About Elaine

I am an arts and culture consultant who has spent her whole working life bringing live arts to people who would not always have come otherwise.

It is the work I love. Through my consultancy and The Arts & Culture Group, my national network of over 1,100 members, I connect communities, schools and families with wonderful theatre, exhibitions and live events, building the kind of trusting relationships that prove arts and culture really is for everyone.

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Who I am and what I do

I am Elaine Grant. I run Elaine Grant Creative Consulting, an arts and culture consultancy based in London, and I founded The Arts & Culture Group, a national membership network with over 1,100 members. My work is to connect people, communities and audiences with the live arts, and to make sure that arts and culture is genuinely for everyone, not just for the few.

I do that in two ways. As a consultant I work with theatres, producers, galleries, museums and heritage sites who want to develop new audiences, fill an allocation, run a focus group, host a post-show talk, or moderate a panel. As the founder of The Arts & Culture Group I bring that same love of the arts to a national community of members who get discounted, sometimes complimentary, tickets to wonderful shows.

My story

Where do I start? I’m a working class Black woman. I grew up in Peckham, went to a comprehensive girls’ school, and absolutely fell in love with drama. That love took me to a performing arts centre, where I threw myself into everything, ballet, jazz dance, jazz vocals, you name it, and then on to a BA Honours Degree in Performance Arts.

From there I spent twelve incredible years working as an actor, and I adored it. But what really started to light me up was the other side of the arts, bringing people in, opening those doors for the people who don’t always feel like theatre is for them. So I retrained as an arts administrator and project manager, and that’s when I began working with schools, with community groups, and on the community engagement work I love so much.

I gave eleven wonderful years to that work. And it was at a theatre education charity that everything really came together for me, because that’s where I developed my two specialisms, audience development and community engagement. I was working with schools and families, taking them into theatres, running workshops in schools, theatres and community settings, coordinating them and often facilitating them myself, leading programmes and choosing the productions. Every leadership skill I use today, I learned in those years, and I’m so grateful for them.

In 2023 I decided to leave that organisation and start my consultancy. There was no real strategy. I did a few business programmes along the way, but what I really did was build very good relationships with industry specialists, marketeers and producers. I met with a few of them, who generously gave me their time, and I spoke to them about what I wanted to do. Work just came to me. I started working with some community groups, started getting them into seeing shows, and they would pay me to coordinate their visits.

In 2024 I founded The Arts & Culture Group. It is a national membership network, continuously growing, now over 1,100 members. I get discounted, sometimes complimentary tickets for a variety of theatre, art and cultural events for my members, and they are absolutely loving the experiences. I get the most incredible feedback. People want to keep going and seeing high quality art and culture, and that is what I stand for.

Testimonials

What clients say

Working with Elaine has been incredibly rewarding for our project. As a predominantly white organisation, we called upon Elaine’s lived experience and expertise to recruit African Caribbean participants for Focus Groups this year, and I don’t think we would have been able to run those consultations to time, or as successfully, without her support. Elaine went above and beyond from the get-go, even travelling to Harewood to visit and meet with some of the participants, which I think had a positive contribution to their experience. Plus, she’s a lovely person to be around and work with! Elaine’s dedication and communication throughout is testament to how invested she is in diversifying cultural audiences in a genuine and authentic way, and I’m really looking forward to continuing to work with her and draw upon her expertise for this important work. Don’t hesitate to work with Elaine!

Beth Dawes, Head of Marketing and Audiences. Harewood House, Leeds

Talk to me about your project

Whether you are a venue, a producer, a heritage site, or an arts lover thinking about joining The Arts & Culture Group, I would love to hear from you.

Get in touch

What I stand for

I stand for creating live experiences for my members and for the community groups, schools, families and individuals I work with. High quality art and cultural live events. That is what I want my legacy to be, that I was able to give people these experiences, life-changing, long-lasting memories with their friends and their families.

Arts and culture is for everyone. Not a luxury. Not elitist. When I talk about diversity, I do not just mean culturally diverse. I mean diverse in the widest sense. There is no discrimination, no prioritising of particular race groups or genders. For me, art is for everyone, and I think a lot of organisations should engage more in that.

That is the mission. That is the work.

What I bring to a project

If you are thinking about working with me, here is what I bring to the table.

  • 25 years of audience outreach across theatre, galleries, museums and heritage
  • Over 40 years of community engagement work in the arts
  • A deep, organic database of community groups, schools, teachers and families I have built over decades
  • Real, trusting relationships with community leaders across the UK
  • A diverse list of audiences I can speak to honestly, including audiences for opera, ballet, musicals, plays, exhibitions and family work
  • A track record of filling allocations, growing audiences and bringing people back
  • Warm, confident hosting and moderating skills for talks, panels and post-show events

I am very proud of three years in business, and I feel I have proved myself as authentic, genuine and hard working. If I say I am going to do something, I do it.

How I work with people

A lot of my work is relationships, building them and sustaining them. People have been incredibly generous to me, and I take that seriously. I do my best to be supportive of everybody who works with me, whether that is a client trying to engage a new audience or an audience member coming to the theatre for the first time.

Some people need more hand-holding than others, and that is fine. What I have learned over the years is that if you support people on their first visits, they will feel much more comfortable booking their own tickets the next time around and bringing other people with them. That word-of-mouth is everything in this industry.

Speaking and panels

Alongside my consultancy and my membership network, I take on speaking engagements. I have moderated panels at marketing conferences and family arts conferences, hosted post-show talks for theatre productions and given talks of my own, including one on becoming an entrepreneur at 59. Age is just a number, and that talk goes down particularly well with women starting out a little later in life.

If you are looking for a host or a moderator who knows the arts inside out, I would love to hear from you.

Testimonials

What clients say

Thank you, Elaine, for your dedication to everything related to the performance arts and education. You have made many many children and their teachers and families very happy with the Mousetrap links. It’s an extraordinary organisation and I and my students benefited for many years when I was a full-time teacher of Drama and Theatre Arts and English. Thank you for your hard work and dedication.

Duncan Melvin, Teacher

Talk to me about your project

Whether you are a venue, a producer, a heritage site, or an arts lover thinking about joining The Arts & Culture Group, I would love to hear from you.

Get in touch