Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Clare Reddington

Clare Reddington breezes into Lockside on a beautiful autumnal morning, a breakfast spot she knew back in its former, unrecognisable, days as a transport caff, and now frequents on a Sunday to read a newspaper. It’s been two months since her appointment as Watershed’s new CEO, a role that works alongside her existing work as creative director, supported by executive director Miriam Randall, allowing former CEO Dick Penny to concentrate on the organisation’s expansion in the lead-up to its 40thbirthday.

Clare has taken the helm of an institute that has become an international powerhouse for developing creative technologies, something she helped to set in motion when she joined for a six-month project back in 2004. But her relationship with the place goes back further than that, growing up in Nailsea with ideas of becoming an actress.

“From maybe the age of 14 I went to Watershed,” she says, ordering a latte and a plate of bubble and squeak with barely a glance at the menu. “It was the place that I went to see films. I literally think I used to bunk off school and go to Watershed! So it has always been a place that was really clear in my mind as a really brilliant venue.”

After a degree in Drama, Media and Cultural studies at Birmingham University made it clear that acting wasn’t for her (“everybody else wanted it so much more than me”), Clare landed a job at Cheltenham Arts Festival, before a break saw her running the Science Festival for five years, doling out legal highs at Heston Blumenthal’s dinner parties and working with a similarly-ambitious team of artistic directors.

“What I love doing is sitting at the boundary of things,” Clare says as our breakfasts arrive. “The Science Festival crossed science and culture and art, and Watershed is about the boundaries of creative and technology and moving image. I feel uncomfortable when I’m based squarely in a genre. And possibly my best trait is connecting people and knitting them together.”

Clare’s irrepressible drive and enthusiasm got her into Watershed and kept her there, but even when she was part of the executive team, the role of CEO didn’t appeal. “I didn’t want it because I didn’t understand what leadership was outside of the patriarchy,” Clare says, putting down her coffee. “I didn’t understand how not to be a single leader at the top of an organisation. ‘CEO’ sounded like it was part of a way of working that I don’t subscribe to. I’m quite playful and light-hearted but I’m also quite emotional and honest, and I didn’t understand how I could not be any of those things.

“But, as it turns out, plenty of people, like Maria Balshaw who’s now running the Tate, are managing vulnerability and leadership and I’m really excited about that. It’s in our received wisdom that there is a right way of doing things: particularly that notion that, now you’re in the leadership team, you won’t be able to cry at work.”

In the Pervasive Media Studio, home to projects ranging from virtual reality dance experiences to helping the equivalent of the Cultural Olympiad in Japan with city planning ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games, over half of the current 152 residents are female. “We didn’t have to work very hard to get the gender balance of the studio right. I think it happened because of a female producing team,” Clare says. “People saw themselves reflected and welcomed, and we used those lessons when we started to think about how we attract people of colour and people with disabilities into the studio. That’s very much what we’re working on now.

“The technology world is still being written by old fucking white men. The longer I’m around, the more I see people who aren’t male or white authoring technologies as a small bit of activism. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m getting older or actually because the world is more fucking horrible, but I feel like all the women I know are so aware of how we haven’t won yet.”

However, when it comes to cementing Watershed’s place in the cultural narrative, Clare is grateful that the groundwork has been done: “That’s the genius of Dick Penny. He took Watershed from an organisation that had the bank turning up fairly regularly to repossess the building and created this like amazing solid platform that I have the unique pleasure in being asked to look after.

“It feels like this incredible privilege and joy to get to be CEO of an organisation which I love, with a team of people who I trust and who really trust me.”

Illustration of Clare Reddington by Anna Higgie