In Fiona Allan’s latest blog, she introduces some new members to our artistic team and shares her exciting plans for the theatre’s future…

I’ve just returned from three weeks in sunny Sydney, and am completely fired up for the year ahead.  One of the main reasons for this (apart from the benefits of a proper break!) is because this year the Hippodrome will making even more impact in our artistic programming and community activity.

I’m very excited to have some terrific colleagues to work with, and thought that in this blog I could introduce them, and some of our plans.  As you may know, I was appointed as the Chief Executive AND Artistic Director of Birmingham Hippodrome, as a clear indicator that change was going to come.  Well, now it’s here!

Graham Callister has been with the Hippodrome for three years now, leading on festival and event activity. He’s so good he is in demand for other major city events; he was Festival Director for Birmingham Weekender last year and is already involved in Commonwealth Games planning. Graham is also responsible for our community engagement activity, recently working with the Chinese community to produce the city’s Chinese New Year Festival attended by 40,000 people. He’s also got ideas for our visual arts programme, which we plan to kick off mid-year with a very special exhibition linked to Matilda The Musical and Roald Dahl.

Steve Ball may be known to many as Associate Director at The Rep, where he leads on work with schools, young people and learning programmes across all ages – setting up a network of 15 youth theatres.  Well, Steve now splits his role across the Hippodrome too, looking at how we, and The Rep, can best work together to extend our offer across the city and region. This kind of joined-up thinking is pretty unique in the UK, and our aim is to put any competitive spirit behind us to create the very best city-wide offer for schools and young people. Steve is also planning more term-time activity in our foyer spaces during the day.

Chris Sudworth was Creative Director at the innovative Corby Cube before heading to Brum as Executive Director of the Old Rep. Now he’s part of the Artistic Team here, in particular looking at our programming of innovative work in the smaller Patrick Studio (from family to fringe), international dance companies in the main auditorium, and creating a cohort of associate artists that the Hippodrome work with regularly.

The Hippodrome is lucky to have such heavy-hitters working with me now on artistic plans. We intend to be known not only as a venue hosting the very best touring productions, but also a hothouse of creative activity generated here, a cultural destination that any visitor to Birmingham would make a bee-line to visit.

Watch this space, and thank you for your continued interest and support!