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Alec Coles

Director, Tyne and Wear Museums

Alec Coles has been Director of Tyne & Wear Museums (TWM) since 2002. TWM is one of Britain’s largest and most successful regional museums services and runs 11 museums on behalf of six funding clients and attracts over 1.5 million visits each year. It also leads the North East’s Regional Museums Hub under the Government’s Renaissance in the Regions programme.

Alec was previously Chief Executive of Northumberland Wildlife Trust where he developed the ‘people and wildlife’ agenda and sought to raise the social as well as environmental profile of the Trust.

Prior to this he spent over ten years in various roles at TWM where, as manager of the Hancock Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne, he was instrumental in introducing ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions to the organisation and with it the need to develop more sophisticated marketing and public engagement techniques.

He spent his early career at Woodspring Museum in Weston-super-Mare (now North Somerset Museums Service).

He is a member of the Heritage Lottery Fund’s National Expert Panel; co-convenor of the Group for Large Local Authority Museums (GLLAM); a board member of the MLA North East; and a member of the Executive and the Council of the Museums Association.

Alec is particularly interested in the purpose of museums and galleries, and in evaluating and demonstrating their wider social impacts.

He is also determined to support moves to improve professional development and diversity within the sector’s workforce.

He recently sat on both of the Government’s External Advisory Groups which contributed to the two documents entitled Understanding the Future: Museums and 21st Century Life, the latter published in October 2006.