The Achates Team

• Caroline McCormick
  

  Caroline McCormick

  Director

  Caroline leads on major campaigns and organisational strategy. She has developed and delivered campaigns and processes of organisational change, in all art forms and scales of organisation across the country and internationally.

  Caroline developed Achates’ audience informed approach which seeks to ensure arts organisations balance the interests of diverse audience groups with the priorities of art to enable resilience with integrity.

  In 2005, having completed the £70 million capital campaign to create the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum, Caroline became the first Director of PEN International, heading up 145 Centres in 105 countries and acting as the Literature representative at UNESCO. Taking up the role four days a week also allowed her to start working with her first consultancy client, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai.

  Caroline is Chair of the Achates Philanthropy Foundation and, in 2015, founded the national campaign for support for the arts, the Achates Philanthropy Prize. She is a Trustee of the National Centre for Writing and an Advisor to Beatfreeks.

• Matthew Swann
  

  Matthew Swann

  Director of Recruitment and Organisational Change

  Matthew leads Achates’ recruitment division, delivering executive search assignments focusing on organisational change and inclusion.

  Matthew was the Chief Executive of City of London Sinfonia (CLS) from 2012 to 2021, transforming the orchestra to be driven by its participation and community work, with a ‘seriously informal’, immersive performance format with diverse artistic leaders. CLS became a recognised leader in music and healthcare, co-authored the UK ‘Orchestras in Healthcare’ report, and in 2020 won the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Impact for its work with young people and mental health.

  Matthew also led a project to create a more inclusive board of directors for the Association of British Orchestras. Previously, Matthew held producing roles at the Camden Roundhouse, was a Senior Associate for Liz Amos Associates, the leading arts executive search agency, and worked in corporate development for the Barbican Centre.

  As well as his Achates role, he is developing a start-up research and development collective empowering artists from under-represented backgrounds in the music sector. He is currently chair of the Family Arts Campaign.

• Deborah Larwood
  

  Deborah Larwood

  Director of Development

  Deborah Larwood is Director of Development, leading on Achates’ fundraising consultancy across the cultural sector. Work spans fundraising strategy, feasibility study development, mentoring and workshop delivery, major strategic bids and acting as Interim Director of Development.

  With more than ten years’ experience in arts fundraising, Deborah has held senior positions in venue-based and touring cultural organisations as well as in the HE/FE sector, in both London and Yorkshire. Previous roles include Head of Development for Opera North where she oversaw the £18m Music Works capital campaign, Director of Development at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and Fundraising Manager at Sheffield Theatres.

  Deborah is a passionate advocate of peer networking and continuing professional development, and has acted as Mentor and Regional Associate for Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy, as well as serving on the Chartered Institute of Fundraising’s RAISE Steering Committee. Deborah is also the Chair of Harrogate Theatre Trust in North Yorkshire.

• Cerian Eiles
  

  Cerian Eiles

  Senior Consultant

  Senior Consultant, Cerian Eiles, leads on strategic development, including programme development, targeted fundraising and organisational structure.

  She has more than 15 years’ experience across the sector, specialising in working with start-up and grass roots organisations across the country, taking a holistic approach through coaching, mentoring, fundraising and strategy development.

  She has supported organisations of all scales to transform their voluntary income generation and achieve capital targets. Recent projects on which Cerian has advised and led include: Tramshed (formerly GLYPT) whom she has successfully supported throughout their £3m capital project, which will be commence in 2021; East London Dance and Urban Development, whom Cerian has advised throughout their £2m capital project with almost all funds now in place, the project will open this autumn.

  Cerian has a background as a performer and practitioner, working for many years with young people in Peckham, mentoring and supporting their developing careers, as well as producing theatre designed to engage audiences who are new to the arts.

• Helen Gaffney
  

  Helen Gaffney

  Senior Consultant & Researcher

  Helen is a Senior Consultant and Researcher at Achates, working with a broad range of arts and cultural organisations across the UK to build income, develop audiences and strengthen governance.

  Helen is an expert prospect research specialist and experienced fundraiser who currently splits her time between Achates and leading Arnolfini’s voluntary and commercial income, successfully shaping the case for the gallery’s economic, social and cultural value for a range of hyper-local and international communities and re-establishing an income model following the relaunch of the gallery in 2019.

  She was most recently interim Head of Development at the Crafts Council, generating income for a range of education and talent development projects to reach regional audiences and participants, whilst also fundraising to reopen a home for craft, the new Crafts Council Gallery. She has also recently led on developing audiences and commercial income for high-profile London art fairs including Draw and Collect.

  Helen was formerly Executive Director of Achates, leading the business through a period of significant growth across the cultural sector from 2016 – 2018, whilst also serving as the first Director of the Achates Prize which celebrates first time philanthropists to the arts.

  Helen established her career in prospect research at both the Serpentine Gallery and Royal Academy of Arts, moving to The Old Vic to inaugurate a prospect research function and advise the Executive Director as Business Development Manager.

• Rose Goddard
  

  Rose Goddard

  Head of Trusts

  Rose Goddard leads Achates’ trust fundraising work. She works closely and collaboratively with a wide range of clients representing a variety of artforms, supporting organisations to build successful trust strategies rooted in an audience-informed approach for capital and revenue funding campaigns.

  With clients from across the cultural sector including Cardboard Citizens, Tramshed, Poet in the City, UD and East London Dance, Rose has extensive experience of working with strategic funders such as Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Foyle Foundation and the Garfield Weston Foundation, and also specializes in prospect research, bid writing and project development.

  Rose is an Ambassador for the Achates Prize, and consults across fundraising and project management with organisations including Women’s Prize Trust. She has held roles as Programme Manager at national charity The Reading Agency where she also chaired the Knowledge Quarter’s Knowledge Exchange group, and previously worked in editorial publishing at Penguin Random House and Oxford University Press.

   

• Helen Delaney
  

  Helen Delaney

  Bid Writer

  Helen is a Bid Writer in Achates’ trusts division.

  Before working at Achates, Helen was a curator for twenty years, working in the contemporary British art team at Tate Britain. She worked on the acquisition of c.1,500 works of art for Tate’s permanent collection. She curated the 2012 exhibition Another London: International Photographers Capture City Life 1930-1980, as well as numerous collection displays and artists’ projects and commissions.

  As well as her Achates role, Helen is a freelance grants and trusts fundraiser, with a particular interest in grassroots charities making a positive social impact, especially where this involves disabled and neurodiverse communities.

• Victoria Hibbs
  

  Victoria Hibbs

  General Manager

  Victoria is Achates’ general manager. She brings over 25 years of arts sector experience to the role both from an administrative and producing perspective and has first-hand insight to the challenges and complexities of fundraising and strategic planning, particularly within the theatre and events industries.

  Having trained as a stage manager at Bretton Hall College in Yorkshire, she then spent 12 years working nationally and internationally in a variety of stage management roles ranging in scale from community touring companies to International circus acts (De La Guarda at the Roundhouse, Camden and the Rio, Las Vegas), large-scale events such as the Millennium Dome and the Manchester Commonwealth Games in 2002. She was awarded Stage Manager of the Year in 2003.

  In 2004 Victoria diversified into producing, administration and finance and has been general manager and joint CEO for Attic, a small-scale arts organisation based in LB Merton for well over a decade.

  She also spent five years in a variety of consulting, administrative, finance and development roles, supporting the organisational growth and development of the award-winning Omnibus Theatre in Clapham. 

• Dagmar Walz
  

  Dagmar Walz

  Senior Associate

  Dagmar specialises in organisational development, business models, strategic planning and capital projects.

  Recent projects for Achates include the establishment of a delivery and legacy organisation for London Borough of Culture Brent, vision and programme development for Symphony Hall Birmingham, grant programme review and new venue feasibility study for the Westway Trust and interim project management and statutory fundraising for the Roundhouse’s Next Generation Campaign.

  Dagmar has worked for some of the UK’s leading performing arts organisations including the RSC, National Theatre, English National Opera and The Old Vic, and was Executive Director of innovative youth arts charity IdeasTap from 2011 to 2014. She is a Trustee of the Achates Philanthropy Foundation.

• Kallum Nunes

  Kallum Nunes

  Recruitment Administrator

  Kallum joins Achates as Recruitment Administrator from the Government’s Kickstarter programme to support the development of Achates Recruits. Kallum brings experience in business and administration through his time working at LB Lambeth as both Business Administration Apprentice and Education and Employment Data analyst and Coordinator Officer Contractor for Children’s Services. He has also worked as Apprentice Business Administrator and Office administrator for various estate agents. At LB Lambeth he was responsible for researching and identifying young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) and monitoring their education and youth engagement information, including undertaking needs analysis and liaising with external partners to identify appropriate referrals to support.  He has developed communications strategies, online databases and content management systems and is proficient in data input and analysis. These skills will support his transition to the cultural recruitment sector.