The shortlist for the Arts Professional Awards 2026 is here, with winners to be announced at the Business of the Arts Summit on 13 May at the Conway Hall, London
Arts Professional of the Year
Stephen Crocker, Norwich Theatre: Under his leadership as chief executive and creative director, Norwich Theatre has doubled turnover from £12m to £25m without public funding, rebalancing the model so ticket income has fallen from 90% to 70% of revenue. He has strengthened the commercial subsidiary with non-executives from Meta, Comparethemarket.com and Apple, and helped secure culture as an area of competence in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. An affordability plan with £10 seats for low-income audiences sits alongside that growth.
Chantelle Culshaw, Dulwich Picture Gallery: As Deputy Director, Chantelle led the Gallery’s £5m Open Art and The Future Plan capital project to completion on time and on budget in September 2025. At its heart is the ArtPlay Pavilion, which she championed as a route out of reliance on temporary-exhibition income; it has welcomed 17,891 attendees, including 9.2% Universal Credit ticket holders and 16% from global-majority communities. She is now sharing the approach at sector conferences as a new blueprint for early-years cultural engagement.
Liam Evans-Ford, Theatr Clwyd: In nearly a decade as chief executive, Liam has led Theatr Clwyd from a 50-staff local authority department with a £4.8m turnover to an independent charity group turning over £14m, recently securing a second five-year Cultural Service Agreement with Flintshire. He steered the £50m Haworth Tompkins redevelopment through to completion in November 2025, gas-free and solar-powered, while productions continued in temporary on-site theatres. Over the same period the theatre has delivered 80+ world premieres and won Olivier, UK and Stage Awards.
Helen Matravers, Polka Theatre: Under Helen’s artistic direction, Polka took over £1m in box office revenue for the first time in 2025, with 115,000+ visitors and a Nutcracker co-production that transferred to the West End. She has launched the artist development scheme Catapult, the Polka Playwriting Award, and an industry day within the Big Dreams Festival. Her advocacy to SOLT/UK Theatre made smaller affiliate theatres eligible for the Olivier Family Show category for the first time, with Polka receiving two nominations in 2026.
Finance Professional of the Year
Neil Goulder, Artichoke: Since joining Artichoke as Finance Director in 2017, Neil has embedded Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief into project design, securing over £4m in tax returns and stabilising the financial model for free, large-scale public art. He provides one-to-one financial guidance to colleagues and introduced an interest-free loan scheme and annual leave buy-back, with staff turnover now at its lowest ever level. For Lumiere 2025 he led the launch of Artichoke’s first box office system, issuing 97,500 tickets and doubling donation income on 2023.
Kerry Llewellyn, Shetland Arts: As director of operations at Shetland Arts, Kerry has led the development of a shared model of financial leadership across three separate island trusts (Shetland Arts, Shetland Recreational Trust and Shetland Amenity Trust), a structure that did not exist before. New ways of working have lifted efficiency across all three and created a culture of open exchange, while also supporting innovation including the adoption of AI. She combines strategic judgement with pastoral care, acting as trusted deputy at Shetland Arts.
Susan McIntosh, Edinburgh International Festival: Susan joined EIF as Director of Finance and Commercial days before Covid forced the Festival’s first cancellation; under her leadership, annual income has since grown from around £13m to £20m, a 54% increase. She has led the replacement of EIF’s patchwork finance platform, the rebuilding of the HR function, and the complex exit from the Lothian Pension Scheme, and now chairs the working group exploring new premises. EIF has also become the first charity and first arts organisation globally accepted onto the BSI Net Zero Pathway.
Fran Sanderson, Figurative: As CEO of Figurative, Fran brings public, private and philanthropic capital together to support the cultural and creative sector, having been instrumental in the Arts Impact Fund and launched the £20m Arts & Culture Impact Fund in 2020. Since Figurative’s spin-out from Nesta in 2024 she has led its merger with New Philanthropy for Arts & Culture and developed a Theatre Tax Relief cashflow loan scheme. She is currently leading research with Arts Council England and Creative PEC on financing net-zero cultural buildings.
Excellent Business Model Innovation
Dulwich Picture Gallery: Two hundred years after opening as the world’s first purpose-built public art gallery, Dulwich has reshaped its model around the ArtPlay Pavilion, a year-round, low-carbon early-years space by Carmody Groarke, co-created with HoLD Art Collective and local families. The move reduces reliance on temporary-exhibition footfall: ArtPlay has delivered £157,410 in ticket income (14% above budget) at 81% capacity in its opening months, attracting 9.2% Universal Credit ticket holders and 16% global-majority visitors. Passive ventilation, recycled materials and a ground-source heat pump have reduced estate-wide emissions by 30%.
New Art Exchange, Nottingham: NAE has introduced a permanent, citizen-led model of organisational leadership centred on its VOICE Assembly, with local Hyson Green residents embedded within leadership and shaping programming, commissioning, strategy and resource allocation. The model extends into commercial activity, with the trading subsidiary aligning venue hire, hospitality and partnerships to community priorities. Within six months, the Assembly had delivered around 65% of its action plan and influenced over £285,000 in funding decisions; visitor numbers are up 22%, global-majority attendance up 48%, and overall income up 50%.
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment: In 2020 the OAE became the first UK orchestra to make its home in a state school, taking up residence at Camden’s non-selective Acland Burghley School. Lower rent directly supports school budgets, while bespoke programmes serve a community in which 43% of students are of global-majority heritage, 44% receive Pupil Premium and 26% have SEN; Music GCSE passes rose 10% in 2025. The partnership has produced the Dreamchasing Young Producers after-school club and the acclaimed collaboration Breaking Bach, touring internationally in 2027.
Royal Armouries Entertainment: Launched by Adam Lumb during the pandemic, Royal Armouries Entertainment has replaced the declining traditional museum image-library model with a full-service IP solutions offer across film, TV and games. The business has grown tenfold in two years, supporting entertainment companies from concept to launch with consulting, licensing, filming, activations and launch marketing. Clients include Baz Luhrmann’s Joan of Arc, eOne Hasbro’s Dungeons & Dragons, Bethesda’s Doom, Final Fantasy and Games Workshop.
Excellent Partnership / Collaboration
Activate Performing Arts and National Landscapes Association (Nature Calling): Nature Calling (2023-2025) brought together the National Landscapes Association, Activate and artists working across six National Landscapes, responding to the Landscapes Review’s call for greater inclusivity. It secured the first Defra investment in a national arts programme of this scale alongside ACE funding, with Activate leading training for 50+ National Landscapes staff and a dedicated programme for artists. More than 8,000 people participated and live audiences topped 55,000, with 34% from diverse backgrounds, 24% identifying as disabled and 21% from low-income households.
Arts Councils of England, Ireland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Creative Scotland (All In): The five UK and Irish arts councils have jointly launched All In, a new access scheme for deaf, disabled, neurodivergent and learning-disabled audiences, free to users and entirely funded by the councils. It is underpinned by 94 bespoke Accessibility Standards for Creativity & Culture covering the built environment, digital communications, customer service and accessible cultural experiences. An additional £500k has since been committed by the UK and Irish governments to deepen cross-border aspects, and its success was highlighted in Lady Hodge’s review of Arts Council England.
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment: The OAE’s ongoing partnership with Camden’s Acland Burghley School sees players on site more than 150 days a year, working with senior leadership, the SEN team and the Music, Dance and Drama faculty to embed the arts across curricular and extracurricular provision. Joint work includes the Dreamchasing Young Producers after-school club, which has helped ABS become the first school in Camden to offer a T Level in Broadcast, Media and Production. In 2024-25 the partnership enabled 2,192 students, families and residents to experience world-class artists at low or no cost.
Rambert, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and NHS Manchester (Early Moves): Early Moves is a creative-health partnership tackling Greater Manchester’s low school-readiness rates by embedding Rambert’s Creative Dance for Early Years syllabus within the nursery workforce itself. The 2025 pilot trained 28 practitioners as “movement champions” across 16 settings in the region’s ten boroughs, prioritising more disadvantaged areas, with research partnerships now developing with UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Goldsmiths’ Baby Lab. An independent GMCA-commissioned evaluation found increased engagement and wellbeing for every child evaluated, with unanimous recommendation from setting managers.
Excellent Solution
ARC, Stockton Arts Centre: Tees Valley New Creatives, commissioned by Tees Valley Combined Authority in 2021 and delivered by ARC, tackles the loss of creative talent at the point of graduation through free, member-responsive career clinics, business advice, internships and industry networking. 106 members (59.88% of membership) have secured creative employment to date, 28 have started creative businesses, and members have filled 300+ paid creative opportunities. Sir Nick Serota has described TVNC as a valuable contributor to talent development and a model that other places might follow.
Cog Design: Working with Park Theatre and ticketing provider Spektrix, Cog Design built a new in-purchase donation tool that replaces the usual small fixed top-up with an interactive slider showing the gap between ticket price and the true cost of staging a show. The design is deliberately bold about the economics of live theatre, encouraging audiences to pay towards true cost rather than adding a small donation to restricted funds. Since launch, Park Theatre has seen a 40% uplift in donation income and almost three times as many donations as the previous year.
Compton Verney House Charity: Between summer 2024 and February 2026, Compton Verney delivered its largest infrastructure upgrade since opening, installing 160 solar panels, an air-source heat pump, a new gallery chilling system, an electric shuttle bus and a restored lake-source heat pump. Annual energy use is down by more than a third, carbon emissions have fallen by 170 tonnes, energy bills have dropped £175,000, and the site is now oil-free. Nearly £500,000 was raised from nine external funders, safeguarding museum accreditation, international loans, and the Learning Centre that hosts 6,000 pupils a year.
Julie’s Bicycle: First developed in 2009, the Creative Climate Tools are the world’s first bespoke, free-to-use carbon calculator and toolkit for the creative sector, available in seven languages and regularly updated to meet major funders’ reporting requirements. Since 2021, over 2,000 organisations in 20 countries, from orchestras and festivals to museums and music venues, have used them, with qualitative reporting features producing sector-wide insight beyond carbon data. Emissions across the Arts Council England portfolio have fallen by an average of 50% since reporting became a funding requirement in 2012.
Excellent Research or Policy Intervention
Arts Councils of England, Ireland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Creative Scotland (All In): All In brings the five UK and Irish arts councils together behind a single, entirely publicly funded access scheme for deaf, disabled, neurodivergent and learning-disabled audiences, a rare expression of UK-Ireland cross-border cultural collaboration. Its 94 Accessibility Standards for Creativity & Culture provide the sector in all five nations with a common reference point for the built environment, digital communications, customer service and accessible cultural experiences. The UK Prime Minister and Irish Taoiseach recently announced an additional £500k to deepen the scheme, and its success was highlighted in Lady Hodge’s review of Arts Council England.
Creative PEC (State of the Nations): State of the Nations is Creative PEC’s flagship research series covering arts, culture and heritage, R&D and clusters, internationalisation and creative education, delivered with researchers at Newcastle, Sheffield and Sussex universities and consultancy Work Advance. Since launch it has produced 14 reports, two of which prompted Channel 4 News specials on the underrepresentation of working-class workers in TV and film, and the decline in creative further education. The 2025 Creative Industries Sector Plan cited Creative PEC research 26 times, accompanied by £100m for creative clusters, a £150m Creative Places Growth Fund, a £75m screen growth package and £30m for video games.
Future Arts Centres: In partnership with Arup, Future Arts Centres produced the first sector-wide analysis of capital investment need for UK arts centres, drawing on 90 venues that collectively welcome 9.4 million visitors a year. The findings, that 78% of centres had been unable to complete planned building works and more than 60% had undertaken no renovation in a decade, were taken directly to Parliament, prompting 37 MPs to write to DCMS ministers. It was the only sector-wide evidence cited in the Hodge Review of Arts Council England and contributed to the context for January’s £1.5bn cultural capital funding announcement.
Society of London Theatre / UK Theatre: SOLT/UK Theatre led the evidence-based campaign that secured permanent higher Theatre Tax Relief rates from April 2025, using data showing the higher rates save producers £85.7m annually and generate a 4:1 return for the public purse. They coordinated intensive engagement with theatres, producers, foreign investors and parliamentarians, and aligned advocacy with orchestras, museums and other cultural bodies also reliant on their data. Their new State of UK Theatre report provides the first unified, authoritative UK-wide dataset on the sector, with the 2026 edition showing theatre audiences growing in the West End and the regions even as visitor attractions and cinemas decline.
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