Kate Organ graduated in Drama and French at Birmingham University in 1977. As a student, she was one of the four founder members of Jubilee Arts (now evolved into The Public), establishing it as a full time company and working there full time after graduating. In the 1980’s she studied Drama in Education and worked freelance for a range of arts companies as a theatre director and educationalist. Her live and film-based drama projects with young people and community groups achieved national acclaim. From 1987 she combined freelance creative projects with being director of the ground–breaking Birmingham Readers and Writers Festival, producing 4 festivals and curating numerous original events within them.

In 1995 Kate became Drama Officer for West Midlands Arts. This role encompassed the spheres of arts policy, organisational and business analysis. She went on to lead the Department of Performing and Combined Arts as Director. Here she was responsible for managing funding support to a large portfolio of key clients, from small festivals and arts centres to large theatres and orchestras. She advised on and assessed applications for Capital Lottery Funding, as well as Revenue Funding and the Stabilisation Programme, which offered opportunities for fundamental organisational change and revised business strategies for arts organisations. In 2001 she was the British juror on the European Union Culture 2000 programme.

She led the development of several policy reviews and the development of key strategies, including overseeing the regional input into the National Theatre Strategy (2000) and leading on the first International Arts Development Policy for the region (2003). She brokered partnerships with other funders and proved an effective advocate for the many vital roles of the arts in society.
Throughout her career Kate has devised and delivered creatively based training workshops – from team building to project planning for artists, librarians, teachers, social workers, theatre managers, boards and charity trustees. She has been a visiting lecturer at several Higher Education establishments – lecturing on Arts Administration, Events Management and Creative Writing. She provides one-to-one mentoring and coaching for creative sector managers.

Since 2003, Kate has returned to free lance work. Her portfolio of projects has included:

• Interim management
• Business planning, fund-raising and organisational reviews
• Training, facilitation and coaching
• Evaluation of arts development programmes
• Conference management (producer of two conferences for International Society for Performing Arts)

Kate’s philosophy is to embrace chances to learn from new situations, to encourage people to excel beyond their expectations, to maximise team work, and base organisational planning on the potential of people to carry it out by discovering what truly motivates them.