Trustees of The Lowry
Chairman - Sir Rod Aldridge, OBE
Rod Aldridge is a social entrepreneur with over 40 years’ experience of working in the Public Sector. He was the Founder of the Capita Group and led the group from its formation in 1984 to becoming the market leader provider of support and professional services to the government and to the private sector in the UK. In 1987 he led the MBO of the group from CIPFA and the flotation of Capita on the USM in 1989 valued at £8 million. Today the group is a FTSE 100 company, employs 27,000 people and interacts with 33 million people through the services it delivers. It has a market capitalisation of over £4 billion and is the best performing share ever in the FTSE.
Prior to Capita, Rod worked in local government for 10 years with East Sussex County Council, Brighton Borough Council, Crawley District Group and West Sussex County Council, joining CIPFA in 1974 ultimately becoming its Technical Director.
In July 2006 Rod retired as Chairman of Capita to establish the Aldridge Foundation to continue with his work on public service reform and to focus on his charitable activities involving educational underachievement and social exclusion.
He is a patron and trustee of the Prince’s Trust and was the Chairman of the CBI’s public services strategy board at its inception in 2003 through to July 2006. Rod is also Chair of ‘v’ the charity launched in May 2006 which aims to inspire and engage over 1 million new youth volunteers. In January 2007 he was appointed Chairman of The Lowry, a theatre and arts venue in Salford and was appointed a non-executive Director of Foreign & Commonwealth Office Services Business.
He is a qualified accountant with CIPFA and was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2006. Rod was awarded an OBE in 1994 New Years Honours List for services to the computer industry and was given the freedom of the City of London in 1996. He is on the Court of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. He is a regular speaker at conferences and is a contributor to the debate on public service reform. He was awarded a knighthood in the in the Queen’s 2011 New Year Honours list on New Year’s Eve, in recognition of his services to young people in his capacity as Chairman of The Aldridge Foundation.
Rod’s interests are his family and sport, mainly golf, cricket and football. He also enjoys travelling and the theatre.
Jane Frost
Jane Frost joined HM Revenue and Customs as Director of Individuals Customer Unit on 23 May from the Department of Constitutional Affairs where she was Director of Consumer Strategy. She has more than 20 years marketing experience. An accomplished corporate strategist and marketer, her vision and creative expertise have driven notable results across commercial and non-commercial sectors at both a national and international level.
Cambridge educated and a Unilever trained marketer, Jane was previously at the BBC, most recently as Director of Marketing & Strategy for BBC Technology and prior to that as Controller of Corporate & Brand Marketing. Jane was responsible for the BBC films Perfect Day, World Leaders and Small People which broke industry records for awareness and approval while the conversion of the promotion Perfect Day into a charity CD raised over £2.5 m for Children in Need.
Jane spent 10 years with Shell, where she gained extensive international experience working in many markets including the US, Australasia, Middle and Far East. While at Shell, Jane was responsible for successfully implementing the organisation’s first ever Pan European advertising campaign and was the driving force behind numerous globally co-ordinated major brand re-launches.
She is known for her ability to deliver results, working with companies to improve organisational structure and processes, brand development, sales and account management functions and overall organisational competitiveness.
Jane also enjoys a busy family life with her husband and two children in South West London and holds a number of non–executive directorships. These are at Wolters Kluwer, Lowry Centre Ltd, BBC Children in Need Ltd and the HTI Educational Trust.
Bill Hinds
Councillor Bill Hinds was the Leader of Salford City Council from 1988 until 2004 and is Chairman of Manchester Airport plc and a Trustee of The Lowry.
He currently represents the Council on a range of outside bodies and serves as a Director of a number of companies responsible for regeneration and employment initiatives.
His political background is in the Trade Union movement, where he rose to the status of National Convenor for the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Workers Union.
His interests include politics, the arts (especially opera and ballet), reading, birdwatching and rugby league.
Rodney Holmes
Prior to retirement at the end of 2008, Rodney Holmes had over forty years experience in construction and property development, in the public and private sectors, in the UK, North America, South Africa, the Middle East, Far East and Continental Europe. He has been personally responsible for delivering major projects as the representative of clients, developers and contractors, covering investment, financial, design, project and site management. He was employed for twelve years by the Dutch property company, MAB Groep bv, as Director of Operations, with responsibilities covering The Netherlands, Germany, France and the UK.
In 1999, he joined Grosvenor, the international property group, and was responsible for the concept and day-by-day direction, co-ordination and delivery of the Liverpool One project.
Since the end of 2008, Rod has been Chair of The Mersey Partnership, was the private sector member of the Liverpool City Region Cabinet (with the Leaders of the six Local Authorities), Chair of the City Region Economy Board, Deputy Chair of the Employment and Skills Board and is now a member of the Shadow Board of the Local Enterprise Partnership.
During the Liverpool One project, he was a founder/director of the Paradise Foundation, a charity, which continues as the Liverpool One Foundation.
He is a Trustee of The Lowry Centre, Salford and a Director of the Playhouse and Everyman Theatres Trust.
He is a Vice-President of the Merseyside Civic Society and an occasional awards judge for the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Paul Kelly
Paul joined ASDA in August 2007 as Corporate Affairs Director and is in charge of media and government relations, sustainability, corporate responsibility and regulatory policy. He is also in charge of shaping the company’s health strategy.
Prior to joining ASDA he held a number of senior positions with Compass Group PLC and Granada Group PLC. For the last seven years he was Group Corporate Affairs Director for Compass.
He is a member of the Council of Food Policy Advisers, a board member of the British Retail Consortium, Chair of Business in the Community’s Plough to Plate Project and a Board Member of the School Food Trust. Paul has been a Lowry Trustee and non-executive of the operating company since 2000.
David Lancaster
Deputy Leader of Salford City Council. Hallé Board member and long-standing Chairman of major committees of Salford City Council with wide interest in music and the arts.
Barbara Spicer
Barbara joined Salford City Council as Chief Executive in 2006 from Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council where she had worked in a number of roles for more than nine years, most recently as chief executive and director of regeneration and neighbourhoods.
Adrian Vinken
Adrian Vinken started his academic life training to be a Civil Engineer at Sheffield University. After successfully completing his first year, he left to spend a year as a trainee accountant in London only to return to Sheffield to gain an honours degree in philosophy and economics.
After a brief excursion into arts administration in Cardiff, Adrian returned to Sheffield to undertake Ph.D. research in Evolutionary Theory and to start university teaching.
Adrian’s current career really started when he burned his academic bridges in 1980 and left Sheffield University to found and direct the Leadmill arts complex in inner city Sheffield. The Leadmill was developed from an old derelict industrial complex by the voluntary effort of the city’s young unemployed and armies of ex-offenders into a pioneering modern arts centre. The Leadmill doubled as a highly successful pop music venue and night club as well as providing a venue for jazz and classical music, touring theatre, dance and education programmes. Its unique blend of commercialism and cultural activity won it a number of national awards and accolades from Arts Ministers and the Prince of Wales.
There followed other innovative projects including the conversion of derelict listed industrial buildings for new commercial and educational uses.
Adrian is currently Chief Executive of the Theatre Royal Plymouth, the largest regional producing theatre in the country, and Plymouth Pavilions, a large-scale entertainment, arts and leisure complex. Adrian has recently led the development of the radical TR2 building, the largest theatrical production and education facility in Europe, on the waterfront in Plymouth. In 1999, he was appointed by the Secretary of State to be Chairman of Culture South West, the region’s Cultural Consortium. He also currently chairs the National Touring Partnership and Plymouth Common Purpose and is a member of the Arts Council's Drama Panel. Adrian's past honorary responsibilities have included chairing the National Association of Arts Centres and the Arts Development Association and a Governorship of Plymouth University.
Adrian is married with two children. He enjoys distance running, fell-walking and classic car renovation.
Ian Currie
Graduate of Manchester University and chartered accountant. Worked in corporate finance in the region for 20 years including co-founding Zeus Capital the Manchester-based investment bank. Director of a number of public and private companies. Married with four children. Lives in Brindle near Chorley. Supports a number of charities including Crabtree North West Charitable Trust, his family charity.
Mike Blackburn
Mike has been in BT since 1992. His current role is that of Vice President, Strategy & Planning for BT Government and Health business. Mike lives in the North West and has been BT’s Regional Director for the North West since 2007. This role brings the voice of the North West into BT and helps to bring the BT story to life across the UK, by being the local face and focal point for access to the whole of BT.
Mike has recently been appointed Chair of the Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership and was the former Chair of Greater Manchester’s Commission for Economic Development, Employment and Skills (New Economy). The Commission was one of a series established as part of the changes in the governance of Greater Manchester and supported the work of the Greater Manchester Executive, concentrating initially on implementing the Greater Manchester Strategy.
Mike has been a Trustee of NYAS since 2000. This is a National charity based in Birkenhead which gives socio-legal advice and advocacy support to children and young people.
Mike is Chair of governors at one of the new Manchester Academies, the Communication Academy, which opened in 2010. Mike sits on the North West advisory board for a Prince of Wales charity, Business in the Community, and is the Prince’s NW Regional Ambassador for 2010/12.
Mike is married with three children and lives in Cheshire.
Tom Russell
Tom has worked in urban regeneration in Manchester, London and Oldham for most of his career. As Deputy Chief Executive of Manchester City Council he was involved in Hulme City Challenge, the redevelopment of the city centre following the 1996 bomb, and in European Structural Fund programmes across the region. He was Chief Executive of New East Manchester urban regeneration company from 2000 to 2008, building on the successful staging of the Commonwealth Games in the area in 2002 to lead its comprehensive renaissance. As a result of this, he then spent 18 months in London, managing the masterplanning process for the regeneration of east London following the 2012 Olympics, and establishing the regeneration company – the Olympic Park Legacy Company - which will lead the delivery of the plan. Since completing this assignment in July 2009, Tom has been involved in a range of consultancy projects across the North West.
Jeremy Glover
Jeremy transformed Bolton Lads and Girls Club from a standard run down youth club to its current status where it is seen as one of the best examples in the UK of a modern 21st Century Youth Zone. The Club was quoted extensively by the Government in its White Paper “Aiming High for Young People” and is the model for the new myplace centres. He is a member of DCSF Aiming High advisory group (chaired by Minister of State for Children and Families) and contributed to the development of the myplace programme. Along with Bill Holroyd, Jeremy has established a new charity OnSide North West, with the aim of replicating the successful Bolton Lads and Girls Club and the plan is to build many more across the North West. His personal achievements include::
• Awarded a Paul Harris Fellowship in 1998.
• Awarded MBE for Services to Young People in 1999.
• Became Honorary Fellow of Bolton University in 2001.
• Awarded Honorary Doctorate at Bolton University in 2010.
• Director of Board, Bolton University Student Body.
Jeremy is interested in sport, rock music, gardening and cities.
Felicity Goodey - Lifelong President of The Lowry Centre Trust
Felicity Goodey led the team which funded, built and operated the country’s most successful arts-based millennium projects, The Lowry theatre and gallery complex. She is a former senior BBC journalist and presenter who discovered a passion for regeneration! After ten years of leading The Lowry she was asked by Salford City Council to help set up a much bigger regeneration project and now chairs Central Salford, the largest Urban Regeneration Company in the country which is charged with helping to redevelop what was the old City of Salford. In 2006/7 she led the consortium which won the highly contested bid to relocate a major part of the BBC to the North and in the process devised the concept of mediacity:uk, a globally significant new media hub which is being built alongside Lowry at present.
She gave up broadcasting to become one of the first directors of the Northwest Development Agency and develop her business interests. She chairs the regional organisation responsible for developing Tourism across the Northwest and she is chairman of the University Hospital of South Manchester, her ‘local’ albeit major teaching hospital.
Her business career included founding with colleagues the Unique Communications Group, a broadcast production and corporate communications company; she was for many years a non executive Director of Nord Anglia PLC.
She is a governor of The Manchester Grammar School, a former Board member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and a council member of Salford University. Honours include a number of honorary degrees, together with the CBE for services to regeneration and an honorary fellowship of the RIBA.
Jane Bonham Carter
Jane Bonham Carter was educated at St Paul’s Girls’ School and University College London.
Her first job was as a researcher for an American production company Broadway Video, working out of the Brill Building in New York.
On returning to London she went to work for the BBC and was a producer at both Panorama and then Newsnight. From there she went to Channel 4, where she was Programme Editor of A Week In Politics.
She became the Liberal Democrat’s Director of Communications in 1996, a role she held through the 1997 election returning to a career in television as an independent producer at Brook Lapping Productions where she produced a number of documentaries for Channel 4, the BBC and ITV, including the award winning series ‘Maggie: the First Lady’
In 2004 she was made a Liberal Democrat Life Peer, and became spokesperson on Broadcasting and the Arts.
She has sat on various House of Lords Select Committee including the one set up in 2005 to look into the BBC Charter Review, and then the Communications Committee.
After the 2010 election she was elected Deputy Convenor of the Liberal Democrat Peers, and she was appointed Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee on Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, this includes being lead Lib Dem spokesperson on DCMS matters in the House of Lords.
She has been on the Advisory Committee of the think tank Centre Forum since 2005, and RAPt (Rehabiliation for Addicted Prisoners Trust) since 1999. Earlier this year she was appointed to the board of the National Campaign for the Arts.