About us

Alan Davey - Chief Executive

Alan Davey was appointed Chief Executive of the Arts Council in November 2007.

Alan was Director for Culture at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport from 2003 until December 2006, having previously worked in the Department as Head of the Arts Division since 2001. In an earlier stint at the then Department of National Heritage he was responsible for designing the National Lottery.

Alan has also worked at the Department of Health, where he led the Modernising Division and held the post of Secretary to the Royal Commission on Long Term Care. He has been a visiting Fulbright/Helen Hamlyn Scholar at the University of Maryland and has degrees from the universities of Birmingham, Oxford and London.

Alan is well known for his passionate interest in, and advocacy of, the arts, as well as for his unrivalled knowledge of public policy in this area.

Executive Director, Advocacy and Communications

Andrew Whyte is Executive Director, Advocacy and Communications for Arts Council England and is currently also acting as interim Executive Director, Arts Strategy.

A former Vice-President of the National Union of Students, Andrew began his professional career in the mid-80s working in campaigning and communications roles in the UK voluntary sector, first as Youth Rights Officer at the British Youth Council and then as Media and Parliamentary Liaison Manager at children’s charity Barnardo’s.

He joined Rupert Murdoch’s News International in 1991, and two years later became Deputy Director of Corporate Affairs. In 1996 he left to join Shell International as an External Affairs Adviser before joining BBC Broadcast as Head of Public Relations in May 1998. He was appointed Head of Corporate and Public Relations for the BBC in August 2000 a post he held until leaving the corporation in September 2005.

A member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Andrew is also a Fellow of the RSA.

Aged 47 and married with two teenage children, Andrew lives in Kent. Andrew is also a trustee and director of the Media Trust and a member of the board of the housing charity Thames Reach.

Executive Director, Arts Planning and Investment

Althea Efunshile has held senior leadership positions within DfES since 2001. In her current post, she leads a team of 80 staff and manages an annual budget of £312m. Her recent achievements include the development and launch of the Children in Care Green Paper. From 2003-2006 she was Director of the Safeguarding Children Group at DfES, where she led and delivered the department’s response to the Bichard Report following the Soham murders. As Director of the DfES’s Children and Young People’s Unit from 2001-2003, Althea set up the £450m Children’s Fund programme to ensure every local authority delivered preventative programmes for 5-12 year olds at risk of social exclusion, and she led the development of the "Outcomes Framework" which has since become an essential aspect of children’s services across the country.

Prior to this, Althea was Director of Education and Community Services, then Director for Education and Culture at the London Borough of Lewisham. Among her achievements was the development of Lewisham’s Cultural Strategy. Althea gained a BA (hons) in Sociology from the University of Essex and a PGCE from Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Executive Director, East

Andrea Stark was appointed Chief Executive of East England Arts in November 1999. She was previously Chief Arts Officer for the City of Dundee and during that time she established the City's new arts department. She was project director for the £10 million Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre, the largest arts lottery project in Scotland at that time.

Andrea's early experience was in youth and community theatre. She moved in the mid-1980s to work in arts development in the North of England, where she became Head of Arts Development for Sunderland City Council. While at Sunderland she established the largest arts development agency for the arts in the North and was associated with the setting up of the National Glass Centre and the Year of Visual Arts.

Executive Director, East Midlands

Laura Dyer, at 34, was the youngest Chief Executive to be appointed to a Regional Arts Board. She was appointed in 2000 as Chief Executive of East Midlands Arts Board.

Previously, Laura was Head of Arts for the London Borough of Croydon, a post she held since 1997. She started her career in the arts as a production assistant to Jill Freud and Company, a small scale theatre company. After completing an MA in Drama at Essex University, she worked in a co-operative theatre company developing new writing and community arts projects. In 1991, she moved to the Garden Festival Wales as Drama Events Officer.

Her first local government job was as Arts Development Officer at the Borough Council of King's Lynn & West Norfolk. This period also involved a secondment to Eastern Arts, where she introduced the Lottery funded Arts for Everyone programme.

Executive Director, London

Moira Sinclair became Executive Director of Arts Council England, London in March 2008, where she is responsible for the support and development of the arts throughout the capital, overseeing a portfolio of over 250 regularly funded organisations, which includes many of the national companies such as the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre, alongside many smaller influential and experimental companies such as Company of Angels and Bigga Fish.

Moira was previously Director of Development for the London office, where she led on strengthening relationships with London’s Mayor and with the 33 boroughs and in placing the arts at the heart of the successful £9.4m cross-sectoral Well London bid. She also worked closely with the other London agencies on cultural planning for the Thames Gateway and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Before joining the Arts Council in 2005, Moira was Director of Vital Arts, an award winning arts and health organisation. She has also worked in local government, and in theatre and production management, with roles at Greencandle Dance Company, Tricycle Theatre and at the Hexagon in Reading among others.

A graduate of Manchester University where she studied drama, Moira became a Clore Fellow in 2004/05.

Executive Director, North East

Mark Robinson has recently been promoted to Executive Director of the North East region; previously he was Director, Arts & Development – a post he has held since 2002. From 2000 to 2002 he was Head of Film, Media and Literature at Northern Arts, and was instrumental in the creation of Northern Film & Media.

He was previously Director of Arts & Humanities at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of Durham (1999-2000) where he researched and published on poetry, literature and education, arts and health, and community development, in academic journals including ‘Medical Humanities’ and ‘Education 3-13’. As Director of Cleveland Arts (1993-99) he set up the Teesside Arts in Education agency, amongst a wide variety of initiatives. Prior to this he worked as a head chef in vegetarian catering, a freelance writer, literature development worker, writer-in-residence in a prison, and directed the Writearound festival for several years.

Mark is a Teesside Common Purpose Graduate and a member of the UK-South East Europe Forum.

He is also a widely published poet and critic whose books include: The Horse Burning Park (Stride 1994), Gaps Between Hills (with Dermot Blackburn and Andy Croft, Scratch 1997), Half A Mind (Flambard 1998), and most recently Words out Loud (Stride 2002), a groundbreaking study of the poetry reading. He is included in many anthologies, including Red Sky at Night: British Socialist Poetry edited by Adrian Mitchell and in German translation in the University of Salzburg Book of Contemporary British Poets So also ist Das. He has also written, with Rebecca O’Rourke, Running Good Writing Groups (University of Leeds, 1995). He has also worked in visual arts and new media, developing and managing a wide range of projects. For ten years he edited Scratch poetry magazine and press. In 2000 a film featuring one of his poems won a Regional Royal Television Society award.

Executive Director, North West

Michael Eakin became Regional Executive Director of North West Arts Board in March 2001. Previously, he was Director of Arts and Leisure for Reading from 1997, with a portfolio including the arts and theatre services as well as libraries, museums and archives, sport and leisure, and tourism.

Michael has been a Board member of Southern Arts Board, and Method and Madness Theatre Company, and was Vice President of the Theatrical Management Association from 1994-1997. He negotiated the establishment of the UK's major world music festival, the WOMAD Festival in Reading, in 1990 and led the joint management team of the Festival through to 2001.

Michael's initial career was in theatre management, in Hillingdon, West London, and then Reading. He worked for Reading Borough Council as Head of Arts and Theatres, where he ran and programmed the major regional presenting theatre and concert hall, The Hexagon. He was also responsible for 21 South Street Arts Centre, The Town Hall (a lottery-funded refurbishment of a 19th century concert hall, museum and art gallery) and the Council's arts development service.

Executive Director, South East

Felicity Harvest is the Executive Director of Arts Council England South East, and a member of the Arts Council's national Executive Board. After completing a drama degree, Felicity worked for many years in arts organisations, first as a theatre designer and subsequently as a publicist and administrator. Her jobs during this period ranged from being milliner at the RSC to running a community cinema in East London.

During the 1980s she was a partner in a consultancy firm specialising in local authority arts and leisure audits, and on training artists to work in institutional settings. She also was for a time a local authority member. She joined West Midlands Arts as director of development in 1990, moving to South East Arts as Chief Executive in 1996.

Executive Director, South West

Nick Capaldi was appointed Chief Executive of South West Arts in November 1998, having joined South West Arts 10 years previously as Director of Performing Arts. Nick was Chair of Arts 2000, the national organisation that assisted the Regional Arts Boards with the management and co-ordination of Year of the Artist.

A trained musician, Nick studied at Chethams Music School in Manchester and graduated from the Royal College of Music and City University's Department of Arts Policy and Management. In a varied arts career he has been a performer and teacher, and has broadcast on radio and television. He has also worked in orchestral and event management with organisations including Musica Attacca and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Executive Director, West Midlands

Sally Luton was appointed Chief Executive of the West Midlands Regional Arts Board in November 1996 and is responsible for the strategic leadership and development of this regional cultural agency.

Sally has led the development of the Board's capital strategy and has helped the region become the recipient of the highest amount of lottery capital funding outside London. The Board recently raised £1.3m to establish the first Creative Industries Venture Capital Fund launched by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in March 2000. During her tenure, Sally has introduced new policies for the support of Black and minority ethnic arts, digital media, architecture and international arts and new strategic agreements with the region's 38 local authorities.

Before joining West Midlands Arts, Sally ran a craft gallery, restaurant and workshops complex in Cirencester and has worked in theatre administration, public relations and journalism. Sally is a graduate of the University of Kent and holds an MBA from the University of Aston. She is a Member of the Institute of Personnel & Development (MIPD).

Executive Director, Yorkshire

Andy Carver joined the Arts Council in the merger with the regional arts boards in April 2002.

Prior to that he was briefly Chief Executive of Yorkshire Arts, the regional arts board for Yorkshire and the Humber, having worked for Yorkshire Arts, and its predecessors, in a variety of posts since 1992, including Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Corporate Affairs. Before joining Yorkshire Arts, he was coordinator of a professional community arts organisation in Corby, Northants, having worked in community work, FE teaching and as a community artist for 13 years. As an artist he worked in a variety of fields including graphics and printmaking, photography, music and circus.

Andy lives in a rural area near Holmfirth, West Yorkshire. Leisure interests include music, reading and a lifetime obsession with Manchester City FC.