Arts and Culture

Perrett Laver has extensive experience of senior level executive search across a range of organisations within the wider creative and cultural sectors.

We care passionately about the value and wider skills that the arts and culture bring to society, and are deeply committed to working for organisations that promote these sectors, particularly at a time of global uncertainty and rapid change.

Complex sustainability issues face these sectors, including funding, engagement, diversity and the appropriate use of digital technologies. As a truly integrated, global firm, we offer genuinely deep local and regional knowledge and networks to locate the strongest and most exciting talent for our clients to seize the opportunities these challenges present, wherever they may be.

We have worked on global non-executive and senior executive assignments to support specialist and curatorial appointments. Alongside this, we have also conducted a wide range of searches across all professional service functions, where we have a strong track record of utilising our extensive networks across the wider private and non-profit arenas to support successful cross-sectoral appointments. These have included senior assignments in the areas of fundraising; finance; digital, marketing and communications; human resources; education, learning and participation; programming and audience engagement; estates and buildings.

How We Think

Non-Profits – EMEA

Where We Can help

Museums, Galleries and Heritage

Perrett Laver has worked for a wide range of organisations that exist to promote the value of heritage and culture to wider audiences. These have encompassed national museum groups and libraries, through to heritage bodies and internationally-renowned contemporary visual art galleries.

Our assignments have been at non-executive director, Chief Executive and senior Director-level. Alongside our global networks of leaders with specialist and curatorial backgrounds, we have used our wider experience across a variety of sectors to identify and successfully secure professional services leaders from all functions.

Performing Arts and Multi-Disciplinary Cultural Spaces

We can offer experience of leading assignments for a variety of global organisations that promote engagement with performance art forms, and the performing arts more widely. Appointments have been for theatre, opera and wider music companies and venues, as well as for leaders for festivals and multi-disciplinary spaces.

Our assignments have been at non-executive director, Chief Executive and senior Director-level. Alongside our international networks of leaders with relevant specialist careers, we have used our wider experience across a variety of sectors to identify and successfully secure professional services leaders from all functions.

Conservatoires, Specialist Higher Education Institutions and Specialist Arts Schools

We are passionate about the opportunities and skills that education for the arts, cultural and sporting areas bring to young people, and to society more widely, particularly at a time when wider global economic and political changes pose potential threats to their promotion and future sustainability. We have therefore developed a strong track record of recruitment to specialist educational organisations that draws upon our deep expertise across the educational, cultural and sport sectors.

Perrett Laver is one of the global market leaders for educational and academic appointments. We work with a wide variety of higher education institutions around the world, ranging from the strongly research intensive to the solely teaching and learning focused.  Working with schools, our clients include leading UK independent schools, maintained schools and special schools, educational charities, international schools and global schools groups. Perrett Laver has also worked extensively with international educational bodies, funding councils, learned societies, policy organisations, and other leading bodies where educational agendas meet wider government policy and priorities.

Our work has been at the non-executive and Vice-Chancellor, Principal, Head and equivalent level, alongside numerous leadership roles at senior academic and professional service leadership level.  We also have a large scale Global Chairs and Professors practice, working annually on a vast range of research leadership appointments across a variety of different disciplines.

Non-Profits, Foundations and Learned Societies

As a wider firm, Perrett Laver is one of the global market leaders for our work with non-profits, educational and charitable organisations, and we are passionate about utilising this experience for the broader service and promotion of the arts, culture, sports and education in global society.

We have therefore proactively supported a number of trusts, foundations, learned societies and membership bodies, and other non-profit or charitable organisations that exist to advocate for these sectors more widely, across a range of senior executive and non-executive appointments.

Who to talk to

Recent Arts and Culture Clients

Recent Arts and Culture Appointments

Meet the Leaders: In Conversation with Professor Kevin Singh

Professor Kevin Singh is an architect whose career in has spanned over 25 years. He has extensive experience in both higher education institutions and in the industry, as the head of his own practice. Within the last couple of years, Kevin Singh joined the Manchester School of Architecture as its Head in September 2020. The Manchester School of Architecture is distinctive as it is a joint school between Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester. We sat down with him to discuss the challenges and rewards that come with his role, how design has changed over recent years and his advice…

Caro Howell appointed director-general of Imperial War Museums

Imperial War Museums (IWM) has announced Caro Howell as its new director-general. Howell will take up her role on 1 May 2023, with the institution’s outgoing head Diane Lees remaining in post until 1 March 2023. Howell has been the director of London’s Foundling Museum since 2011, where she has helped the museum, which is dedicated to the lives of orphans and their legacies, build audiences and establish new relationships with care-experienced young people. From 2005, Howell was the head of education and public events at the Whitechapel Gallery, where she oversaw the development of major new education spaces and project galleries. Prior…

How have arts leaders helped the sector transform post-Covid?

We sat down with Head of Perrett Laver’s Arts Practice in the UK, Milly Smith, to discuss challenges facing the sector following the pandemic, how organisations are encouraging audiences to return to venues, and what lies ahead for the arts sector. What is one of the most significant ways in which the arts sector has adapted or changed its course, following the pandemic? The pandemic demonstrated the adaptability and agility of the art sector. All arts and cultural institutions had to operate remotely, if that wasn’t already set up, and find ways to continue engaging with their audiences. With every lockdown, the…

Q&A: Imogen Baird on Diversity & Inclusion in Sport

To celebrate the upcoming summer of sports, we sat down with our Head of Sports Practice, Imogen Baird, to discuss her role at Perrett Laver, working with Sport England, and the barriers and opportunities to building inclusive sports leadership. What does your role entail as Head of Sports Practice at Perrett Laver? I lead Perrett Laver’s Sports Practice – a phenomenal team made up of creative research colleagues and skilled project managers. The practice was founded with a focus on the unique social impact of sport, motivated by its ability to nurture potential, tackle inequality, and generate a sense of pride and…

National Football Museum announces addition of nine new trustees

The National Football Museum has announced the nine newly-selected trustees. The museum is celebrating a decade in Manchester this year and see this as the perfect time to introduce some fresh faces, reset, look forward and implement an exciting new strategy. The museum has just announced a new lease with the Manchester City Council and has set ambitions on developing the museum’s galleries and forming new partnerships within the football world. The museum has been conducting a recruitment process over the last few months which has culminated in the induction of the following nine trustees: Andy Farr is currently Head of Business Planning &…

Aminata Cairo and Rosa te Velde to form the Social

The Executive Board of the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK) has appointed Aminata Cairo as lector and Rosa te Velde as associate lector of the new Social Justice and Diversity in the Arts research group. This AHK-wide dual research group that will start on 1 August is being established by the Executive Board to accelerate research into social justice, inclusion and diversity in the arts. Social justice and diversity in the arts are topic that occupy a prominent place in arts education and in the professional field, and in the vision of the AHK they must also come to…