Time: 16:15 – 17:15Location: O’Reilly Theatre

 Are we tired of talking about the recession yet, about the economic crisis in which the arts is mired? We may well be, but tough realities remain, and what's needed most of all is the kind of conversation in which each speaker in this session specialises: frank, forward-looking conversation, an interrogation of those realities, a staking out of priorities and of strategies by means of which to find the way through. 

Biographies of the panel: 

 Annette Clancy is an organisational consultant who has worked in the arts and cultural sector for over 20 years. Prior to establishing her consultancy, Interactions, she was artistic director of Garter Lane Arts Centre, Programme Administrator of the Dublin Theatre Festival and General Manager of the Soho Theatre Company (London). Her consultancy work has included the design and management of creative consultation processes, including the Arts Council’s 2005 national consultation process, which informed the current arts strategy; curating the recent New Media New Audience Conference; strategic planning, organisational reviews, policy development and training. 

Annette holds an MSc in systemic organisation and management, is an accredited psychotherapist and is currently a Doctoral Candidate in organisational behaviour at the University of Bath, where she is researching the creative potential of disappointment. 

 Andrew McIlroy has been involved in the arts and cultural policy for almost 20 years, as a manager, a policy maker and a practitioner. After a considerable time fundraising in the UK and Europe, he worked for three years with a contemporary art agency in Milan, and then as a freelance policy expert with the Council of Europe, advising on cultural policy development in Russia and the Caucasus. For the past five years he has split his time between London where he works with FutureCity, an urban development agency specialising in contemporary art projects, and Brussels, where he temps as a strategy advisor for a lobby network, Culture Action Europe. 

 He also earns a crust struggling to be fair as a theatre critic and writes for both pleasure and pain. His radio play The Interpreter won the Channel 4 radio play of the year 2007, and his plays are regularly performed in Brussels. His short stories have been broadcast on RTÉ and published in collections, such as the Bridport Anthology in the UK. His philosophy of art is simple: “Theatre matters, but friendship and a functioning digestive system matter more.” 

 Mark Robinson has been Executive Director of Arts Council England, North East, since 2005; previously, he was Director, Arts & Development. From 2000 to 2002 he was Head of Film, Media and Literature at Northern Arts, and was instrumental in the creation of Northern Film & Media. He writes regularly about arts strategy and policy on his blog Arts Counselling (http://artscounselling. blogspot.com). 

He was previously Director of Arts & Humanities at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of Durham (1999-2000) where he researched and published on poetry, literature and education, arts and health, and community development. As Director of Cleveland Arts (1993-99) he set up the Teesside Arts in Education agency, amongst a wide variety of initiatives. Prior to this he worked as a freelance writer, literature development worker, writer-in-residence in a prison, directed the Writearound Festival and was an award-winning Head Chef in vegetarian catering. 

Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also a widely published poet and critic. His most recent publication is A Balkan Exchange: 8 British and Bulgarian Poets (Arc 2007), the result of a long collaboration between North East England and Bulgaria. A Bulgarian translation of new work will appear in 2010. For 10 years he edited Scratch poetry magazine and press. In 2000 a film featuring one of his poems won a Regional Royal Television Society award. 

 Alistair Spalding was appointed Chief Executive and Artistic Director of Sadler's Wells in October 2004. 

He joined Sadler's Wells in February 2000 as Director of Programming, and his programme has included companies such as Netherlands Dance Theatre 1 and 2, Mark Morris Dance Group, Michael Clark, Ballett Frankfurt, Pina Bausch, La La La Human Steps, Alvin Ailey and New Adventures. He commissioned Sadler's Wells' Hip Hop Festival (May 2004) and co-produced Carlos Acosta's sell-out show in summer 2003. 

He joined Sadler's Wells from the South Bank Centre, where he was Head of Dance and Performance. Between 1994 and 2000, he strongly developed the presentation and commissioning of dance and performance on the South Bank. He also developed strong co-producing relationships with a number of national and international companies and artists including DV8, Alain Platel, Jonathan Burrows, Javier de Frutos and Rosas Dance Company. The South Bank Centre won the Time Out award for best dance production in both 1998 for Alain Platel and in 1999 for the New York Ballet Stars project. 

Alistair was a member of the Arts Council of England dance advisory panel between 1995 and 2003 and is an external advisor on the City University Validation Board for the Laban Centre London degree courses.