Matt Carwardine-Palmer

07791 465524

Sector: Advertising & Marketing

Key Skills

arts, culture, marketing, communications, strategy

Key Clients

Anvil Arts, Basingstoke; Dance South West; HQ Theatres (Wycombe Swan & Wyvern Theatre ); Orchestras Live; Royal & Derngate, Northampton; Salisbury Playhouse; Shakespeare's Globe; Sherman Cymru; Sound Affairs; Stephen Browning Associates for the British Film Institute; Swindon Dance; True Digital; University of Bristol Students' Union; Volcano Theatre Company; Wales Millennium Centre; Wiltshire Arts Promoters.

Matt Carwardine-Palmer is a highly proficient marketing freelancer and consultant. With a background mainly in the arts, Matt works with a broad range of cultural organisations on improving their marketing, and also on engendering a culture of marketing within organisations beyond the sector.

With excellent qualifications, considerable senior management experience and a client list that includes Orchestras Live, Dance South West, Wales Millennium Centre and University of Bristol Students’ Union, Matt can provide your organisation with both strategic and tactical support.

Matt has researched, written and presented marketing and communications strategies for numerous cultural organisations including Swindon Dance, Sherman Cymru and Wiltshire Arts Promoters. He has also recently developed a five-year strategy for the University of BristolStudents’ Union.

Matt places particular emphasis on the importance of stakeholder engagement, the development of key messages and ensuring that marketing objectives help deliver the overall organisational objectives. He also ensures that a marketing or communications strategy includes a detailed, realistic and deliverable action-plan in order to deliver short-term objectives.

As well as taking on writing full strategies, Matt has also worked with other organisations on an advisory basis, providing structure, direction and independent ideas. Matt has also undertaken online primary research for Shakespeare’s Globe into the effectiveness of its online presence, and carried out stakeholder research for the British Film Institute into the proposed new National Film Centre on the South Bank.

Matt is highly experienced in planning and undertaking a full range of communications activities, and can help your organisation either on an ad-hoc or regular basis. This can be an extremely cost-effective way of delivering your marketing and communications functions. Matt has advised a number of his clients on staff recruitment and development issues, from helping to create job descriptions to short-listing and sitting on interview panels.

Matt has been working with Orchestras Live since December 2006, managing all of its communications including the launch of its new identity, developing and managing their website, undertaking e-marketing, producing publications, organising events and working on media campaigns. He also worked on a similar basis with Dance South West from May 2007 to July 2008 and has continued to provide ad-hoc support to them.

Matt has worked with a number of clients on developing their websites and introducing e-marketing functionality. He has also managed print projects (working with freelance graphic designers) and undertaken some freelance copywriting for season brochures. Matt provided marketing and press support to Sound Affairs for its Spring 2009 tour of ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’. This included production of a comprehensive marketing and press pack, commissioning photography and supporting venues with day-to-day requests.

It can be a difficult and lengthy process to replace senior marketing personnel in an organisation. During such times, there is always a danger that without senior marketing input, short-term priorities slip, teams have a lack of direction, and longer-term projects get put on hold. Employing an experience freelance marketer on a part-time basis can be a solution to this problem, providing stability during these periods of change.

In 2007, Matt worked as Interim Campaigns Manager at Wales Millennium Centre and returned as Interim Head of Marketing in 2008. He has also worked as Interim Head of Marketing at Salisbury Playhouse and Royal & Derngate in Northampton, and most recently as Interim Marketing & Communications Manager for the University of Bristol Students’ Union.