Julia Payne

Chief Executive [and Co-founder]

Julia was one of the hub’s founding directors back in 2002 and continues to lead the organisation now that it’s into its second decade.

She has 20+years experience in promoting, marketing and fundraising for independent ‘beyond mainstream’ music. She earned her stripes working in venues, including London’s Barbican Centre, as development director at a music charity and as a producer. After a spell as music officer at Arts Council England, she co-founded the hub, curious to explore a new development agency model in the music sector. A natural leader, the hub evolved out of a desire to work with like-minded visionaries who shared her talent for lateral thinking, a determination to make a difference and a passion for asking ‘what if?’

Julia leads on our in-house ‘hub lab’ programme, and is currently heading up our Joining the Dots project, exploring new potentially ‘game-changing’ ideas for the independent music sector and new ways to share knowledge. She also led on New Music Plus…, a scheme created in partnership with PRS for Music Foundation, which supported the professional development of music producers over a five year period.

With lead responsibility for our 150-strong client portfolio, Julia has a long track record of working with large and small organisations across the music industry, to support them with strategic planning, change management, fundraising and marketing. Julia is also heavily in demand as a researcher. Recently, she’s worked on an economic impact assessment of English Folk Expo and research into The Great Escape and Soundhub, Kent’s music education hub. She led our research which informed Arts Council and the British Council’s development of their Artists’ International Development Fund, and the Musicians – Have Your Say research project for Help Musicians UK, still the UK’s largest ever survey of professional musicians.

She has a strong interest in education, and is an experienced trainer and mentor. She led the hub team that developed and managed BBC Talent’s Fame Academy Bursary Scheme (now BBC Performing Arts Fund), and was instrumental in developing Guildhall School of Music & Drama‘s award winning Connect programme.

Julia enjoys mentoring artists and producers whose work she finds inspiring and is currently mentor to Chimera Productions. She’s on the board of the National Youth Jazz Collective and Penned in the Margins, and an advisor for PRS for Music Foundation. In her spare time, she’s an avid music and theatre attender, bakes cakes, grows things and does a bit of arty cutting and sticking.

Follow Julia on Twitter.
Visit Julia’s blog.