New Director of Strategic Learning, Insight and Influence
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Holly Donagh as our new Director of Strategic Learning, Insight and Influence, starting on 1 June 2020.
Holly is an experienced leader in the cultural education sector, with expertise in the role that creativity and the arts can play in improving society. Holly is currently the Deputy Chief Executive at A New Direction (London’s strategic agency connecting arts, culture and young people) where she has worked for nine years.
In that time she has led a number of innovative and high-profile initiatives such as the London Cultural Education Challenge, bringing new partners together to combat the barriers to cultural engagement faced by young Londoners, and the first national evaluation of the Creative People and Places programme (an England wide Arts Council investment into the creative life of communities). Holly led A New Direction’s research programme, commissioning significant work on the lives of young people and the nature of working in partnership and she has written regularly on these topics.
Prior to working at A New Direction, Holly worked for Arts Council England for ten years, leading on engagement with central government and spearheading initiatives for integrating the arts into public life.
Holly has a MSc in Voluntary Sector Management where she focused on the role of research with beneficiaries in driving organisational growth.
Moira Sinclair, Chief Executive, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, said: “This is a new role for the Foundation which brings together our communication, research, policy and influencing teams. It builds on the pioneering work of Jane Steele, our retiring Director of Evidence and Learning, and signals our ongoing commitment to reflect and to share intelligence and learning between and with the organisations we fund and the wider charitable sector. We are very much looking forward to Holly joining us – she brings the ability to synthesise information, to draw out insight and to spot how we might need to respond, skills which will be much needed in the coming months.”
Read more about Holly’s experience on LinkedIn.