On 23 May 2016, Jackie Killeen joined us as Director, British Council Scotland. We’re thrilled to welcome her and what better way to introduce her than through our three key areas of work.
A is for Arts:
It’s been a pleasure to join British Council in time for the summer festivals. I’ve been able to see how our arts team here in Edinburgh work with the festivals, with a range of Scottish arts organisations and with our global network to ensure that important platforms like Momentum – which brings delegates from a range of art forms and countries to Edinburgh – can be the best possible experience and lead to valuable long-term collaborations. This has been a great way for me to get to know how and where the British Council contributes.
E is for Education:
I’ve been particularly struck by the range of British Council programmes, and how they weave into the education system – and therefore the learning experiences of children and young people – at different stages. There’s something really exciting for me about how we bring all of this together to help our children and young people feel curious about the wider world and confident about their ability to flourish in it. Language learning plays a strong part in that, along with the development of other global citizenship skills through opportunities such as Language Assistants, Connecting Classrooms, IAESTE and Erasmus+.
S is for Society:
In many ways I see arts, education and society together. When we talk about our Society work in the British Council we are thinking about strong global programmes around agendas such as active citizenship, gender equality, social enterprise. This is very much my own background, and I am interested in how we can both strengthen the connections and contributions to these from Scotland, as well as looking at the connections and interdependencies between arts, education and society work.