John Kieffer

John Kieffer has over 25 years' experience in UK and international cultural policy, arts management, arts programming, creative industries development, and the music industry.

 

In the late 70s and 80s John worked as a live music and spoken word promoter and arts festival programmer while running a record distribution company for jazz and contemporary music. Festival 79 in Brighton was one of the first major live art festivals in the UK.

 

Through the rest of the 80s he then worked for the arts & disability charity Shape, Greater London Arts on jazz development, and with community publishing initiatives. In 1989 he joined the London Docklands Development Corporation as Arts Development Manager in the latter days of the regeneration authority, establishing an arts programme featuring young British visual artists from the Goldsmiths school and the burgeoning visual arts scene of the time, a public art commissioning scheme, and a full range of arts education initiatives.

 

In 1992 he was appointed as Director of Arts for London Arts with responsibility for all art-form policy - literature, music, theatre, dance, visual arts, crafts, interdisciplinary arts - and funding in London as well as the assessment of major National Lottery applications.

 

From 1997-99 he worked simultaneously as:

 

- the Director of the Arts Foundation, the fellowship scheme for individual artists;
- as a Programme Associate for Artangel, the pioneering arts organisation with a unique collaborative approach to commissioning on Jem Finer's Longplayer and Scanner's Surface Noise; and as
- consultant to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Media Trust's Community Channel, and the Kings Cross Partnership.

 

Prior to joining AEA, John was for 6 years the Director of Performing Arts and Head of Music for the British Council where he introduced major changes in the form and content of the programme. He brought about a substantial engagement with the music industry and commissioned the Council's weekly music radio show, the Selector which won a Gold Sony award in 2005. John produced D+10, a joint UK/South Africa cultural celebration of 10 years of democracy in 2004.

 

With Double Shot, AEA and as an independent, John has worked with Tate Modern, Glyndebourne, Creativity Culture & Education, the BBC, UVA, CC-Lab, the Design Museum, the Architecture Foundation, the Music Manifesto, International PEN, Arts Council England, Bigga Fish, B3 Media, the De La Warr Pavilion, Artquest, the BASS Festival, A New Direction, the London Design Festival, the Clore Leadership Programme and many others.

 

He has substantial experience in the governance of arts organisations and cultural projects, including as chair of Artangel, and as a trustee of A New Direction, Artsadmin and the BBC Performing Arts Fund.

 

John is regularly called on to give advice and has served on the steering committees of the Music Manifesto and Connect. He sat on the government's Music Exports and Creative Exports advisory groups, and is an adviser to City University on cultural management and the creative industries, and to Tate Modern. He acts as a mentor and adviser to a number of creative producers and SMEs.

 

He has lectured and appeared at public events including City University, the Sorbonne, M4Music in Zurich, Arts Marketing Association and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He writes, blogs and broadcasts on the arts and creative industries, and has appeared on BBC radio and television. John is a Fellow of the RSA.

 

John along with John Newbigin, Shelagh Wright and John Holden has co-edited a book on the creative economy and the recession published in April 2009.

 

In his spare time John occasionally jumps out of planes, consumes too much culture, obsesses about one part of his record collection or another, hangs out with friends, stresses about Arsenal FC, visits South Africa as often as possible, and writes fiction and poetry.

 

Key influences: Professor Stuart Hall, Miles Davis, J S Bach, Mark Rothko, Joni Mitchell, John Coltrane, Paul Evans, Jane Root, Sun Ra, Richard Cupidi, John Zorn, Michael Morris and James Lingwood of Artangel, my friends, colleagues, and family.

 

Favourite quote: "Do not fear mistakes. There are none." Miles Davis

 

	2008 - 2009 Independent Arts Producer, Cultural Broker, Consultant, Double Shot Consulting Associate, AEA Associate - -
	2005 - 2007 Senior Consultant - AEA Consulting (United Kingdom) -
	1999 - 2005 Director of Performing Arts and Head of Music - British Council UK and South Africa (United Kingdom) -
	1997 - 1998 Freelance - (United Kingdom) - Worked with Artangel, Media Trust, Kings Cross Partnership, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and others
	1997 - 1998 Director - Arts Foundation (United Kingdom) -
	1997 - 1998 Programme Associate - Artangel (United Kingdom) -
	1991 - 1997 Director of Arts - London Arts (Arts Council) (United Kingdom) -
	1989 - 1991 Arts Development Manager - London Docklands Development Corporation (United Kingdom) -
	1988 - 1989 Music Officer - Greater London Arts (United Kingdom) -
	1984 - 1987 Coordinator - Shape London (United Kingdom) -
	1978 - 1983 Freelance - (United Kingdom) - Worked on live music promotion, festival programming, event management, community publishing, music distribution etc

Wright, Shelagh, John Newbigin, John Holden and John Kieffer (Eds.) (2009) After The Crunch, London, CCS, ISSN/ISBN:978-086355-624-1