The Arts Foundation is delighted to announce the appointment of Ted Hodgkinson, Head of Literature & Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre, to its Board of Trustees.
Ted brings with him a wealth of experience at the forefront of the UK’s cultural landscape. In his role at the Southbank Centre, one of the world’s most celebrated arts venues, he has championed writers, poets, and spoken word artists, platforming bold and distinctive voices and shaping some of the country’s most vital literary programming.
Mary Jane Edwards, Director of The Arts Foundation, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Ted to our board. His extensive expertise in literature and the spoken word is a tremendous asset to the Foundation. Ted’s passion for independent artists and his breadth of experience across the cultural sector will be invaluable as we continue to champion the next generation of creative talent.”
Ted Hodgkinson added: “The Arts Foundation has been instrumental in supporting so many boundary-pushing artists to make some of their most significant work, enriching our shared cultural life. For artists committed to taking creative risks, the challenges of building a sustainable career have never felt more acute, but these fellowships represent one of the most powerful interventions in the sector, given at the moment of maximum impact. I’m hugely looking forward to contributing to that work alongside Mary Jane and the board – to support future generations of artists to create vital new work.”
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Ted Hodgkinson Biography
Ted Hodgkinson is Head of Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre, Europe’s largest arts centre. Since taking up the role, he has launched a range of new initiatives, from the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective to Indie Night, which champions independent publishing. He leads the programming for the London Literature Festival and a range of cross-arts projects and festivals featuring world-renowned authors and cultural icons.
His previous experience encompasses roles at Granta and the British Council, overseeing programming in the Middle East and South Asia. He has judged numerous awards, including the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and was chair of judges for the International Booker Prize in 2020. He is a trustee of English PEN and New Writing North. He has twice been named among The Bookseller’s 100 most influential people in publishing and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has contributed to a range of publications, including the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement and co-edited, with the Icelandic author Sjón, The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat and other stories from the North.
About The Arts Foundation
The Arts Foundation is a registered charity that supports individual artists and creatives in the UK with unconditional financial fellowships through the Arts Foundation Futures Awards.
Since 1993, the Arts Foundation has awarded over £2 million to the most promising artists in the UK at a pivotal moment in their careers to enable them to concentrate on their creative development, experiment, and realise their artistic potential.
The annual Arts Foundation Futures Awards provide five transformative £20,000 Fellowships, with all Shortlisted Artists receiving £1,000 towards the development of their practice.
The vital contribution of the Arts Foundation Futures Awards to the arts in the UK is demonstrated by its past Fellows, many of whom are regarded as contemporary pioneers and have gone on to become leaders in their respective art forms, including: Wayne McGregor (1994), Alice Oswald (1996), Joy Gregory (1996), Sarah Kane (1998), Hannah Starkey (2000), Asif Kapadia (2001), Ali Smith (2001), Rufus Norris (2002), Carol Morley (2003), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (2006), and more recently, Simon Fujiwara (2009), Sam Lee (2011), Alice Birch (2014), Hollie McNish (2015), Evan Ifekoya (2017), Holly Hendry (2019), Onyeka Igwe (2020), Klein (2020), Bethany Williams (2020) and Tanoa Sasraku (2021).