Testimonials

John Fulljames, Director of Oxford Universities’ Humanities Cultural Programme

“The season was part of the early development of a new cultural programme in Oxford, engaging both city and university, which will eventually be housed in the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. As such, it was very important for us to work with a curator who would build trust and relationships with a wide range of community and cultural partners across the city.

Maria’s generous and collaborative approach, combined with her deep knowledge of environmentally engaged cultural work, meant that she was uniquely placed to develop the season for us. Maria brought with her experience and knowledge of curating and delivering cultural programmes and festivals, and the experience of encouraging the development of growing teams. We benefitted from her investment in the people she was working with, and her ability to connect effectively both with researchers within the university as well as with cultural and community organisations across the city.

The resulting season of work far exceeded our initial expectations. Maria skilfully evolved the focus of the season, increasing the focus on public installations and curated conversations in order to maximise both public and researcher engagement. The collaboration with the Sustainability Office to bring Michael Pinsky’s Pollution Pods reached almost 4000 people, while the collaboration with the Natural History Museum was seen online by more than 400,000. She carefully curated the programme to ensure it remained within the frameworks we had agreed, while supporting and challenging the team on how it could best be delivered.

Maria brought intellectual focus and shape to the season, responding to the input of academics and artists, to create a narrative which travelled from observation, to reflection and then to action. The season has seeded conversations between academics and artists which will lead to future cultural projects.

Maria’s skills as a curator are firmly grounded in her experience of collaborating with diverse groups of people to release and synthesise their ambitions and so enable inspiring cultural activity. As Maria is so responsive to context and empathetic to those around her, I have no hesitation in recommending her wholeheartedly…”

Jude Kelly, Artistic Director, Ripples of Hope Festival, Founder and Director of The WOW Foundation

“Maria Bota is a culturally sensitive and savvy programmer and director of ideas . She’s hugely experienced and also gives colleagues at all levels respect, support and warmth.”

Steven Cochrane, Partnership Director, Oxford Road Corridor

“We selected Maria following a competitive process to provide artistic direction for the inaugural Corridor of Light festival. Maria’s experience and ideas for the event stood out from the other submissions, and her appointment was an important factor in securing Arts Council funding. Maria brought experience and expertise in the arts and cultural sector to the team, providing credibility and leadership when engaging with cultural partners and artists. Maria’s approach was very collaborative, recognising the complex dynamics of the partnership.

Maria initially supported the development of the artistic programme for the Arts Council proposal, before overseeing a call-out and commissions in conjunction with the artists, enabling the artists to realise their vision within the constraints of the budget and timescales. Maria developed relationships with cultural partners to leverage significant additional programming, adding to the scale of the event, and oversaw the Corridor of Light Technical Producer to identify the appropriate technical, production and artist liaison teams required for each commission. All KPIs were achieved and the event delivered within budget.

I would certainly recommend Maria to others seeking a festival Artistic Director – Maria worked extremely hard throughout the commission, and provided expertise and leadership to deliver a successful event. Maria understood the wider strategic and place context for the event, and skilfully navigated any challenges that arose in a good-natured manner, to ensure that the festival’s objectives were met, whilst providing a strong platform for future editions.”

Alison Clark, Head of Culture, Sport and Tourism, Durham County Council

“I recommend Maria to everyone. I think there are few people out there with the balance of strategy, creativity and sensitivity that Maria has.

I wanted to work with Maria on the Durham City of Culture project as I was aware from her previous work how much her values, ways of working and creative vision matched with the values of our bid process; cultural democracy, rootedness, environmental/ecological awareness, high production values, tenacity, deep relationships with artists, clear translation of strategic intent into creative and imaginative programming.

It’s a sensitive balance to produce a programme that is highly space-specific and place-based at the same time as resonating nationally and internationally, and Maria struck this balance so well, listening to and respecting local expertise and bringing her expertise to bear both lightly and deeply. Crucially Maria remained close to the strategic intent of the bid and to me as commissioner, ensuring that the direction of travel met the overall aims of the bid and the wider strategies that sat behind it.

We developed the Durham City of Culture bid and made it to the final shortlist of four in under a year, and produced a set of processes and programme that drew extensive praise and support equally from national government and local communities. Maria played a key role in this, and continues to do so as we work towards a county of culture programme.”

Julie Russell, Service Director: Arts, Culture and Leisure, Wakefield Council

“We would absolutely recommend working with Maria, particularly if you are seeking an individual who can lift, push and encourage bigger, bolder thoughts and ideas. Maria is an expert listener and was able to pull together many, many threads into a cohesive, compelling and creative whole. Her enthusiasm is infectious and she quietly and supportively makes things happen. Our programme and future planning have greatly benefited from our time with Maria and we received all round positive feedback from all, at any level, who engaged with her.

We were delighted to work with Maria to scope and devise the core of our Year of Culture 2024 through extensive engagement in Wakefield district. We put out an open call for a Creative Programme Consultant and Maria stood out in a busy field. We were drawn to working with Maria due to her exceptional track record of helping cities and places really raise the bar in terms of creative ambition for their residents. We needed this thoughtful, experienced and creative approach to push forward what we and our partners felt is possible during the year. Maria supported our work at a critical time; we had not been shortlisted for City of Culture 2025, but there was huge excitement and passion to continue with planning our own year celebration in 2024.

We needed specific expertise to act as a neutral broker in some ways, and to harness, galvanise and analyse this energy within the creative, cultural and community sector of our district. We benefitted greatly from Maria’s measured and collaborative approach at this time.

We already have a strong and vibrant cultural landscape in the district and engaging Maria helped us to reflect on what we had, whilst also indicate the scale of our own ambitions for Year of Culture to our varied and diverse partners. We benefited greatly from Maria’s guidance in how to design consultation that engaged a wide range of potential stakeholders, and she brought a freshness to conversations about the future of Wakefield’s culture that were vital. We knew the eventual ambition needed to truly reflect a multitude of voices, and therefore truly be a partnership approach.

Her support and guidance in terms of communities with the steer to create intersectional community gatherings has not only ensured residents voices are embedded within our current plans but has also strongly influenced our long-term approach to engagement.

Maria’s work culminated in a substantial written report which we can now confidently use as a key element of Year of Culture 2024, providing a robust backbone of wide engagement and impressive critical analysis. This report reflected upon the outcomes of many engagement sessions, over 80 in total, reaching a combination of creatives and wider community representatives and residents (200 plus). This included detailed project ideas that have emerged from her time in Wakefield, guidance on our journey and timelines towards a Year of Culture as well as specific insight such as advise on branding/marketing and external funding ideas, including commercial sponsorship.

Beyond this Maria’s work has left a legacy of excitement and attitudinal shift towards a collective vision for Year of Culture. Most delightfully when presenting back the core programme-elements to anyone who has engaged in the earlier consultation, we consistently received feedback that partners, stakeholders and colleagues can see their ideas embedded within our Year of Culture 2024. We could not have fairly and suitably ‘landed’ this without a neutral broker and facilitator, who was comfortable in all settings from political engagement, sector engagement and community engagement.

I was also very pleased to see a senior consultant, be very happy, willing and supportive to work directly with my team; never wanting to chase me personally (for my title!) but working with those who truly matter and will be a needed engine behind ‘getting the job done’.

We will always be keen and willing to consider Maria’s skills in future work we might have.”

Simon Wales, Chief Executive, Waddesdon Manor, project lead for Feast

“I originally approached Maria Bota to help Waddesdon develop an idea for a new weekend of public programming, and I asked Maria specially because of the quality of the programme she created for the Salisbury International Festival . Having personally visited the Salisbury Festival, I was excited and inspired by how music, theatre, dance and comedy street performance animated the city, how the audiences were so receptive to the programming, and with participation an important element.

With Maria’s guidance, we created the vision for the new Feast weekend at Waddesdon. Maria built strong relationships with our senior team, identifying how the artistic programme could be specifically relevant to elements of Waddesdon’s heritage and physical landscape. We wanted to achieve the ‘festival feel’ across Waddesdon, something that I felt had never been fully explored, and to ensure that Feast would be an experience for everyone. We asked Maria to create a programme that exemplified Waddesdon at its best, and drawing on themes of hospitality, entertainment and learning.

Maria was able to articulate the vision for Feast in such a way that she gave the senior team confidence in making a significant financial investment in the programming and content. Her expertise and personal knowledge of the artists ensured that we would hit the ground running in year one with a programme that delivered our aspirations, and which would surprise and entertain up to 12,000 visitors.

Thanks to Maria’s artistic leadership, Feast developed over the four years (2015-19) and became a major addition to our seasonal calendar. It was enthusiastically received by visitors from the outset, with a strong identity and marketing campaign, and audiences would look forward each year to “see what Waddesdon would come up with next”. By 2019, under a new name of Summer Fest, artists including Motionhouse Dance, The Bullzini Family, Osadia and Mr Wilson’s Second Liners were presenting spectacular performances to large crowds.

Covid disruption, budget cuts and a change of internal direction have sadly meant that Summer Fest is currently paused, but I do hope that we can work with Maria again in the future. Maria is a well-liked and trusted leader, who has really helped Waddesdon to achieve something extraordinary over the five years of our weekend festival.”