Joanne Wain – Executive Director
Joanne’s role as Executive Director is multi-faceted and includes producing, marketing, event and project management, business development, and managing a creative team to deliver the company vision.
Joanne is an accomplished arts professional with over 20 years’ experience working in the cultural industries with a broad range of art forms in both management and production, from indoor and outdoor theatre, digital and online art events, to large-scale outdoor spectacles.
How long have you been with IOU and what has been your highlight?
‘I have been with IOU since 2014 and have worked on over 40 productions and events. There are many highlights including – successfully pulling off the Rear View conversion of a double-decker bus into a rear-facing mobile auditorium, then reproducing the show in 360 for a VR film installation shot live; to delivering workshops that include personal favourite – how to stick things together.
I love the diversity of the role, from the simple to the complex, whether that’s stuffing envelopes to shooting from the front of a train with an IOU engineered camera rig.’
Tell us about your professional journey before joining IOU?
‘From 1992-1999 I lived and worked in Manchester working as a Freelance Journalist for The Face, Mixmag, Muzik, as Editorial Assistant for Jockey Slut magazine, and Director of Freestyle PR.’
(Joanne prides herself on being the first and youngest sibling in her family to go to University after initially leaving school to become a hairdresser!)
‘I began working as a freelance Producer for NVA’s Ghost Peloton, Tour de France in Leeds; Quays Culture, The Lowry, NVA’s Speed of Light; WE PLAY Expo: The North West’s Closing Celebrations for London 2012 and Paralympic Games at Preston Guild Festival.
From 2007-2011, I was General Manager at FutureEverything, a digital festival of Art, Music and Ideas and before that Senior Event Producer at leading events company UZ, producing a series of high impact large scale festivals including BBC Music Live:On the Streets, Glasgow Art Fair, MusicWorks, the UK’s Cross-Media Music Convention and Festival and Big in Falkirk, Scotland’s National Street Arts Festival.’
Tell us about any stand out productions or exhibits you’ve experienced that left their mark on you?
‘I love all things music and was completely and utterly influenced by the acid house revolution in the very late 80s in Manchester and the North of England. Electronic music was in my DNA pre-acid house, from Brian Eno to David Bowie to Bauhaus, without me even knowing what it was back then.
The first art production that I worked on as a project assistant was Improbable Theatre and the World Famous 1999 premiere of Sticky, which was one the best outdoor theatre productions I had ever seen or worked on at that time. ‘