Programme Manager

Paul Burns

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0121 689 1090

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paul.burns@dancexchange.org.uk

I graduated in History of Art from Manchester University in 1998 and worked in a bookshop, as a professional classical vocalist and in local authority arts development before my first proper job in the arts at Arts Council England, West Midlands (then West Midlands Arts). Having started working in the Visual Arts department, I later became a Policy and Resources Officer with particular responsibility for arts and regeneration/social inclusion activity, which gave me the opportunity to meet and work with a number of fantastic arts organisations. One of these was Punch Records, an arts organisation, social enterprise, record shop and promotions company in Birmingham run by Ammo Talwar MBE. In 2002 Ammo offered me a job as his general manager and together with a fantastic group of artists I developed and produced a range of education and performance projects including touring dance and music work, visual arts commissions, academic research and Europe's largest DJ conference. During this period I also won awards from Channel 4 and Arts and Business for my work, which was nice.

In 2005 I left Punch to work on the national team at Arts Council England developing and implementing The Arts Award (a nationally recognised arts leadership qualification for young people) and also to begin to develop my own work as a freelance arts manager/producer working with a range of dance and music artists and writing about dance and the arts.

In November 2007 I joined DanceXchange as Programme Coordinator, managing the Patrick Centre programme during the development of International Dance Festival Birmingham 2008, and was then fortunate enough to be offered the permanent post of Programme Manager. In my role at DanceXchange I am primarily responsible for programming and managing the professional performance programme at The Patrick Centre, maintaining the venue’s status as a one of the UK’s most important centres for the creation of new dance works and for creating links with regionally based dance artists. My role also includes developing and managing the performance programme for International Dance Festival Birmingham, our biennial dance festival, now one of the biggest in Europe. This means you’ll generally find me either at my desk, out visiting artists, venues and dance companies, or watching dance in a theatre or studio somewhere, all of which are pretty nice places to spend your time. As a passionate advocate of Birmingham as my adopted home I also try to develop links with other arts organisations in the region, and I’m currently developing a major research and archive project investigating the history of social dance in the city.

When I'm not working or watching dance, I'm generally reading, going to other arts events (particularly music and visual arts) or going for walks in the countryside.