Meet our team: Graeme Calvert, Senior Officer
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What does your role involve?
I spend lots of time designing and delivering a range of internal and external learning initiatives across all areas of our work – so I’m up and down the country training staff in our nine offices and making guidance documents, quizzes and videos. I also create the ‘how to apply’ information sheets and Easy Read guides funding applicants can find on our website. We know that there is a lot of information attached to our funding programmes, and it can be overwhelming to applicants for all sorts of reasons, so being as accessible as we can be is really important to me, and the Arts Council.
What was your career like before joining the Arts Council, and what made you apply to work here?
This is my second stint working here, having previously had roles in Grant Management, Assessment Support, Investment Systems and Enquiries. I’ve also worked for a big insurance firm, a college, in banking, advertising, sales, hospitality, factories and built stages and seating for live events and conferences. A role at the Arts Council really appealed to me because I wanted my work to be for something more than lining someone else’s pockets. The work we do changes lives in a positive way, and it’s worth being a part of that.
What’s the best thing about working at Arts Council?
Through talking to people and reading funding applications, I’ve discovered some of my favourite artists that I otherwise wouldn’t have heard about!
What have you learned from working here that you didn’t expect?
The administration of public funds requires a lot of rigorous process so that it can be closely scrutinised, as it should be. I’ve developed my skills in analysis, risk management, business administration, logic modelling and public speaking. All sorts of really interesting and applicable things that you don’t traditionally associate with arts and culture.
What’s your favourite memory of arts and culture?
Too many to choose from! I’m a post-rock, prog-rock, math-rock, shoegaze geek, so seeing 65daysofstatic play their first album start to finish at Manchester Cathedral was pretty spectacular. I’m also quite into new and immersive tech, and last year I saw Marshmallow Laser Feast’s immersive VR experience “We live in an ocean of air” at the Saatchi Gallery, which blew me away.
Tell us something interesting about yourself
I lived in a shipping container in the Australian bush for three months while volunteering over there. I was mostly burning land in preparation for the dry season (never more relevant than now with Australia’s record bushfires), as well as building rudimentary structures from trees, going on ‘croc surveys’, helping tourists to “Be Croc Aware” and working with local Aboriginal artists to sell their art. Aboriginal art is a kind of language and, if you learn to read it, you can see stories in the pictures. It’s fascinating stuff.
Finally, what do you want to do in the future?
I’m also an (amateur) musician – I play the guitar, piano and bass and I produce music too, and I seem to constantly be writing an album or a novel. Maybe I’ll finish one of them one day!
