Director of Learning and Participation, The Sage Gateshead

Katherine Zeserson has a national reputation as a community musician, educator and trainer and has worked in a notably wide range of contexts. She was the first music development worker for the White Lion Street Free School in the early 1980s, co-founded the Haringey Young Women's Music Project,
worked for the Shape network in its first five years, and went on to spend 1984 -1994 as Community Music Development Worker for Them Wifies, the Northeast's longest established community arts project. Throughout the 1990s she worked as musical director, voice coach and performer on a wide
range of theatre projects with a number of the Northeast's theatre companies including Live Theatre, Northumberland Theatre Company and Northern Stage.

Her experience in the formal education sector as a music animateur, voice teacher and choral trainer ranges from nursery to degree level. She has taught vocal skills, music theatre, improvisation, elements of world music,
community arts theory and practice at several of the Northern region's universities and colleges; designed and run animateur and teacher development programmes for many Northeast local authorities; devised and delivered staff training for social services departments, arts departments and
community development teams across the region. She has held many arts-ineducation residencies, working with both primary and secondary age children.

She worked for many years as an artist/trainer with Folkworks and spent 1998 - 2000 as Community and Education Advisor to Northern Sinfonia, prior to taking up her current post as Director of Learning and Participation at The Sage Gateshead and alongside Andrew Scott (also Director of Learning and
Participation 2000 - 2006) she conceived and founded The Sage Gateshead's nationally ground-breaking Learning and Participation programme. Following Andrew's departure in May 2006 she became the sole L & P Director, responsible for the strategic development, direction and implementation of
this ambitious region-wide programme as well as working alongside the other Departmental Directors to lead and manage the organisation as a whole under the leadership of Anthony Sargent.

She is Chair of the Board of The Lawnmowers Independent Theatre Company (of which she was co-founder in 1986), and a member of the Board of the Northern Cultural Skills Partnership. She was a member of the Board of Northern Arts from 1998 - 2001, and of the More Music in Morecambe Board from 2002 - 2005. She is a widely admired singer of jazz, contemporary and improvised music and currently composes and performs regularly with the a cappella vocal ensemble Mouthful.