The board of Trustees of the Wiltshire Music Centre provide overall strategic direction for the organisation. A wider group of Advisory Councillors bring additional skills, expertise and contacts to support the Centre’s work.

Caroline Kay - Chair
Before turning freelance in 1998, Caroline Kay was employed for six years as a senior consultant with leading arts management consultancy AEA Ltd. Her recent clients include the Royal Albert Hall and the Heritage Lottery Fund. While at AEA she was lead consultant responsible for several successful lottery applications totalling over £50 million and acted as a technical assessor on several Arts and Heritage projects. In 1998 she led the development of AEA Training, an intensive training programme for managers of capital projects in cultural organisations.

From 1988-92 Caroline was Deputy Director of ABSA (now Arts and Business) and from 1986-88 she was Information Officer of the Wellcome Trust, the major medical research charity. Her first job was as a Clerk in the House of Lords having joined through the fast stream Civil Service Examinations in 1982. Caroline received a first class BA Hons in Physiology and Psychology from New College, Oxford in 1982 and completed a part-time MSc in Organisational Psychology at Bristol University in 2000. She was a Board Member (1992-97) of English Touring Theatre and (1997-99) of Aldeburgh Productions, is a Fellow (Governor) of Winchester College and is a non-executive director of the Avon, Gloucester and Wiltshire Strategic Health Authority. She is married to Bradford-on-Avon GP Dr James Heffer.

Harriet Feilding –
Treasurer and Company Secretary
Harriet is presently Bursar of Stonar School, an independent girls school North of Bradford on Avon. Previously she was in the fine art world with Bonhams, and before that as a Director of Sotheby's in charge of the Client Accounts department.

Having read Mathematics at Oxford, Harriet qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Andersen & Co in London, leaving seven years later to join the Designers Guild. She joined English National Opera as Finance Director and Company Secretary in 1991.

Harriet has also been the Board Member and Treasurer of the National Youth Dance Trust (1994–2001) and a Board member of English Touring Opera (1994–1998).

Keith Bennett
Keith Bennett studied music at Oxford, where he was organ scholar at Brasenose College, and at Trinity College of Music. He was awarded a doctorate from Oxford in 1978 for his study of the Italian madrigalist Luca Marenzio. Until his recent retirement he was a principal lecturer at Bath Spa University College, where for eighteen years he was Course Director of the BA (Hons) Music degree.

Keith has lived in Bradford on Avon since 1979, and has conducted a number of very successful sold-out concerts at the Wiltshire Music Centre involving the Paragon Singers, a first rate choir drawn from the local community, and the professional period instrument orchestra Bradford Baroque Band. He also conducted Bath Opera for two years in 1988-1990 and has performed widely as an accompanist, continuo player and singer. He serves on the Advisory Committee of the Early Music Network, the Council of the National Early Music Association and the Wiltshire Music Centre's Programme Advisory Group.

Catherine Cooper
Catherine Cooper trained as a teacher of Physical Education and Dance at Bishop Otter College, Chichester and Sussex University, gaining a B.Ed Hons in 1975 and NPQH in 2002. She has taught in Wiltshire for 29 years including 5 years as a part time advisory teacher for primary P.E and Dance.

Catherine has worked at St Laurence School since its opening in 1980 and was formerly a teacher at Trinity School in Bradford on Avon. She has undertaken a variety of roles including head of faculty, assistant head of sixth form, assistant headteacher with responsibility for inclusion, personnel and training and more recently head of upper school. She has a very strong belief in the power of the performing arts to enrich lives and has been involved in many collaborative projects with music, dance and drama throughout her career. Catherine is a member of the leadership team at St Laurence and has a strategic role in developing the school’s specialism as a Performing Arts College. The links between the school and the Wiltshire Music Centre are seen as an important and exciting part of future developments in arts education.

Peter Measday –
Chairman, Friends of the Wiltshire Music Centre
Peter Measday BA, ACIB, spent most of his working life in the banking profession, firstly with the Standard Bank of South Africa (now the Standard Chartered Group) but mainly with the National Westminster Bank (now part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group). For the most part he worked in London in areas of retail banking and banking skills training.

In 1982/1985 he was in charge of Nat West Bank’s Management Development Programmes. He retired from the position of Assistant Managing Director, Nat West Insurance Services in Bristol in 1993.

His commitments increasingly involve Rotary Community Service projects, but he aims to leave sufficient time for travelling and spending time with his children and grandchildren.

Phil joined Arts & Business after four years on the senior management team at Bristol Old Vic, where he headed the marketing and development department. Before moving into arts management, Phil was news editor of the theatre industry newspaper, The Stage and also wrote for a number of other titles, including the Sunday Express, the Evening Standard and The Scotsman.

Phil has sat on the boards of many arts organisations, previously chairing South West Arts Marketing, art+power, and the governing body of Ashton Gate Primary School in south Bristol.

Born in the Netherlands, and a graduate of the University of Warwick, Phil is married with three children and lives in Bristol.

He is currently co-ordinator of the Bath & North East Somerset Council Open Planning Forum. He was a Trustee of Twerton Village Hall, a Millennium Commission project, from 1998 to 2001 acting as the project director.

Lindsay has three young children the eldest of which is learning the keyboard.

Involvement in local affairs led her to stand for election to the County Council where she was the member for Bradford on Avon for twelve years 1987 – 2001. For some of that time she chaired the Social Services Committee. She was Mayor of Bradford on Avon from 1999 – 2001 and was elected for a further term in 2003-2005. She is still a town councillor.

She has been a school governor at a Special School and a non-executive director on Wiltshire Health Authority. She is still a non-executive director of the combined Strategic Health Authorities of Avon, Gloucester and Wiltshire.

Vicky was involved with the development group when the Wiltshire Music Centre was first being considered and joined the Trustees in 2001.

Joan Main has taken an active interest in education at all levels, having served on the governing councils of both Bath and Southampton Universities, and on the former she has been made a life member of the Court. She has been a governor of Dauntsey School, Warminster School, and Kingdown Comprehensive School, Warminster, as well as serving on the Governing body of Braeside and Oxenwood. She has also been on the committee of the NSPCC for 42 years, and the governing committee of Caring for Children (the National Children’s Home Committee) which she chaired for 7 Years. Other committee work includes the national committee for negotiation for higher education; her work as Chairman of SACRE; her work on the Archaeology and Museum Committees in Devizes and Salisbury and on the Community Health Council.

His teaching career in secondary education spans over 30 years of which 16 years have been as a Headteacher. He was formerly Principal of Cotham School in North Bristol, a Specialist Performing Arts College and Post 16 Centre for North Bristol (1997-2004). He is currently a Visiting Fellow at Bristol University, Graduate School of Education, leading a research programme into reasons for student disaffection and failure in the secondary school system.

James is currently Chair of Trustees of Multi-A(rts), a charity which brings the Performing Arts to the most disadvantaged areas in Bristol, and a Trustee of the Avon Sexual Abuse Centre. He provides consultancy to Antidote, a national organisation promoting emotional literacy.

He is a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, and of the Institute of Directors.