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How are we going to work together?
Every engagement starts the same way: a conversation, then a short written proposal setting out scope, timeline and cost — so you know exactly what you’re buying before anything begins. From there, work usually takes one of three shapes.
Investment that answers to people
Delivering investment that has to answer to people
If you’re a developer, contractor or a health or energy business bidding for publicly-backed work, the strategy is only half the job. The other half is social value, community benefit, evaluation and inclusion — done credibly enough to survive scrutiny. My background is in funding, governance and culture, so I can help you design that side in from the beginning rather than scrambling for it near the end.
Some of what I bring:
Funding secured from Arts Council England, the Henry Moore Foundation, the Paul Mellon Centre and others.
Growing experience writing large-scale public bids, including a UK Shared Prosperity Fund application to support 142 cultural enterprises.
Board leadership, including trustee and interim chair of a £2m-turnover arts organisation, and incoming Co-Chair of New Contemporaries.
Community-facing delivery in settings as demanding as NHS mental-health care, with clients including Harewood House, Hospital Rooms and Arts Catalyst.
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Advisory Days
For: a specific decision, a second pair of eyes, a knotty problem.
What it looks like: one or more structured days — briefing materials read in advance, focused working sessions with your team (in person or remote), and a written summary of recommendations within the week. Sometimes one day is all a problem needs.
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Retained support
For: organisations that need senior strategic or governance capacity without a full-time hire.
What it looks like: one to four days a month, embedded enough to know how your organisation actually runs — attending key meetings, advising leadership, working alongside your team. Reviewed quarterly, so it continues only while it’s earning its place.
Not sure which fits? That’s what the first conversation is for — get in touch.
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Projects
For: a defined piece of work with a deliverable — a strategy, a governance review, a financial model, a workforce plan, an evaluation or social value assessment, a feasibility study, a funding bid.
What it looks like: fixed scope, fixed price, agreed upfront. Typically four to twelve weeks: discovery (reading documents, interviewing people, analysing the numbers), a working draft you respond to, then a final version built to be used — board-ready, funder-ready or implementation-ready.
The gap this work fills
Across Teesside and the North East, organisations are taking on resources faster than anyone could build the capacity those resources demand. Regeneration and cultural funding arrive with evaluation, social value and governance obligations attached; new organisations form around programmes before their boards have settled; growing businesses hit the moment where strategy, workforce and risk can no longer be run on instinct. None of this is a failure — it is what growth under pressure looks like.
What matters most, in my experience, is sequence: governance and financial clarity first, because every other decision stands on them; evaluation designed at the start, not assembled at the end; and workforce and access built into plans rather than retrofitted. Most of the expensive problems I’m brought in to fix are cheap problems that waited.w you around.