Jenny Rutter
Chair
Jenny is a producer with 2 decades' experience supporting and developing creative practice in the Northwest. Her career has included local government regeneration, creative industries and professional development roles as well as managing and producing a wide variety of creative industry & arts programmes, including major festivals and events.
Jenny delivered the first dedicated Creative Industry development programme in Preston and supported the submission of the European funding bid that saw her work there replicated across the County as the original Creative Lancashire service. As a business advisor and consultant, she went on to work with NESTA on the development of their groundbreaking Creative Enterprise Toolkit, delivering training on its use to HE partners across the UK.
Jenny’s heart has always been with the arts and in her belief in art as a tool to drive social change & to help shape positive futures for marginalised people and places. Since 2014 her work has shifted into this area more directly, most recently working with two Arts Council England Creative People and Places programmes, LeftCoast in Blackpool and Super Slow Way in Pennine Lancashire.
For LeftCoast she worked on a number of commissions that aimed to re-frame the dominant negative narratives of Blackpool & its resident communities, which face some of the biggest social challenges in the country; and was involved in the early phase development of Art B&B, the seaside resorts newest hotel & social enterprise, entirely designed & made by artists, offering a unique cultural visitor destination experience, which opened for business in 2019. She also designed and delivered LeftCoast’s programme of artist professional practice which supported local creative’s with the skills they need to build sustainable careers working in the regions.
As Deputy Director of Super Slow Way, Jenny has co-developed the first British Textile Biennial which invites artists, designers and makers to explore the politics of cloth in performances, artworks and events across Pennine Lancashire against the backdrop of the impressive infrastructure that supported the cotton industry & with the community that has textiles in its DNA. She also manages Super Slow Way’s wider 3 year programme of commissions and residencies working with communities, partners and heritage assets along their 20 mile stretch of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.
Along the way, Jenny has become a Clore Cultural Leadership fellow and Relational Dynamics accredited coach and continues to work hard to realise the amazing cultural potential of this county which she truly loves, recently becoming a founding board member of the Lancashire 2025 City of Culture bid company and Chair of Creative Lancashire.