The Achates Team

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

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

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.

Fiona English

Director of Strategy

Fiona is Achates’ Director of Strategy and leads the development of strategic projects whether for individual organisations, or at a local or regional level.

Fiona has more than a decade’s experience in arts fundraising, strategy and organisational change. From 2017-2021 she was the inaugural Executive Director of the King’s Head Theatre overseeing the organisation through a rapid period of growth and development, securing the new building in Islington Square as well as spearheading the fundraising campaign for the building.

During Fiona’s tenure the venue raised £3m, won awards for its work both on stage and off stage and implemented dramatic change to make the venue a healthy, happy place to work, including being awarded the highest Healthy Workplace accreditation of any theatre from the GLA.

Fiona has worked across the cultural sector for both subsidised and non-subsidised venues, arts festivals and within the education sector. She is also a qualified coach and works in grassroots sport across the UK, opening up access to the outdoors for people from all walks of life.

She is passionate that arts can bring about positive and transformative societal change, and everyone deserves a place to be inspired, debate and bring about change.

Alex Mayer

Senior Consultant

Alex is a senior fundraiser with 17 years’ experience in the cultural and education sectors, most recently as Deputy Director of Development at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. A specialist in trusts and foundations fundraising, Alex’s career has spanned the strategy and delivery of major gift fundraising, management of multi-disciplinary teams, corporate sponsorship, membership and events. She is an experienced capital and revenue fundraiser and relishes opportunities where philanthropy becomes the vital catalyst in project development and implementation. She has particular expertise in generating income for learning and participation programmes, and this has been a focus of previous roles at both the RNCM and The Lowry theatre and galleries in Salford.

Alex is a former Trustee of Burnley Youth Theatre, one of the UK’s most vibrant and inclusive youth arts organisations, and a current Trustee of the Junior RNCM, a weekly music school for young musicians aged 8-18. Alex is a pianist by training, though regretfully out of practice, and determined to support young people in accessing extraordinary cultural training and experiences, just as she did.

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

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

Senior 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.

Caroline Jester

Senior Bid Writer

Caroline has worked in theatre and the arts for over twenty years as a dramaturg, writer and trusts and foundations fundraiser. She was Dramaturg and Literary Manager at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre for twelve years initiating new projects and writing successful bids for artist development programmes, educational and community projects, as well as large scale international collaborations. Her freelance work has included working with building and non-building-based companies such as Kali Theatre, Newhampton Arts Centre, New Earth Theatre, Strike A Light and Futures Theatre.

Her writing on theatre and playwriting is published by Bloomsbury, Routledge and Oberon Books and she is a Fellow of the Institute of Creative and Critical Writing at Birmingham City University. She has designed writing programmes in Italy, Croatia, Singapore and the US. She is currently on the Shadow Board of a new Charitable Trust, setting up a Cultural Centre in a Town Hall as Part of the Levelling Up Fund.

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

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.