Helen Marriage

Director
Artichoke

Helen Marriage is Director of Artichoke, the arts production company she co-founded with Nicky Webb in 2005, and Creative Director of Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture.

Helen’s previous work includes a seven-year period as Director of the Salisbury Festival, described by The Times as ‘miracle of modern British culture’. She created the first Arts & Events programme for Olympia & York, the developers of Canary Wharf in London, and was an Associate Director of the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT).  She began her working life at Artsadmin where she managed a variety of independent artists in the early 1980s.

In 2012, she was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Design, a prestigious fellowship awarded to individuals working in the area of urban design and planning. Her appointment was an acknowledgement of the impact Artichoke has made on the way mass public art events are negotiated and staged.  She was awarded an MBE for services to the arts in the New Year’s Honours list in 2016.