Staff biographies
Our team has a range of expertise in research, audience development, marketing and community engagement. They bring experience of working in organisations across London and the UK, and across artforms and sectors, as well as the knowledge and expertise they’ve acquired working within an audience development agency.
Find out who we are and then send us your questions by email.
Anne Torreggiani
Chief Executive
Anne became AL's first CEO in 2002. She has over 15 years experience in the arts, as director of marketing in several progressive arts companies (including West Yorkshire Playhouse, London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), Theatre Royal Stratford East and Greenwich Theatre) and as a consultant and facilitator in audience development and strategic marketing, with a particular interest increasing audience-access. Directorships have included the Arts Marketing Association, West Yorkshire Arts Marketing, LIFT and The Albany Deptford. She has given seminars and lectures on audience development for a variety of institutions and agencies in the UK and abroad.
Sarah Boiling
Deputy Chief Executive
As Deputy Chief Executive, Sarah leads on the organisational development of the company as well as designing and delivering many of AL's large-scale collaborative audience development projects. These projects currently include an audiences benchmarking service for London galleries, which is now being piloted nationally, and Reach 2011 - a professional development programme for local authority arts teams (in partnership with people make it work).
Sarah is an experienced trainer and regularly presents at conferences, including the Museums Association Conference, Arts Marketing Association and The British Council. She recently returned from Egypt where she contributed to a week-long cultural management course for emerging cultural leaders from across North Africa and the Middle East. Sarah is also an accredited Action Learning Facilitator.
Sarah's career before she joined Audiences London included senior marketing positions at Tate and the Barbican, project managing British Art Show 6 and freelance work with clients such as Bath Festivals Trust, Arts Council England, Business Design Centre and Hall for Cornwall.
Audience Development Services
Penny Mills
Director of Client Services
Penny's role focuses on supporting organisations to use information to understand their audiences' needs and improve how they connect with them. Recent work has been for Theatre503 and BAC. She also works on our collaborative projects, including the London Theatre Consortium, London Dance Escalator project and Family Friendly in Partnership. She's also responsible for ensuring that Audiences London understands and responds to the needs of arts and heritage organisations in London through its services, events and growing knowledge bank.
Head of Marketing at the Royal Court theatre for 5 years, Penny joined Audiences London in January 2006. Previously she was Marketing Manager at Edinburgh International Film Festival and also worked for the Edinburgh International Festival. She is a qualified specialist in strategic marketing planning in a cultural context.
Adrienne Pye
Associate - South East
Adrienne worked for Audiences South as Head of Special Projects, until its closure in August 2011. She ran the Audience Development South East programme of organisational and audience development for three years for Arts Council England South East and was Director of Arts Marketing Hampshire from 2000 to 2005.
Specialisms include access, cultural tourism and evaluation. Major pieces of work included evaluation for decibel in the South East region and Find Your Talent - PUSH, audience development work for rural touring companies and galleries. She was also a member of the Arts Council’s national panel supervising the creation of the Family Friendly Toolkit for arts organisations.
Adrienne’s background is in marketing for a number of theatres in the north west, then at Arts About Manchester she set up the first black arts ambassadors unit, co-managed the country’s first major Test Drive campaign across Manchester and Liverpool and project-managed the BTA (now Visit Britain) UK Cities of Culture campaign.
Rachel Escott
Associate
Rachel joined the team in June 2010 to offer marketing and communications insights for our clients, through bespoke consultancy or as an element of our shared projects, events and service packages. She advised on the Outer London Venues’ audience development project, and for individual organisations in the Respond in Practice 2 project. Consultancy clients include London Borough of Redbridge, The Albany theatre and the Independent Cinema Office. Her inputs range from designing and leading focus groups to leading training seminars and advice surgeries.
Engagement Services
Helen Ball
Head of Engagement Services
At Audiences London Helen supports cultural organisations to engage with and better understand their local communities. She runs AL's community engagement network, a programme of ongoing seminars and events and manages community engagement research and consultancy services and projects.
Helen joined us in April 2008 having previously worked in a range of cultural and community settings as a local authority arts officer in Salford, a participation officer for children and young people and a trainer in youth arts and playwork. She is an experienced mentor and has an MA in Childhood. She's also worked as a coordinator for several contemporary art projects.
Finance and Operations
Pak Ling Wan
Head of Finance and Operations
Pak has overseen the smooth management of AL’s office since back in 2006. He runs our financial monitoring systems and tracking for the team, to help us work with maximum efficiency, and has helped us embrace standard processes to achieve this. Pak has successfully gained funding for AL as well as contributed to running specific AL projects and events. He has advised on AL’s Respond in Practice and Not for the Likes of You projects and has assisted individual client research projects.
Pak is currently also working as Producer and General Manager at Chinatown Arts Space, that produces groundbreaking art and champions the work of British East Asian artists. He has been involved in arts administration since 2001 and is very familiar with good practice. His past experience in the cultural sector includes the British Film Institute, Lyric Theatre, Soho Theatre and VET. He has worked in areas such as fundraising, marketing, research, training, administration and finance.
Research Services
All of our Research Team are MRS affiliates.
Richard Turpin
Research Manager
Richard took up the role of Research Manager in July 2010, with a remit of responding to client enquiries, delivering research-led projects and managing the research team. He also oversees the strategic development of our research services.
Using his experience of a broad range of methodologies, Richard can advise you on the best approach to your research projects. This ensures that outputs are robust, insightful and provide input into your wider audience development strategies.
Richard has been working with Audiences London on a freelance basis since 2002 and has been the project manager for the CultureMap initiative since its inception in 2006. His current project involvement includes the Orchestras benchmarking project and the Outer London Venues' audience development project.
Richard brings a wealth of experience to the role. He has worked as a customer relationship consultant in both the culture and tourism sectors for a range of clients. In addition to his primary research skills, Richard is an experienced project manager, data analyst and new media developer, and spent time as Research Manager at the Barbican Centre.
Daniel Cowley
Senior Research Officer
Since arriving at Audiences London in October 2007, Daniel has worked with a wide range of clients and projects. He is currently leading on our Visual Arts Benchmarking project as well as delivering research for CREATE, Photographers’ Gallery, Almeida Theatre, Dance Umbrella and others. He’s also a lead trainer in our research-based workshops. Daniel is expert at drawing insights from primary research, data analysis and mapping; and brings also his experience in the field as our trainer for field researchers, easy-to-use questionnaires and e-surveys.
Daniel's interest in arts research and audience development began when he worked as a researcher in museums and galleries in North-West England. He is an Affiliate Member of the Market Research Society (MRS).
Max Toynbee
Research Officer
Max joined Audiences London in April 2011 to manage the Snapshot London resource as well as undertaking bespoke research projects. As well as being the first port of call for all Snapshot London related queries, he is particularly interested in developing the resource to gain deeper insights for collaborating participants. Max is experienced in translating research findings into practical, actionable recommendations having worked to this end with clients from across the public, private and voluntary sectors in previous roles.
His career in social research began as an interviewer North West England before moving to London to become a social researcher designing and delivering projects using a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. He has direct involvement in the cultural industries as the promoter of music events formerly in Manchester and currently in London.
Leo Sharrock
Research Associate
Leo was the Market Intelligence Manager at Audiences South, where he specialised in using audience databases and secondary research to help organisations to understand their users and non-users. He is continuing this work for Audiences London and as a member of the marketing hub at Hampshire County Council. He works with organisations from theatres to galleries to country parks – and with umbrella bodies such as local authorities - to develop marketing and audience development strategies based on the evidence provided.
Leo has developed an expertise in gaining an understanding of audience behaviours by using tools such as GIS mapping systems, socio-demographic profiling tools (ACORN, Mosaic and Arts Council England’s new arts-based Segmentation system), databases and ticketing systems and research data such as the Taking Part and TGI surveys. For the past five years he produced the annual national and regional summaries of the TGI survey on behalf of Arts Council England.
Orian Brook
Research Associate
Orian is a CASE doctoral student at the University of St Andrews, and her PhD focuses on spatial modelling of attendance to arts venues, looking at the influence of local cultural infrastructure on attendance levels from different population groups by analysing box office and secondary data in London and Scotland, in partnership with Audiences London, Culture Sparks, TAB and the Federation of Scottish Theatre.
This builds on a research fellowship funded by the ESRC programme, where she worked using statistical modelling to understand the relationships between demographic and socio-economic population variables and rates of arts attendance from different neighbourhoods, and how using administrative rather than survey data contributes to our understanding of the issues. In 2009-10 she undertook an ESRC-funded placement at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to explore international comparisons in public participation in culture and sport.
She was formerly Research Director at Audiences London and a founding member of staff. Alongside primary research projects, she was responsible for: Snapshot, CultureMap and the Guidelines for Monitoring Audience Diversity. Prior to AL she was a freelance audience research consultant, and worked in marketing for organisations including the Barbican, English National Opera and harmonia mundi.
South West Team
Jim Brewster
Chief Executive
Jim has worked with cultural organisations and local authorities across the South West and South East to support them in capturing and gaining value from audience data. Jim is interested in how organisations use evidence and judgement to develop their business models. Jim's experience and skills centre upon interpreting data, formulating strategies and managing change.
Jim started work on audience engagement in public libraries, museums and archives. Since joining Audiences South West in 2008, Jim has worked with local authorities, individual cultural organisations and developed collaborative approaches to increasing engagement.
Emily Bull
Operations Manager
Emily's passion for the arts and culture lies with enabling audiences and professionals to learn, experience and develop. Previous to working at ASW Emily delivered a range of programmes and projects across the region which aimed to increase engagement with the arts. She also has a Masters in Arts Management, experience of business planning to place audience development at the centre of the organisation and event management.
Emily's role within ASW is to build relationships with the sector through communications and events, as well as assistant project management, providing secondary data for clients to understand audiences and managing the overall operations.