Nigel Singh

Chief Executive Officer, Audiences Central  (March 2008–present)
Audiences Central is one of ten national agencies that provide audience development and strategic marketing to a range of fee-paying members and strategic stakeholders. The organisation has 85 members that range from large cultural organisations such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, The New Art Gallery Walsall and the Birmingham Hippodrome, to smaller practitioners such as Capsule, Fierce and Shropshire’s Meadow Gallery. After 15 years struggling to explain the definition of arts development to my mother, I now have to do the same with audience development.
 

Head of Arts & Museums, Staffordshire County Council (2004–2008)
In my last post at a local authority I was responsible for the management of a county arts and museum service, including cultural venues, the arts and museum development programme, funding schemes, and associated staff and financial resources. We tried to run this service innovatively, and were led by partnership and delivery. Within an hierarchical local government structure, this was not without a few challenges!
Strategic Arts Development Officer, Staffordshire County Council (1997–2004)
I was responsible for frontline, cutting edge arts development work, including public arts, working with hard to reach groups, arts and health, visual arts and partnership projects using creative consultation. This was all about advocating arts development and finding new ways to prove the validity of the arts.
Newhampton Arts Centre Manager, Wolverhampton MBC (1994–1997)
After a year on the dole I was a finance assistant in the local arts centre, clueless at this stage about arts development. This performing arts centre housed eight companies as well as music, dance and theatre facilities. My duties were varied – from lighting a dodgy arts boiler to appeasing local gangs and providing pastoral care for the vagrant who slept in our outside toilet block.
Manager, Bilston Art Gallery, Wolverhampton MBC (1992–1994)
Music saved my soul during my college years and as a musician it has been my good fortune to run two visual arts galleries – I haven’t quite worked that one out. This small contemporary craft gallery was (and is) a little gem. It was not without audience development difficulties, as it was sometimes difficult to convince Bilston residents of the relevancy of contemporary craft.
PR Junior Consultant (1986–1989) and Junior Political Consultant, Murray Evans PLC (1990–1992)
Pre college and at the tender age of 17, I started stuffing 6,000 envelopes a day. Two years later I was co-ordinating lobbying activity for clients including Victim Support, BMW, British Gas and some minor political figure called Margaret Thatcher. What a grounding! This was the first (and last) time I wore a pinstripe suit and red braces, and yes… I had a Filofax.