10 questions for Phil Douglas of Curious Arts

Phil Douglas is the mind behind Curious Arts, a North East based arts and youth charity championing and developing opportunities for artists and participants from the LGBTQIA+ community across the region, as well as offering a global workplace training programme focused on inclusion to organisations including Twitch (Amazon), Sky, and Nexus Tyne & Wear Metro, among others.

What was your first job, and what did it pay? I grew up in Teesside and I was a glass collector at the Middlesbrough Empire for £4.10 an hour (they thought I was 18, don’t tell anyone).

What is the best advice or support you’ve been given in business? A manager in a previous role once told me “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” and that has really stuck with me. I like to be in control of my relationship with stress and list making, forward planning and organisation is my way of doing that.

What are the main changes that you’ve seen in your business/sector, and what are the challenges you facing? Stagnating funding for arts and culture sectors is a constant issue, but one of the main issues we are facing is an increased awareness of the work that we do, which might sound positive, and it is… but it comes at a cost. With broader awareness of our work, sadly, comes an increase in abuse - hate crimes and negative comments, especially on social media which is increasingly hard to navigate as a small arts charity.

We have a responsibility to keep our people (staff, artists and participants) safe. There is a lot of uncertainty for the LGBTQIA+ community in the UK at the moment, for example we are still waiting for a ban on conversion therapy in this county and there has been a significant rise in anti-trans rhetoric which has a direct impact on the community and the work we are p