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 during the pandemic led our Balance programme, which supported creative freelancers to balance their minds and their books, providing mental health and business-focused support via monthly Balance talks, our Balance toolkit and training around business planning, innovation and mental health. An accredited coach and action learning facilitator, she also led our RE:SET action learning programme, which supported around 150 freelancers with coaching support during the pandemic. Other ‘hub lab’ programmes Julia has led include our Joining the Dots project, exploring new potentially ‘game-changing’ ideas for the independent music sector and new ways to share knowledge, and 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 led the team that evaluated Arts Council England’s Grassroots Live Music Fund (report here) and also worked with the British Council music team to refresh its support for international residencies. She is currently working with Manchester City Council to research how it can better support music venues in the city, and with Arts Council England to review its support for music across the South East. She is also part of the team that won the bid to bringing the international music convention, WOMEX, to the UK in October 2024.
Julia enjoys mentoring artists and producers whose work she finds inspiring and in a pro bono capacity is Co-Chair of the South East Creative Economy Network, co-founder of the Made in Essex Network and Chair of Sound UK. 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.