Our Activities

Creative enterprise

Arts centres as creative enterprises

Since December 2024, we have been hosting a series of online talks for all FAC members, with invited guests – often from beyond the arts sector – considering ‘if you were running an arts centre, what would you do?’

 

Upcoming sessions

The Autumn 2025 programme will be on the following dates:

  • Thu 18 Sep, 8.30am-9.45am – with Andy Street

  • Thu 30 Oct, 8.30am-9.45am – with Thangam Debbonaire

  • Thu 4 Dec, 8.30am-9.45am – with Dominic Campbell

 

 

Andy Street

Sir Andy Street served as the first Mayor of the West Midlands from 2017 to 2024, helping to establish the West Midlands Combined Authority and oversee a huge influx of public and private investment into his home region. Prior to that he was managing director of John Lewis (having started his career there as a graduate trainee), guiding the employee-owned business to one of the most successful spells in its history – culminating in the department store chain being named the most trusted brand in Britain.

He currently chairs Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and previously chaired the Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership. He has also served as the lead non-executive director for the Department for Communities and Local Government, as well as a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group. He was awarded a CBE in 2015 for services to economic growth, and was knighted in 2025 for services to public service.

Andy will be sharing with us: Thursday 18th September 2025, 8.30am-9.45am.

 

 

Thangam Debbonaire

Baroness Thangam Debbonaire is a Labour Member of the House of Lords and was MP for Bristol West 2015-2024. She runs Red Frock Ltd., providing assistance to businesses and arts and culture organisations, clients have included Southbank Centre, the Opera network UK and The Art Fund.

She served in Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinets, most recently as Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Thangam’s current work includes arts policy, international cultural partnerships and diplomacy, copyright and AI. She chairs Labour Women’s Network and the Parthenon Project and sits on the boards of Sadler’s Wells and LabourList.

Before Parliament Thangam worked for 25 years in gender equality and domestic violence prevention, nationally and internationally.

Thangam will be sharing with us: Thursday 30th October 2025, 8.30am-9.45am.

 

Dominic Campbell

Dominic is a public service entrepreneur with a background in organisational change, strategy and leadership. He is passionate about the role of 21st century approaches to transforming organisations and our economy, acting as an advisor and thought leader to all levels of government in the UK, US, Australia and many places in between.

With senior leadership experience in government, Dominic has delivered large change initiatives starting with the London Borough of Barnet and more recently the transformation of Homes England as their first Chief Digital Officer. In 2008, Dominic founded FutureGov, a UK and Australia-based consultancy that helped to bring digital and design into the heart of government transformation (acquired by TPXImpact in 2019).

Until recently, Dominic was based in Washington, D.C. where he spent a year as a Fellow at the Beeck Center at Georgetown University focused on enabling better governmental collaboration across all levels of public services in the United States. Now living in Barcelona, Spain, Dominic is Partner at UK public service venture studio Impossible Ideas, inventing and investing in transformative new organisations – from foster care to community lending, case management for community organisation to AI for social workers.

Aside from those roles, Dominic is an investor in promising public service start-ups such as Hello Lamp Post (community engagement), Beam (supporting the homeless into employment), Plinth (enabling public and third sector collaboration) and Bloom Money (banking underserved immigrant communities across the UK).

Dominic will be sharing with us: Thursday 4th December 2025, 8.30am-9.45am.

 

 

Previous sessions

Imwen Eke 

Imwen is an experience designer and social games creator, who’s curious about creative technology. She explores technology, participation and game mechanics, focusing mostly on Play in Adulthood and co-creation.

Imwen Eke is an Experience Designer, Social Games Practitioner, Creative Technician, Educator, Consultant and TEDX Speaker. She tours the sensorium of technology, participation, game mechanics and play to explore new conversations and narratives for culturally curious audiences. Her focus is on Play in Adulthood and co-creation. Imwen creates work through her games studio New Party Rules Labs.

She is Advisory Board Chair of MyWorld, co-founder of the Livesey Exchange and co-founder of Black Excellence Global Network.

Imwen joined us on Thursday 5 June 2025.

 

John Knell

John Knell is one of the UK’s leading thinkers on the changing face of work and organisations, and as a strategy consultant works widely across the private, public and third sectors. He is also known as an incisive and provocative (when required) influencer of policy and practice.

Over the last twenty years he has built an international reputation as a cultural policy analyst, working with governments, funders, cities and major cultural institutions around the world. He is an internationally recognised thought leader in cultural policy and cultural value measurement, and is the Director of Counting What Counts, which delivers the Impact & Insight Toolkit for funded NPOs.

John has authored numerous reports on work, the labour market, organisational change, and arts and policy focused public reports – most recently a report on Impact Investing for Taylor Vinters (who were recently acquired by Mishcon De Reya) and the National Theatre funded Scene Change report on business model innovation in the performing arts sector. John is currently the Chair of Crafts Council.

John joined us on Thursday 8 May 2025.

 

Andy Haldane 

Andy is the Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). He was formerly Chief Economist at the Bank of England and a member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee. He was the Permanent Secretary for Levelling Up at the Cabinet Office from September 2021 to March 2022. Andrew is Founder and President of the charity Pro Bono Economics, Vice-Chair of the charity National Numeracy and Chair of the National Numeracy Leadership Council. Andy chairs the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre’s Industrial Board. He is contributing editor at the Financial Times and Chief Economic Advisor at PwC. Among other positions, he is Honorary Professor at the Universities of Nottingham, Manchester and Exeter, Visiting Professor at King’s College, London and a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Social Sciences.

Andy joined us on Thursday 6 February 2025.

 

Louise Stewart

Louise is an experienced CEO in the culture, tourism, events and leisure sector.  She became CEO of Chester Race Company in March 2022 responsible for leading the company, which operates Chester, Bangor-on-Dee and Musselburgh racecourses as well as a hotel, city centre bar, and significant catering and gaming divisions.

Previously CEO of Alexandra Palace, one of the country’s largest independent event venues, she oversaw the successful delivery of a £30m restoration programme, the growth of own brand events, increased revenues and significant improvements in visitor experience, organisational culture and reputation.

Louise joined us on Thursday 8 May 2024.

 

History of the Creative Enterprise group

In early 2024, a small group of FAC members met six times to interrogate the current picture and identify future activities that might be useful for the wider FAC network.

Activity included a combination of workshops and provocations from external speakers including Steve Chalke founder of the Oasis Trust, Rachel Green from Nesta, Dominic Campbell from Impossible Ideas and Mike Harris, founder of 89UP. Members can access some of the slides from these speakers in our Resources (password protected).

Conversations and outcomes were wide-ranging, and included:

  • Business and asset model analyses of a ‘typical arts centre’ which contributed to FAC’s Sector Insight Report,
  • Establishing new, practical workshops delivered in partnership with Achates, and a new action research group designed to strengthen individual giving initiatives,
  • Peer-learning and planned workshops for all FAC network to increase awareness, understanding and access to creative tax reliefs.

The current programme of online talks resulted from this group; building on the thinking from the previous action research group, we hope that these speakers will inspire members to develop the assets, relationships and opportunities of our art centre in fresh ways.

© 2025 Future Arts Centres