Jenny Davis
Jenny Davis, founder and director of Arts Uplift has been working in community arts for 22 years. She trained in drama and theatre and ran Youth Theatre’s for many years with children and young people running workshops, directing and devising plays and producing. Some of the places Jenny has worked is The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, Number 8 Arts Centre, Pershore and ran Vivre Drama a youth theatre for many years.
She then became Arts Development Officer for Wychavon District Council in 2007 where she initiated and project managed many arts projects with children and young people, including the long standing Wychavon Youth Music project and The W Factor a district wide arts competition for young people. Over the last 6 years at Wychavon DC Jenny’s work focused more on arts and health and older people. Regular projects that Jenny project managed was Music workshops for dementia at Number 8 arts centre and regular arts projects in care homes across the district.
Jenny now works for Arts Uplift CIC full time developing the company and its finances as well as project managing the many varied projects that we run. She also sits on Warwickshire and Worcestershire’s Cultural Education Partnership’s as well the West Midlands Cultural Health Alliance and Coventry and Warwickshire Arts and Health Alliance.
Jenny has attended many arts and health conferences and symposiums over the years including, Good Practice: Symposium and Networking Event for People Working in Arts, Health and Wellbeing and Arts Development UK’s Arts, health and Wellbeing seminar and has much knowledge and experience of arts and health and how to evaluate the work for health outcomes.
Sue Pope
Sue has worked in the museum and heritage education sector for over 20 years, working for The National Trust, Avoncroft Museum and Museums Worcestershire. Since 2015 Sue has followed the freelance path and has delivered successful educational resource development and consultation projects for a number of clients including Chiltern Open Air Museum, Birmingham Conservation Trust and West Midlands Historic Buildings Trust.
As a practicing historic musician and music educator herself, Sue leads her own band of costumed minstrels and undertakes education advisory roles for both the Orchestra of the Swan, based in Stratford and the Academy of Ancient Music, based on Cambridge. Sue is also a trustee for the Group for Education in Museums (GEM).
Donna Hetherington
Donna is one of Arts Uplift’s Directors. Donna started her career in travel 32 years ago and is still in the same industry, although she had ten years out to work in commercial banking.
During her first stint in travel she went from being a leisure travel agent to then managing her own small branch in Ledbury, Herefordshire. In 1996 she was offered an amazing opportunity to become General Manager of this business and leisure travel industry and moved to the Midlands. During her time there she opened a new branch in West Yorkshire that went on to become very successful.
In 1998 this company was then acquired by a travel company in Leamington Spa and she became their Director of Sales – Business Travel. She stayed in this role for the next 6 years, managing a sales team and winning the travel accounts of many large companies around the UK.
In 2004 she decided it was time for a change and went to work for Lloyds Bank (Then LloydsTSB). She was a Commercial Manager with a portfolio of clients, and a brief to win new clients to the bank. She was involved in lending decisions, mortgage and savings advice and day to day banking requirements. Reading I&E reports, balance sheets and business plans was a regular occurrence and it gave her a great grounding in businesses from start up through growth to maturity.
After having her children, in 2014 she returned to the travel business and now works part time as an Account Manager for a Commercial travel company.
Nigel Davis
Nigel is an experienced business improvement & change analyst as well as been practised in project management and training. His experience covers a number of customer facing and operational functions in the retail and utility sector including working for a number of blue-chip corporates. He is a Prince 2 and Six Sigma practitioner. Nigel has experience with financial modelling, cost benefit analysis and strategic business planning.
Earlier in his career he worked for a number of years for a major environmental campaign group where he obtained funding to set up a project for urban nature reserves.
He has additional skills in graphic design and video production, including producing training videos for some major corporates. In his spare time, he is a busy father, cook, gardener and house renovator!
