Photo: Tom Platinum Morley
● About
About Jade
Jade Foster is a curatorial and business consultant based in Yarm, North Yorkshire. Their practice brings together strategy, commissioning-led exhibition-making, collection-based research and organisational development, working with commercial, public sector and non-profit organisations across Teesside, the North East and beyond.
As a consultant, Jade works on strategy and futures planning, financial modelling, workforce design, governance and risk. They have secured funding from the Henry Moore Foundation, Arts Council England, the Paul Mellon Centre, the Bagri Foundation and the Elephant Trust; written applications totalling over £100,000 — including a UK Shared Prosperity Fund bid supporting 142 cultural enterprises — and held board leadership roles, including trustee and interim chair of a £2m-turnover arts organisation. They are incoming Co-Chair of New Contemporaries, the UK’s longest-running platform for emerging artists, which has identified and launched careers over 75 years — from the YBAs to recent Turner Prize winners. They are completing an MBA in Cultural and Creative Leadership at Teesside University, with Chartered Manager status awarded on completion.
● Mission & Philosophy
Principles
● Evidence before opinion
Every recommendation I make is grounded in analysis — financial, structural and human. I read the accounts, the data and the room before I advise, so decisions can be defended to a board, an auditor or a sceptical team.
● Say the true thing
Advice worth paying for includes what is uncomfortable. I am independent and direct — which means telling you what nobody inside the organisation can before it becomes expensive.
● Built for everyone, from the start
Organisations work better when access and inclusion are designed in, not bolted on. I bring this into strategy, workforce planning and governance as a matter of rigour — because it is how you retain people, reach markets and meet your duties.
● Build for after I leave
The measure of good consultancy is what remains when it ends. I transfer capability, document decisions and strengthen your systems — so you are not buying dependency on a consultant.
● About
Born in Sandwell and of Afro-Caribbean heritage, Jade’s curatorial career spans roles at Primary, Disability Arts in Shropshire (DASH) and New Art Exchange, alongside consultancy and commissions for Harewood House, Hospital Rooms, Peer, Arts Catalyst, CCA Glasgow and Glasgow International. They have supported artists at early institutional moments who have since presented at the Venice Biennale, won the Turner Prize and entered major museum collections, and they have delivered talks and keynotes for Tate Britain, the British Art Network, Clore Leadership and CCCADI, New York.
Their research and editorial work operates nationally and internationally. They are Founding Editor of Voice ≠ Speech, a peer-reviewed open-access journal with an international editorial board, and Founding Director of Black Curators Collective, a national infrastructure organisation supporting Black women and non-binary curators. Their writing has been published in Art Monthly, ArtReview, LUX, Camera Austria International and Corridor8, alongside the introduction to the first monograph on Maia Ruth Lee for Radius Books. They hold an MA in History of Art from UCL, awarded with Distinction and supported by the Fer-Garb Scholarship.