Laura Drane

Laura is an experienced, senior consultant and facilitator, based in Cardiff and working across the UK’s arts and culture sectors. 

She has 25 years’ experience delivering a wide variety of projects at a national and strategic level. Laura’s role supports our consultancy services, as well as focusing on work with social purpose at its heart.

Laura's work for the last two decades has been rooted in Laura H Drane Associates Ltd, including with organisations like Creative Lives, Arts Council England, Manchester International Festival, National Skills Academy, plus many universities and local authorities. She has also been a Portfolio Manager for Arts Council of Wales, sitting as part of the management board.

Since joining The Audience Agency, she has contributed to the policy work for the Officer of the Future Generations Commissioner around the Green Paper for a Culture Bill for Wales, and has facilitated work in Basildon around the scoping and feasibility of a cultural forum.

Laura's skills and enthusiasms encompass: 

• developing partnerships and ways of working
• making policy and connecting it to practice
• delivering strategies, frameworks and business models
• producing creative programming and place-making
• overseeing phases of work from concept to strategic planning to delivery to impact.

She has many years of practice in facilitating away days, networks and events/conferences; or as part of longer change management processes. She is also able to support individuals, organisations and networks through Action Learning (recruiting, setting up and running sets). 

Laura is a high-level dysgwr (Welsh language learner). She gained an MA(Hons) in Politics at the University of Edinburgh. In her spare time, she co-runs Cardiff's longest-running, open access book group, and enjoys doing cross stitch and jigsaws.