Arts Centre Melbourne CEO Claire Spencer to head up London’s Barbican

Claire Spencer AM is leaving her post of CEO of Arts Centre Melbourne, to take over as the first CEO at London’s Barbican Centre.

She steps down on April 14 after seven years. She joined after a stint as chief operating officer at the Sydney Opera House.

During her Arts Centre Melbourne tenure, Spencer delivered the Australian Music Hall of Fame in the ground-breaking Australian Music Vault which reached its millionth visitor 15 months after it opened.

She spearheaded the creation of the sector-wide mental health initiative, the Arts Wellbeing Collective, now comprising 400 partner organisations.

The venue completed the $40 million replacement of the State Theatre Flying System during COVID closure; navigated the pandemic response and recovery over a two-year period, including returning live performance to Victoria with Live at the Bowl; and secured government support for the multi-million-dollar Reimagining Arts Centre Melbourne.

Victorian Arts Centre Trust president, Ian Carson AM, paid tribute to Spencer’s legacy, including her leadership and steering the organisation to financial sustainability.

Her other achievements, he said, included “embedding a values-led, people-first culture, setting a strategic commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and in being the unstoppable driving force behind the transformative renewal project, Reimagining Arts Centre Melbourne”.

“Her trademark resilience, tenacity, passion and her commitment to her team, the sector, and the community we serve as Victoria’s arts centre is a mark of her outstanding leadership,” he said.

The Barbican Centre is the UK and Europe’s largest multi-arts venue.

It presents a diverse range of art, music, theatre, dance, film and creative learning events.

It is the home of the London Symphony Orchestra and showcases jazz, folk, world, roots, soul, country, contemporary classical and experimental rock, pop and electronica.

In 2019-20, it drew 1.2 million visitors and generated £3 million (AU$5.67 million) from business events.

It’s a full cycle for Spencer: she remembers attending her first shows there while growing up in London.

But she takes over the complex at a turbulent time.

Last year a number of current and past Black executives released a book Barbican Stories which told of institutional racism, in language, attitudes and promotion.

Its managing director Sir Nicholas Kenyon stepped down after, although he insisted he’d been planning the move long before.

Spencer, in parting, thanked the “amazing, passionate, wildly creative and talented Arts Centre Melbourne team who supported me throughout my tenure and took many leaps of faith as we followed our ambitious agenda”.

A global search has begun for her replacement.