art.”
Merseyside seems to mirror her passion. “Liverpool is very special. It has a very strong creative culture. It is a city that grabs you by the throat - a very emotional place. It makes you want to do something for the city. I found myself very quickly a proponent of how wonderful Liverpool is and how strong it is for the visual arts. “
Now she has bolder visions for the Walker that occupy much of her time away from management work.
In the last week she had meetings with the head of Liverpool’s library that should result in an expansion of the Walkers’ exhibition space. She prepared and delivered a paper on “The Value of Art” for the annual conference of art librarians.
And she attended a fund raising dinner at which the new chairman of National Museums Liverpool, the high profile TV Producer Phil Redmond, was guest of honour.
Much of the week was about developing her vision for the Walker. She wants it to embrace a wider range of art, to increase visual literacy among the young and to increase visitor levels. “It used to get 600,000 a year in the 19th century. Last year we had 300,000.”
“Outside Liverpool it is thought of primarily as about Victorian art, but it is about so much more. I would like to get to the point where it is seen as the best place to see any European painting, from the Renaissance to the modern day, north of Oxford and south of Edinburgh.”
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
A WEEK IN LIFE – MARTIN DAVIDSON
Published in the Sunday Times July 20th 2008
The sun never sets on the British Council. Britain’s vehicle for promoting the UK through cultural relations has 7,400 staff in 110 countries including troubled places where Government diplomats sometimes fear to tread.
In Zimbabwe and Burma, British Council people remain resolutely at their desks, despite official hostility to the UK. It also operates in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.
Martin Davidson, its chief executive says: “I’m enormously proud that our offices in Mandalay and Rangoon are probably the only public spaces in that country where you can read a foreign newspaper, look at the internet or see foreign television. We get about 350,000 people pass through our offices just to get that contact. I don’t think there is any doubt that they are identified and their names are taken.”
“In Zimbabwe we are providing a link to the outside world hugely valued by the young professional Zimbabwean for giving an understanding of what the outside world is thinking about Zimbabwe, contact with colleagues outside and helping to persuade them to stay in the country.”
Davidson, 52, says the Council’s role has changed little since its creation 75 years ago in response to Nazi propaganda. “Then we sought to demonstrate through education, culture and science that there was an alternative narrative about how people live with one another and across international boundaries. That is still what we are for. We use different language now and talk in terms of our role being to build engagement and trust for the UK through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.”
He is paid £160,000 a year to oversee a hugely complex operation with a shifting set of priorities. The Council’s independence of government, “rather like the BBC” gives it credibility. It gets £190 million from Westminster, but makes £375 million from a range of commercial enterprises, especially education. Millions learn English through the British Council’s work.
Davidson’s week reflects the Council’s international nature. Recently he returned from trip consolidating educational links with Arab nations. Improving relations in the Islamic world is currently high priority.
So is climate change. Hours after returning from Beirut, he flew to Switzerland for a forum at which young people from around the world - recruited by the Council - presented their personal encounters with climate change.
Back in London he delivered an evening briefing at Chatham House followed by breakfast with Margaret Hodge, the Arts Minister. Then he briefed a Foreign Office forum on cultural diplomacy.
The key office event was an internal public accounts meeting. A report concluded the Council delivered significant value for money – promoting the present key idea of Britain as: “an open, diverse, interested and engaged society.” Our values are respect for the rule of law, the individual, diversity and for people who come from different places. “That is the narrative we are trying to present about the UK.”
Published in the Sunday Times July 20th 2008
The sun never sets on the British Council. Britain’s vehicle for promoting the UK through cultural relations has 7,400 staff in 110 countries including troubled places where Government diplomats sometimes fear to tread.
In Zimbabwe and Burma, British Council people remain resolutely at their desks, despite official hostility to the UK. It also operates in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.
Martin Davidson, its chief executive says: “I’m enormously proud that our offices in Mandalay and Rangoon are probably the only public spaces in that country where you can read a foreign newspaper, look at the internet or see foreign television. We get about 350,000 people pass through our offices just to get that contact. I don’t think there is any doubt that they are identified and their names are taken.”
“In Zimbabwe we are providing a link to the outside world hugely valued by the young professional Zimbabwean for giving an understanding of what the outside world is thinking about Zimbabwe, contact with colleagues outside and helping to persuade them to stay in the country.”
Davidson, 52, says the Council’s role has changed little since its creation 75 years ago in response to Nazi propaganda. “Then we sought to demonstrate through education, culture and science that there was an alternative narrative about how people live with one another and across international boundaries. That is still what we are for. We use different language now and talk in terms of our role being to build engagement and trust for the UK through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.”
He is paid £160,000 a year to oversee a hugely complex operation with a shifting set of priorities. The Council’s independence of government, “rather like the BBC” gives it credibility. It gets £190 million from Westminster, but makes £375 million from a range of commercial enterprises, especially education. Millions learn English through the British Council’s work.
Davidson’s week reflects the Council’s international nature. Recently he returned from trip consolidating educational links with Arab nations. Improving relations in the Islamic world is currently high priority.
So is climate change. Hours after returning from Beirut, he flew to Switzerland for a forum at which young people from around the world - recruited by the Council - presented their personal encounters with climate change.
Back in London he delivered an evening briefing at Chatham House followed by breakfast with Margaret Hodge, the Arts Minister. Then he briefed a Foreign Office forum on cultural diplomacy.
The key office event was an internal public accounts meeting. A report concluded the Council delivered significant value for money – promoting the present key idea of Britain as: “an open, diverse, interested and engaged society.” Our values are respect for the rule of law, the individual, diversity and for people who come from different places. “That is the narrative we are trying to present about the UK.”
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Profile - Nick Partridge
Profile - Nick Partridge - Published in The Sunday Times July 13th 2008
When rumours that a frightening new disease was killing gay men in America first surfaced in the early 1980s, Nick Partridge - now director of the Terrence Higgins Trust - was working in Amsterdam.
“I was fearful and horrified by the prospect of something that was completely unknown, but was killing people very quickly.” These early intimations spurred him back to London where he soon began working with the newly founded Trust, named after the first known British victim.
Twenty-five years later Terrence Higgins is Europe’s largest HIV and Aids charity and works in a very different landscape.
Aids has killed 25 million people around the world and there are 2.5 million new cases of HIV each year. But in developed countries HIV is now largely a chronic condition controlled by powerful antiretroviral drugs.
Partridge, 52, who earns £85,000 annually, has been director since 1991. This week he returned from a UN gathering in New York about the global Aids situation.
Terrence Higgins is now part of Britain’s health establishment and Partridge divides his time between the Trust and working as deputy chair of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, as a member of the Healthcare Commission and chairing INVOLVE which promotes public involvement in public health, NHS and social care research.
Meetings in London and Manchester with these organisations form key parts of his week together with the enjoyable business of attending the Trust’s annual fundraising gala dinner.
Partridge says he once believed the Trust would disappear when a cure and vaccine for Aids were found. “But research on this has stalled. I don’t now believe we will see either in our lifetime.”
The work of the Trust has changed after two watershed dates. In 1991 Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury died from AIDS. A million pounds in royalties from the re-released “Bohemian Rhapsody”, donated to the Trust gave it financial security.
More importantly Mercury’s death – and the Princess of Wales’s involvement in Aids issues - broadened public understanding.
But Partridge says by then he was close to emotional burn-out and would have quit had it not been for the development of effective antiretroviral drugs treatments in 1996.
“This was extraordinary. The numbers of people dying dropped by over 70 per cent in just 18 months. To see that dawning realization that people were going to live and not die was absolutely fabulous.”
But it also meant the Trust completely re-thinking its purpose. “Our services now reflect a very different relationship. They’re tailored around moments of crisis – such as the initial diagnosis or going on to treatment.”
A new challenge is sustaining awareness. A third of people with HIV in Britain don’t know they have the infection.
“There is a worryingly low level of HIV knowledge and that is where having proper and effective sex education in schools is vital. We have failed to do this and to equip each new generation to understand the risk around HIV and to better enjoy their journey into sex and relationships.”
When rumours that a frightening new disease was killing gay men in America first surfaced in the early 1980s, Nick Partridge - now director of the Terrence Higgins Trust - was working in Amsterdam.
“I was fearful and horrified by the prospect of something that was completely unknown, but was killing people very quickly.” These early intimations spurred him back to London where he soon began working with the newly founded Trust, named after the first known British victim.
Twenty-five years later Terrence Higgins is Europe’s largest HIV and Aids charity and works in a very different landscape.
Aids has killed 25 million people around the world and there are 2.5 million new cases of HIV each year. But in developed countries HIV is now largely a chronic condition controlled by powerful antiretroviral drugs.
Partridge, 52, who earns £85,000 annually, has been director since 1991. This week he returned from a UN gathering in New York about the global Aids situation.
Terrence Higgins is now part of Britain’s health establishment and Partridge divides his time between the Trust and working as deputy chair of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, as a member of the Healthcare Commission and chairing INVOLVE which promotes public involvement in public health, NHS and social care research.
Meetings in London and Manchester with these organisations form key parts of his week together with the enjoyable business of attending the Trust’s annual fundraising gala dinner.
Partridge says he once believed the Trust would disappear when a cure and vaccine for Aids were found. “But research on this has stalled. I don’t now believe we will see either in our lifetime.”
The work of the Trust has changed after two watershed dates. In 1991 Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury died from AIDS. A million pounds in royalties from the re-released “Bohemian Rhapsody”, donated to the Trust gave it financial security.
More importantly Mercury’s death – and the Princess of Wales’s involvement in Aids issues - broadened public understanding.
But Partridge says by then he was close to emotional burn-out and would have quit had it not been for the development of effective antiretroviral drugs treatments in 1996.
“This was extraordinary. The numbers of people dying dropped by over 70 per cent in just 18 months. To see that dawning realization that people were going to live and not die was absolutely fabulous.”
But it also meant the Trust completely re-thinking its purpose. “Our services now reflect a very different relationship. They’re tailored around moments of crisis – such as the initial diagnosis or going on to treatment.”
A new challenge is sustaining awareness. A third of people with HIV in Britain don’t know they have the infection.
“There is a worryingly low level of HIV knowledge and that is where having proper and effective sex education in schools is vital. We have failed to do this and to equip each new generation to understand the risk around HIV and to better enjoy their journey into sex and relationships.”
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