Kate Brindley is adamant that SHE hasn't got where she is today because of any major career plan. And she likes to speak more about seizing opportunities than ambition.
In April, chance brought her to Bristol to become its first director of museums, galleries and archives (the previous post did not include archives). Getting to know archives is one of the big challenges so far, she says.
Another is Bristol's largest capital project: a proposed £20m museum project on the harbourside. This will include the building of a new Museum of Bristol to incorporate the existing Bristol Industrial Museum and tell the story of the people of Bristol.
It will include digital histories, contemporary collecting and explore new ways of engaging with visitors. This will of course have a knock-on effect on the presentation and interpretation of the main museum site at Queen's Road.
She has spent her first weeks drawing up the stage two Heritage Lottery Fund application. 'I feel like I've been dropped in the deep end, well and truly,' she says.
At 35, Brindley has to be the youngest director of a large local authority museums service in the country. She emerged from the relatively small Wolverhampton City Council where, as the head of arts and museums, she secured £6.7m for the redevelopment of the service.
She made her mark with an access and audience development programme in visual arts and was a respected member of the region's phase one hub.
Brindley, who is from Sheffield, left university with a degree in art history and knew pretty early on that she wanted to communicate the joys of art, but not through teaching.
So she volunteered in museums and arts centres in Yorkshire, Manchester and London over a two-year period and also gained a postgraduate diploma in art gallery and museum studies at Manchester.
Time spent at the Leeds City Art Gallery and the Rotherham Art Gallery in particular, where she was allowed to mount exhibitions, opened up a new world.
But the paid museum jobs were too long coming, and it was academia that she turned to - lecturing in 20th-century art history to mostly 19-year-old artists at her local further education college. She was 24.
'It was the older students that were the best and the worst. The best because they were so supportive to me, and the worst because they were so questioning.'
Her first three curatorial jobs, at the Mead Gallery, Warwick; the Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum; and the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, were the kind where she experienced every facet of museum work under each roof.
'I enjoyed that because I wanted to be able to shape things and make a difference,' she says. Each one also happened to be a brand new post. There was no gameplan, 'Serendipity. I was a pioneer, I could define my role. It was almost like there was no rule book. It was great.'
Her early jobs fed her passion for contemporary and 20th-century art, and she was able to make decisions on the commissioning of new artworks in the galleries. At Leamington and Rugby she worked on capital projects, the latter where she cut her teeth as a manager, recruiting 11 staff to work in the re-developed gallery.
But in Bristol, she is leaving much of that behind. For her, curating will be a thing of the past and there will be no new team to mould. She inherits 180 staff, two bosses, a flagship museum with 1.75m items in the collection (there were 12,000 in her last job), and instead of managing the three sites she had at Wolverhampton, she is mother to a total of seven, far more varied institutions.
And of course, Bristol is the leader of the phase one South West museum hub. It could, very well, be something like rocket science.
But as Brindley finishes her salad during the interview, which takes place in her office, she appears cool and up for it: 'My expectation of the job was that it would be pretty tough. A lot to get my head round pretty quickly. I did want that challenge otherwise I wouldn't have come.'
And therein lies Brindley's driving force. What fires her isn't necessarily ambition, but challenge. 'A site like this [the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery] has everything. It's so encyclopaedic. I'm quite comfortable with fine and decorative art, but when it comes to steam trains I'm a bit wobbly.'
But of course it is her job to have the vision for the service not to be expert in, say, natural history. At Wolverhampton, she admits, her fine art background led her to steer its direction more closely 'much to the annoyance of my fine art curators I'm sure'.
Brindley wasn't looking for a new job when Bristol's headhunters came calling. Wolverhampton was at an exciting point having secured the money for new galleries. In true style, Brindley says that Bristol sounded like a good opportunity.
And if what initially looked like a good few rungs up the ladder had turned into real interest, even if she had not got the job, she would at least understand the machinations of a high-level recruitment process: 'Because it doesn't half make you think and keep you sharp,' she says. 'The last thing I want to do is rest on my laurels. I'm not that sort of person. I like to be really on the edge.'
I let Brindley know of my surprise that she left Wolverhampton when she did. Did she not fancy seeing it through to 2006? She admits that it would have been easier for her personally to stay at Wolverhampton.
Her working life had been spent in the West Midlands and she had developed a strong professional network. Most of her friends are there and her husband's job was located there too. Her house in Wolverhampton is yet to be sold and she wonders what they can afford in price-inflated Bristol.
But in some ways, she says, it was a good time to move. 'All the structure [for the new galleries] for delivery was in place. I could see it was going to work. I was at the stage when I could leave it a bit more because I'd been very involved, probably too involved.'
Brindley wants to bring to Bristol the success story that was Wolverhampton - putting access at the heart of everything - in which Bristol is lagging behind.
She says it took some time to work with the team at Wolverhampton to produce a clear agenda and be 'completely passionate about communicating our product and really striving to make it the best and judging ourselves on that'. Taking risks and developing new partnerships were central to that, she says.
'Constantly questioning what we do, what's best practice. That sort of hunger for wanting to improve what you do, driven by the audience as your focus, that's healthy.'
Encouraging 180 staff across seven sites to think and operate her way may be more difficult and certainly a lengthier process than at Wolverhampton. One sector insider called Brindley a 'tough cookie', but wondered if she realised what she was letting herself in for.
Bristol has traditionally been a difficult authority and it has been hinted that Brindley's predecessors were heavily controlled from above.
Brindley says she appreciates the benefit of having council members onside from her days at Wolverhampton. With a new Labour controlled council in Bristol eager to make its mark, she may have an easier time.
A politicised African-Caribbean community is one aspect Brindley will have to deal with. The new Bristol Museum will liaise with this community group to bring about an extension on the story of slavery that is currently told. Brindley's legacy with working with diverse communities in Wolverhampton will help.
'The service is poised at a good moment in terms of its role as leader of the South West hub, investment and its standing on leadership in the sector.' She is also keen to capitalise on Bristol's continuing fervour built up around its European Capital of Culture bid - partnership building is already flourishing, she says.
Brindley's easy, amiable nature hides a shrewd operator. She has certainly proved herself as a competent manager and leader but as a sector visionary? When I ask her about her outlook for museums she repeats the access line again.
She mentions partnership working, talking the Renaissance and Arts Council England language (she secured the Wolverhampton Gallery as a regular client of the regional arts council), best practice and all the other corporate buzzwords.
Brindley tells it straight: 'I say what I'm interested in, say where the organisation should be going, and what I've done so far along that journey. So if they don't like it, well, I don't really want to work for them then do I?'
For someone who has never set her sights on a job, she does say that a service on Bristol's scale would have been the next move after Wolverhampton. But will she stay the course?
If she is allowed to attempt her own personal vision, then maybe. But then again, if her comment on the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum capital project is anything to go by - 'You put so much of yourself into this thing that you then kind of want out' - she'll be gone once the new building is up, turning to the next opportunity or perhaps, making it happen.
In April, chance brought her to Bristol to become its first director of museums, galleries and archives (the previous post did not include archives). Getting to know archives is one of the big challenges so far, she says.
Another is Bristol's largest capital project: a proposed £20m museum project on the harbourside. This will include the building of a new Museum of Bristol to incorporate the existing Bristol Industrial Museum and tell the story of the people of Bristol.
It will include digital histories, contemporary collecting and explore new ways of engaging with visitors. This will of course have a knock-on effect on the presentation and interpretation of the main museum site at Queen's Road.
She has spent her first weeks drawing up the stage two Heritage Lottery Fund application. 'I feel like I've been dropped in the deep end, well and truly,' she says.
At 35, Brindley has to be the youngest director of a large local authority museums service in the country. She emerged from the relatively small Wolverhampton City Council where, as the head of arts and museums, she secured £6.7m for the redevelopment of the service.
She made her mark with an access and audience development programme in visual arts and was a respected member of the region's phase one hub.
Brindley, who is from Sheffield, left university with a degree in art history and knew pretty early on that she wanted to communicate the joys of art, but not through teaching.
So she volunteered in museums and arts centres in Yorkshire, Manchester and London over a two-year period and also gained a postgraduate diploma in art gallery and museum studies at Manchester.
Time spent at the Leeds City Art Gallery and the Rotherham Art Gallery in particular, where she was allowed to mount exhibitions, opened up a new world.
But the paid museum jobs were too long coming, and it was academia that she turned to - lecturing in 20th-century art history to mostly 19-year-old artists at her local further education college. She was 24.
'It was the older students that were the best and the worst. The best because they were so supportive to me, and the worst because they were so questioning.'
Her first three curatorial jobs, at the Mead Gallery, Warwick; the Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum; and the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, were the kind where she experienced every facet of museum work under each roof.
'I enjoyed that because I wanted to be able to shape things and make a difference,' she says. Each one also happened to be a brand new post. There was no gameplan, 'Serendipity. I was a pioneer, I could define my role. It was almost like there was no rule book. It was great.'
Her early jobs fed her passion for contemporary and 20th-century art, and she was able to make decisions on the commissioning of new artworks in the galleries. At Leamington and Rugby she worked on capital projects, the latter where she cut her teeth as a manager, recruiting 11 staff to work in the re-developed gallery.
But in Bristol, she is leaving much of that behind. For her, curating will be a thing of the past and there will be no new team to mould. She inherits 180 staff, two bosses, a flagship museum with 1.75m items in the collection (there were 12,000 in her last job), and instead of managing the three sites she had at Wolverhampton, she is mother to a total of seven, far more varied institutions.
And of course, Bristol is the leader of the phase one South West museum hub. It could, very well, be something like rocket science.
But as Brindley finishes her salad during the interview, which takes place in her office, she appears cool and up for it: 'My expectation of the job was that it would be pretty tough. A lot to get my head round pretty quickly. I did want that challenge otherwise I wouldn't have come.'
And therein lies Brindley's driving force. What fires her isn't necessarily ambition, but challenge. 'A site like this [the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery] has everything. It's so encyclopaedic. I'm quite comfortable with fine and decorative art, but when it comes to steam trains I'm a bit wobbly.'
But of course it is her job to have the vision for the service not to be expert in, say, natural history. At Wolverhampton, she admits, her fine art background led her to steer its direction more closely 'much to the annoyance of my fine art curators I'm sure'.
Brindley wasn't looking for a new job when Bristol's headhunters came calling. Wolverhampton was at an exciting point having secured the money for new galleries. In true style, Brindley says that Bristol sounded like a good opportunity.
And if what initially looked like a good few rungs up the ladder had turned into real interest, even if she had not got the job, she would at least understand the machinations of a high-level recruitment process: 'Because it doesn't half make you think and keep you sharp,' she says. 'The last thing I want to do is rest on my laurels. I'm not that sort of person. I like to be really on the edge.'
I let Brindley know of my surprise that she left Wolverhampton when she did. Did she not fancy seeing it through to 2006? She admits that it would have been easier for her personally to stay at Wolverhampton.
Her working life had been spent in the West Midlands and she had developed a strong professional network. Most of her friends are there and her husband's job was located there too. Her house in Wolverhampton is yet to be sold and she wonders what they can afford in price-inflated Bristol.
But in some ways, she says, it was a good time to move. 'All the structure [for the new galleries] for delivery was in place. I could see it was going to work. I was at the stage when I could leave it a bit more because I'd been very involved, probably too involved.'
Brindley wants to bring to Bristol the success story that was Wolverhampton - putting access at the heart of everything - in which Bristol is lagging behind.
She says it took some time to work with the team at Wolverhampton to produce a clear agenda and be 'completely passionate about communicating our product and really striving to make it the best and judging ourselves on that'. Taking risks and developing new partnerships were central to that, she says.
'Constantly questioning what we do, what's best practice. That sort of hunger for wanting to improve what you do, driven by the audience as your focus, that's healthy.'
Encouraging 180 staff across seven sites to think and operate her way may be more difficult and certainly a lengthier process than at Wolverhampton. One sector insider called Brindley a 'tough cookie', but wondered if she realised what she was letting herself in for.
Bristol has traditionally been a difficult authority and it has been hinted that Brindley's predecessors were heavily controlled from above.
Brindley says she appreciates the benefit of having council members onside from her days at Wolverhampton. With a new Labour controlled council in Bristol eager to make its mark, she may have an easier time.
A politicised African-Caribbean community is one aspect Brindley will have to deal with. The new Bristol Museum will liaise with this community group to bring about an extension on the story of slavery that is currently told. Brindley's legacy with working with diverse communities in Wolverhampton will help.
'The service is poised at a good moment in terms of its role as leader of the South West hub, investment and its standing on leadership in the sector.' She is also keen to capitalise on Bristol's continuing fervour built up around its European Capital of Culture bid - partnership building is already flourishing, she says.
Brindley's easy, amiable nature hides a shrewd operator. She has certainly proved herself as a competent manager and leader but as a sector visionary? When I ask her about her outlook for museums she repeats the access line again.
She mentions partnership working, talking the Renaissance and Arts Council England language (she secured the Wolverhampton Gallery as a regular client of the regional arts council), best practice and all the other corporate buzzwords.
Brindley tells it straight: 'I say what I'm interested in, say where the organisation should be going, and what I've done so far along that journey. So if they don't like it, well, I don't really want to work for them then do I?'
For someone who has never set her sights on a job, she does say that a service on Bristol's scale would have been the next move after Wolverhampton. But will she stay the course?
If she is allowed to attempt her own personal vision, then maybe. But then again, if her comment on the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum capital project is anything to go by - 'You put so much of yourself into this thing that you then kind of want out' - she'll be gone once the new building is up, turning to the next opportunity or perhaps, making it happen.
