January and February are AYT Career Central months with guest blogs and features from arts professionals. Our fourth feature  in this exciting series is from Amber Massie-Blomfield, Executive Director of Camden People’s Theatre

Amber Massie-Blomfield is currently the Executive Director of Camden People’s Theatre. Camden People’s Theatre is a wonderful Central London theatre that supports emerging artists and alternative theatre. Massie-Blomfield says that, ‘I think I’ve always had the ambition to have my own theatre!’ but how did she get here? I caught up with her to discuss her career path and to hopefully find out some tips for young aspiring creatives!

Massie-Blomfield went to Central School of Speech and Drama and studied Theatre Practice. ‘It’s a course called Performance Arts, which is kind of a more experimental theatre practice. It teaches you a lot of producing and making your own work.’ After graduating her first full time job was with Mobius she describes how she learnt, ‘how a London Off-West End theatre company worked, how to talk about it, identify themes and trends, how it works commercially and how people make money out of it.’ After working with them for about four years Massie-Blomfield moved to Borkowski; ‘Which is run by a guy named Mark Borkowski, who’s quite an iconic figure in the PR world. I was working on much bigger entertainment brands. I was working with people like Ticketmaster and Universal Music Group, doing very high end consultancy. So that was very helpful in building my understanding in how the whole of the business operates and how the different parts of the business interact because we were getting some big brands. That was good at getting me to understand the commercial world and how things differ from the subsidised sector.’

Massie-Blomfield then took on the role of Head of Communications at The Albany, she says that ‘I was not purely doing PR but also doing marketing as well. That was a lot of learning! It was the first time I’d been in-house in a venue and been part of the senior management team. When you are part of a senior management team you get very involved in all aspects of the organisation; thinking about how the building’s run, all the technical stuff, building relationships with the funders – and being more local that could be the local council or local community. You also have much more of a direct say in the programming and the artistic choices that your organisation is making. That was really good at reinforcing that where I want to be and what I want to be doing is working in-house in a subsidised arts venue.’ Then she saw the role for Camden People’s Theatre; ‘I’ve known CPT for years – loved it – and actually my first play was on here when I was in the third year of my degree, so I’ve known it ever since I was a student. So, I thought I’d give it a shot and here I am!’

She’s also had a lot of opportunities along the way, including working at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival! ‘I think the Edinburgh Festival is an amazing place to learn, because it’s such an intensive, microcosm of the theatre world. Everything happens so quickly and you just have to learn how to really get on with things and just do it. So it was a really good training opportunity.’ she enthuses.

There are many skills needed in the role as Executive Director, as Massie-Blomfield explains, ‘Being able to keep a sense of the big picture at the same time as being able to deal with the everyday details of running an organisation and figuring out how they create a play is really key. Communications skills, being able to have good relationships with people at all different levels that’s important. And being able to budget!’

Looking to the future Massie-Blomfield hopes to stay in the Director role, saying ‘I’d like to stay at CPT for a few years at least and make my mark here!’ She also has great advice for aspiring creatives like she was: ‘So much of what you do is about forming relationships and talking to people. Trying to connect with and contact the people you think will be engaged in your work and excited about your work is probably one of the most important things you can do!’

Sprint 2015 is coming to Camden People’s Theatre in March – find out more information here.