Adrian Chappell

Improving Music Transition: progression routes across the new music education hub landscape

Adrian Chappell is Programme Convenor for Musical Bridges: transforming transition. He was appointed in January 2010 to establish and deliver this three-year Paul Hamlyn-funded special initiative. Adrian works as a freelance arts education manager; recent employers include the University of the Arts, London, and the University of Greenwich where he is currently helping establish a new 'creative campus' called the 'Deptford Square Mile' with young people, community arts organisations and the police in South London.

Until he began working as a freelance arts education consultant in 2008, Adrian was full-time Programme Manager in London Metropolitan University’s School of Education for five years. He was responsible for many arts-related access-to-HE programmes including a European transnational vocational training programme in Berlin, Istanbul and London for Turkish-speaking young people.

Prior to that, Adrian worked for the Arts Council (London). There, he managed the Council’s education funding programmes since 1990, before he was appointed to lead the Arts Council’s Access Programme in 1999. He created several national arts education partnerships including a long-standing arts and refugees initiative, Celebrating Sanctuary, and a community arts and HE programme called Arts & the Learning City.

Adrian has worked in education as a youth and community worker, lecturer and cultural policy adviser for the Inner London Education Authority. He trained originally in fine art and then in sociology/ cultural studies.  In his spare time, Adrian works as a photographer and video-maker.