Royal College of Art vice-chancellor announced as new chair of the British Council

The British Council has introduced that Paul Thompson, the previous head of London’s Royal Faculty of Artwork, can be its new chair.

Thompson takes up the position after making his identify as vice-chancellor of the Royal Faculty of Artwork (RCA), London’s main postgraduate college of artwork and design, which he led for greater than 15 years. The RCA has been ranked because the world’s primary artwork and design college for the previous eight years consecutively.

Throughout his tenure on the RCA, Thompson oversaw the opening of the school’s new constructing in Battersea, London, which is designed by Herzog & de Meuron and encompasses greater than 16,000 sq.m. The brand new campus growth price within the area of £140m, and included a £54m capital funding grant from the UK authorities in addition to donations from non-public philanthropists.

Previous to the RCA, Thompson labored on the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt museum in New York and the Design Museum in London. He’s additionally a trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In a press release Thompson mentioned: “All through my profession I’ve labored intently with the British Council’s knowledgeable employees throughout Asia, the Gulf and North America. I’ve big regard for the establishment’s position in selling UK ‘smooth energy’ and our world- class universities and am delighted to be becoming a member of Scott and the Board of Trustees.”

The British Council is a non-departmental physique of the International, Commonwealth & Growth Workplace (FCDO). However the council’s chair place has come underneath scrutiny in latest months amid accusations of it changing into politicised.

In August, The Monetary Instances newspaper alleged that Nigel Adams, the previous member of parliament and a detailed political ally of the previous UK prime minister Boris Johnson, was concerned within the recruitment course of for the position of chair of the British Council. Sam Blyth, a distant relation of Johnson’s, who had additionally promised a private mortgage of £80,000 to the previous prime minister, initially appeared on a shortlist of candidates beneficial by the FCDO to run the council earlier than withdrawing from consideration for the position.

Thompson can have a stacked in-tray when he assumes his position, for he’ll take over an organisation which has suffered from a big funding shortfall in recent times. In March 2022, British Council employees engaged in industrial motion in protest over proposed cuts that have been projected to cut back the council’s workforce by not less than 20%.

In September 2021, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the council closed its workplaces and “considerably lowering its operations” in 20 international locations world wide, together with Afghanistan and Australia, as a part of a cost-cutting train. A British Council spokesperson mentioned on the time that the affect of Covid on the council’s business earnings, which was beforehand used to subsidise programming, in addition to an total decline within the authorities’s grant finances in comparison with pre-Covid, had left the organisation going through a big funding shortfall.