Helga Henry, Director

Helga has worked at Fierce Earth since 2005,  first in business development, then as General Manager and she now runs Fierce Earth at Birmingham Hippodrome as its Director.

Helga is particularly interested in spotting and developing creative talent.  It is this interest that underpins all of Fierce Earth’s work.  From individual coaching and mentoring, training creatives to run better businesses to producing artists’ work that seeks to develop the creativity of a whole city.

Helga now produces events and artists’ commissions, leads training courses for creative and cultural businesses and is a keen coach and mentor for artists and creative leaders.

Participants and coachees/mentees in particular appreciate Helga’s style of group leadership and coaching:

Helga was knowledgeable, personable and encouraging. It was fantastic learning experience.

Helga is an extremely skillful facilitator using a mixture of coaching, training and personal experience to enable and empower participants to really grasp the potential of the exprience and in doing so their own potential. Her tone, wisdom and manner are so well suited to training creatives.

(Recent Metapod training participants)

Background and history

A graduate of French and Drama (& Theatre Arts) from Birmingham University back in the mid-80’s, Helga has worked in many different places and sectors.  Early jobs include working for a video editing house and being Women & Theatre’s first full time administrator.  Until something else beckoned…

Helga’s second career was in corporate law.  Having studied for a law degree equivalent she trained and ultimately became an Associate solicitor at Wragge & Co.  It was while working as a corporate lawyer (all power suits and lipstick!) that she learned a lot about some of the biggest and best businesses by working on secondment in-house with  blue-chip companies including British Airways, Novartis and BT.

Previously, Helga was the administrator for a number of organisations including Women & Theatre, Second Sight and Play Train. She has been on countless Boards of management of arts organisations and was the Chair of Geese Theatre, Creative Republic and may others.  She  currently is a board member of the Creative Advantage Fund and MADE*. Helga was the NESTA supported Clore Fellow for 2008/09, a  Common Purpose graduate and  a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Commerce.

Recently Helga has trained as an Action Learning facilitator (with Action Learning Associates), has a Certificate in Facilitation from Henley Business School and is a part time lecturer at Aston Business School.