Dr Jim Hinks Email & Phone Number

I lead the West Yorkshire Combined Authority's policy on Culture, Heritage and Sport, working with local authority colleagues and external stakeholders to develop a pipeline of investments and activities that deliver on the mayor's Creative New Deal, including major year of culture programmes across the region, and skills and business development initiatives within the creative industries. I'm formerly a Senior Programme Manager at the British Council, where I worked closely with colleagues in the UK and globally to deliver arts and culture programmes that responded to local opportunity and context, and reflected the diversity of contemporary UK culture. My role drew upon my expertise in literature and publishing, and the wider UK cultural sector, to provide specialist advice in the areas of policy and strategy, programme-based planning, grant programme design, forecasting and finance, contracts, compliance and evaluation (including KPI and REF returns). I managed the British Council's relationships with key stakeholders, including major festivals, LDAs, libraries, HE, funders, professional associations and trade bodies. I had direct line management and dotted-line management responsibility for several colleagues, enabling them to flourish and develop in their roles, and ensuring that team performance met agreed deliverables and aligned with British Council values and strategy. Prior to that I was Digital Editor at Comma Press, a non-profit publisher, where I led eBook and app development, finding new ways to reach audiences with digital literature. In 2016 I was selected to participate in the first ever Arts Accelerator, a collaboration between NESTA and ACE to develop artistic products for commercial investment, with an intensive training course in leadership, product development, finance and marketing. I have extensive experience as an editor, working with internationally acclaimed authors and translators (including Hassan Blasim and translator Johnathan Wright, winners of the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize). I'm an experienced fundraiser, with a track-record of securing funds from local, national, pan-European and international governmental bodies and grant-making organisations.