Summary CV

Peter Stark has over thirty-five years direct experience of leadership and management in the cultural sector and of the interaction of that sector with issues of economic and social regeneration. He is an internationally acknowledged expert in cultural policy development, in cultural management training and in the conceptualisation, design and realisation of cultural precincts and projects – principally in the context of urban renewal.

Alongside his long term base in the North East of England, Peter has steadily increased his involvement in South Africa since a first visit in 2000 and now works principally from Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth) and Johannesburg. Projects internationally and in South Africa since 2000 have included:

From 1984, as Director of Northern Arts in his native North East of England, Peter played a leading national role in the redefinition of the arts funding system. In 1990 – he initiated the policies that led to the Gateshead Quays developments (at the heart of the culture-led regeneration of Tyneside). From 1995 – as Special Projects Adviser to Gateshead Council - he led the development of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art with the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and Norman Foster’s internationally acclaimed Music Centre – now The Sage Gateshead - for which project he chaired the client side throughout the design process.

His earlier career was in the experimental arts, as a cultural management teacher (City University and Northumbria University), as a cultural policy lobbyist, as a local authority officer, as a Community Performer (he is still a singer of traditional songs) and as Founding Director of South Hill Park Community Arts Centre in Bracknell Newtown.

Peter was awarded the OBE for services to the arts in the North in 1990 and a Chair in Cultural Policy and Management at Northumbria University in 2000. He is a Research Associate of Wits School of Arts and is the holder of a major Late Career Bursary from Arts Council England (2006-9) to support international travel and personal research which is centred on the role of cultures in regeneration in the Anglophone developing world.

Approaching the end of 2007, Peter is in the process of registering “cultures in regeneration” as a SA company (with a Black Economic Empowerment component in the ownership which will grow over the next five years). He is also completing the process of relocating the company from Johannesburg to Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth).

cultures in regeneration works in three areas:

The Swallows Partnership / Sihlanganiswa Ziinkonjane is a partnership between the Provincial Government of the Eastern Cape of South Africa and the North East of England, which will be developed and will grow - in the first instance - by establishing links between the Arts & Culture of each region and by forging collaborations between the artists and practitioners who work there. In time, the scope of the partnership – which already includes Museums and Heritage and Film and Media - will expand to include the areas of Management Training and Sport & Recreation, building up to an exciting programme of activity in 2010 and 2012 – respectively, the years when the World Cup will be hosted by South Africa and the Olympic Games will be hosted by the UK.