Simon Cronshaw: Co-founder, Culture Label

As co-founder of CultureLabel.com, Simon uniquely combines a specialist understanding of consumer behaviours and cultural consumption with expertise in digital strategies. He co-authored the book, Intelligent Naivety, as a practical handbook to commercial income generation in not-for-profit arts organisations.

Prior to creating CultureLabel, Simon headed up the research unit at a national government arts agency, working with a number of internationally recognised management theorists on better understanding the role of arts and culture in today’s consumer marketplace.

Simon works with CultureLabel’s arts clients to deliver innovative new commercial income strategies which unite commercial expertise, specialist technologies and cultural environments.

Simon is a regular speaker on the subject of cultural entrepreneurship and digital trends, and was recently keynote speaker for the National Heritage Board’s annual ‘Business of Heritage’ conference in Singapore.

Rohan Gunatillake: Lead Producer, Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab

Currently based in Scotland, Rohan heads up the Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab - a major new initiative which explores how the twelve Edinburgh Festivals can take best advantage of digital innovation and in the doing help articulate what it is to be a festival in the 21st century.

Rohan is also a director of Mission Models Money, a sector-led think/do tank which researches and tests new ways of working in the UK cultural sector.

Prior to braving the world as a freelance producer and consultant, Rohan worked for NESTA, Accenture and IBM. When not working in the cultural sector, Rohan is also an award-winning blogger and starter-upper specialising in modern meditation and urban wellbeing.

Natalie Melton: Commercial Director, Arts and Business

Natalie holds overall responsibility for consultancy services and the business membership network at Arts & Business, providing direct support and advice to business, brokering introductions and partnerships and initiating research into new areas of cultural and commercial collaborations, working with companies such as Sky Arts, the Co-op, Microsoft, American Express and Crossrail. Natalie has a particular interest in technology, working with the research team at A&B to develop a two year programme of research into the impact of digital technology on commercial and cultural collaborations, which includes the report on which today’s presentation is based. Natalie also leads on Crafted, a major initiative to support the development of craftsmanship in the UK by partnering craft businesses with leading luxury brands.

Prior to joining Arts & Business, Natalie was Chief Executive of Weston Spirit Enterprise, the trading arm of national youth charity Weston Spirit and before that was a co-founder and director of a digital communications agency that worked primarily within the creative industries. Natalie speaks about the relationship between culture and commerce regularly both in the UK and abroad.

Jill O’Neill: Founder, ReFound

Originally from Belfast, Jill lived and worked Glasgow, New York, San Francisco and London before returning Belfast in 2007. After a career in publishing at SPIN Magazine, Readymade and Emap Advertising, Jill returned to Ireland working on the business of art, at Arts & Business. Jill later joined her current employer Business in the Community, working with companies in the area of responsible business practice.

The nomadic nature of 12 years living in 4 large cities, collecting vintage finds and decorating countless apartments with affordable furniture, Jill was inspired to set up ReFound - an art collective which transforms unwanted, reclaimed furniture it into stylish, ‘upcycled’, contemporary ‘works of furniture’. ReFound and its pop-up shops has attracted much attention in its first year of activity and promises to continue with its ever-growing Collective of artists, cast-off but classic home accessories and new projects in the pipeline.

Paula McFetridge: Artistic Director, Kabosh Theatre Company

Paula has been Artistic Director of Kabosh since August 2006. For the company she has directed the premiere productions of ‘The West Awakes’ by Kieron Magee, Laurence McKeown, Rosaleen Walsh and Jimmy McAleavey staged in five exterior locations in West Belfast; ‘Belfast Bred’ by Seth Linder, a food and drink walking tour of Belfast city centre; ‘This is What We Sang’ by Gavin Kostick in the Belfast synagogue and Synagogue for the Arts, Tribeca NYC as part of the 1st Irish Festival 2010 (winner ‘Best Production’ and shortlisted for ‘Best Director’); ‘Two Roads West’ by Laurence McKeown set in a moving black taxi; ‘Carnival’ by Lucy Caldwell in a Speigeltent; ‘Henry & Harriet’ by Carlo Gébler in working city-centre shops; ‘To Have & To Hold’ by Fergal McElherron, a promenade performance in the Old Museum Arts Centre; as well as numerous bespoke theatre events for Healing Through Remembering, Trauma Recovery Network, Relatives for Justice, Tourism Ireland and Northern Ireland Tourist Board.

Prior to Kabosh her many award-winning credits include: Artistic Director Lyric Theatre 2001-2006; Artistic Director of ‘convictions’, produced at Crumlin Road Courthouse by Tinderbox Theatre Company (winner ‘Best Production’ 2000 at the Irish Times/ESB Awards); and director of ‘Pariahs’ and ‘North Nua’ by Vincent Higgins and ‘The Lottery’ by Shay Linehan for RTE Radio 1.

John Richardson: Author, speaker and consultant

John Richardson spent fifteen years growing a developing a wide range of traditional businesses within Northern Ireland such as sandwich bars, coffee shops and garden centres. Five years ago he sold up to embark on a golfing challenge. This challenge was deemed to be “impossible” by golfing luminaries such as Darren Clarke and Sam Torrance but, with three days to go before his self-imposed one year deadline, John shot a one under par round at Blackwood golf centre. The resulting book of this challenge, “Dream On”, was the best selling golf book in the UK for 18 months and has been sold through to the US as well as Germany. It is currently being turned into a movie by Artifice Film in London.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing. John had a total of 83 rejections from publishers for this book and had to use a wide variety of social media and general marketing techniques to create a success of it. He has subsequently used these techniques to publish two highly successful business books.

John lives in Bangor with his wife and daughter.

Sam McIlveen: Digital Publisher, Independent Newspapers

Sam has been in advertising and publishing for the past 20 years. He started as graduate trainee at Dorlands one of the big ad agencies in London in the 1980′s. Now he’s the Digital Publisher for Independent News and Media’s web sites in Northern Ireland - better known as www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk, classified sites www.propertynews.com, www.nijobfinder.co.uk and www.nicarfinder.co.uk

His responsibilities include managing existing sites, providing content for these sites, delivering revenue from these sites and developing new on-line platforms.

Since he joined IN&M in Belfast three years ago, their total audience has increased from approx 5 million pi a month to over 16 million in January. They were awarded Digital News Service of the Year for UK and Ireland, and launched iPhone apps for their classified sites. They will soon be launching an ipad app for Belfast Telegraph. More importantly, digital publishing has moved from loss to profit and is making a significant contribution to overall profitability.

This has been achieved by increasing revenue generated by the web sites, reducing costs and transforming their digital offering as part of a multiplatform publishing approach.

Prior to publishing, Sam worked in advertising. Along the way he created award-winning campaigns for BT, Hastings Hotels, Crimestoppers and The Consensia Partnership, which ran the first recruitment campaign for the PSNI. In addition to recognising return of advertising investment these awards were for Best use of a Small Budget, Best Media Thinking and Best Launch Campaign in UK.

Adrian Campbell: Technical Director, The Design Zoo

The Design Zoo is a specialist digital production company based in Belfast working on both online and offline projects. Our range of services include mobile development, interactive micro sites, social media gaming/applications and a niche area of interactive events. Our unique approach enables us to allocate 25% of our time to research and development, ensuring that each of the projects we deliver, really are truly innovative and continually push the boundaries of digital advertising. Working both directly with clients and agencies as a specialist provider of digital services, we have a well rounded approach to every project allowing us to work from concept generation right through to development and reporting.

We are a small team of enthusiastic and talented individuals, always striving to take each project that bit further than the last, both technically and conceptually. If you are seeking a fresh approach to any digital aspect of your business or are looking for a specialist digital service provider within your agency, we would love to here from you.

Rachel McKnight

Rachel McKnight studied at The University of Ulster in Belfast. Having graduated in 2003, Rachel produces necklaces, bangles, earrings, rings and brooches to form quirky creations in plastics and rubber. The excitement of sourcing new materials and the experimentation with them inspires her to produce original and innovative jewellery. The idea of transparency and opaque colour influences her designs, and plastics allow her to explore this. Simple and uncomplicated shapes and the idea of duplicating these shapes also form the basis for Rachel’s jewellery.

Not only does Rachel have a large range of small batch production, but she also likes the challenge of producing larger scale work for exhibitions and collections.

Rachel originally hand cut all of her work, but in the last couple of years she has embraced technology and now cuts most work using a laser cutter. The idea of combining a man-made, industrial product with a delicate and traditional pattern inspires her work.

Rachel has also just created her range of home ware which consists of placemats, coasters and wall pieces. These pieces are also made from acrylic and polypropylene.

Geoff Hill: Spokesperson, Cow Parade NI

Geoff Hill is a critically acclaimed author and award-winning feature and travel writer based in Belfast. He’s the author of several books including Smith, a novel of which The Independent on Sunday said: “Lyrical and lunatic…few first novels achieve as much”, and which The Times described as “hilarious”. His travel books frequently scale the great heights of the Waterstones’ bestseller list. Geoff is official writer in residence, and chief spokesperson for, CowParade Northern Ireland. CowParade is the world’s largest international public art exhibit that has been featured in major cities including London, New York and Chicago. Lifesize fibreglass sculptures of cows are decorated by local artists, and distributed in public places throughout the host region. After the season-long exhibition, the cows are auctioned off and the proceeds donated to charity.

We have acquired the license to host CowParade in Northern Ireland, to stage the world’s first state-wide event We are injecting fresh ideas into this tried-and-tested exhibition model to make it all-inclusive and community-focused. Our team includes Moorial de Bovine who worked as a project manager for CowParade London 2002. Our sponsorship programme is looking to bring over 270 cows to our pastures, making it one of the largest to date.

Jane Ruffino: Founder, Chaos Thaoghaire

Jane is co-founder of Chaos Thaoghaire, an event dedicated to storytelling, one-upmanship, enforced collaboration and gleeful humiliation, where high-minded absurdity is embraced with lowbrow sincerity. Chaos Thaoghaire’s motto is “the earnest pursuit of ludicrous things”.

Jane is also a journalist and broadcaster, and works as a digital media tutor for the Digital Skills Academy in Dublin’s Digital Hub. She is a contributor to RTE Radio 1’s arts show, Arena. She can usually be found doing at least two of the following: TV research and development, making radio documentaries, feature writing, climbing something she shouldn’t, and tricking people into overlong Situationist walks. She is deputy director of programmes for MindField, an international festival of ideas, to be held in Dublin this April-May.

Before her current life as someone who clicks “other” on dropdown menus, she spent more than plenty of years in archaeology, specialising in medieval architecture and early mapmaking, and running archaeology workshops in local schools.

Jane likes anything to do with the social meaning of material culture, whether that’s interpreting something centuries old, or collaborating with creative people to produce something new.

Jane was born a Bostonian-American and has browbeat Dublin into accepting her as one of its own.

Caoimhin Corrigan: Cultural Broker, ILEX - Urban Regeneration Company

Caoimhin Corrigan is the Cultural Broker with ILEX (the Urban Regeneration Company for Derry~Londonderry) who are one of the main partners in leading 2013 UK City of Culture. The regeneration company’s background and research was instrumental in the development of the bid and in articulating how the City of Culture designation would help Derry~Londonderry to deliver a range of step changes within the regeneration of the city.

Prior to taking up post with ILEX, Caoimhín worked across a range of artforms in the Republic of Ireland, often working through local government. From 2003 – 2009, he was Chair of the Irish Association for Youth Drama. He has led the development of two significant new arts venues; VISUAL – The Centre for Contemporary Art in Carlow, which is the largest new centre to be built in Ireland in recent years and The Dock in Leitrim, a multi-disciplinary centre where he was the founding director /curator from 2005. Based largely on the success of The Dock and also on a track record of commissioning and programming innovative public art projects, Caoimhín was appointed in 2009 to work on behalf of the Irish Government as Commissioner and Curator for Ireland’s representation at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, the Venice Biennale. He has been an adviser and panel member to many Arts Council reviews, has conducted faculty reviews at art schools and has also served on boards of festivals, venues and third-level institutions.

Andrew Hetherington: Co-Founder, Fundit.ieand Project Director, Business to Arts

Andrew is Project Director at *Business to Arts* and co-founder of Fundit.ie. He has led and written a number of key research projects for the organisation including The Private Investment in Arts & Culture Survey Report conducted with Deloitte, The Philanthropy/Giving Study commissioned by the Arts Council of Ireland and Shining the Light on Successful Sponsorships conducted with PWC. He has also developed and managed a number of innovative programmes for businesses that have become successful new models in arts and business engagement. Andrew joined Business to Arts in 2007 from De Lage Landen (part of the Rabobank Group) and holds an MA in Cultural Policy & Arts Management.

Martin McNicholl: Co-Founder, Fundit.ie

Martin is co-founder of Fundit.ie and has been working with Business to Arts over the past 2 years developing an information systems strategy and implementing a cloud-based CRM system to help manage constituents. Martin worked with Accenture Ireland from 1997 – 2009 providing business and IT consulting services, and has since gained valuable skills in business and technology consulting. He has started a small business bringing IT and business skills to smaller organisations at low cost.