About me
Dionne is a communications, business and brand development specialist based in London focusing on the creative industries. Over the last 23 years she has worked with some of the most respected names in international design, architecture and culture including Adjaye Associates, Pentagram, Wolff Olins, Peter Saville, Sebastian Conran Associates, Central Saint Martins, IDEO and The New Craftsmen.
Roles have varied from strategic marketing, client relationship development and communications consultancy to editorial, PR and curating. She loves building relationships and maintaining a wide network of contacts in the creative industries and contemporary art in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Hong Kong.
Most recently as business development and communications director at United Visual Artists and its sister studio Another Space, she is helped initiate and develop projects with Nowness, Day for Night (Houston), MONA (Tasmania), Fondation Cartier, Pace Development (Thailand) / Büro Ole Scheeren, Paris Opéra Ballet, Nike, Google Creative Lab, Cartier Fine Jewellery, Selfridges and Bureau Betak. For UVA’s collaboration with The Bomb she jointly led the project’s first staging at Gotham Hall, NYC and remains involved with the project's creative team.
At Adjaye Associates Dionne was responsible for collaborations and relationships with artists, collectors, gallerists, special projects and museum exhibitions including Salon 94, Design Miami, Chris Ofili, Adam Lindemann, Nicolas Berggruen, the Whitechapel Gallery and the Studio Museum, Harlem. She also worked closely with Sir David Adjaye on all potential and existing client relationships, civic building competitions and proposals.
Her work has also included commissioning content for books and special projects, and collaborating with writers and curators on exhibitions and workshops such as Design Like you Give a Damn at the House of St Barnabas with Wolff Olins, Slow Tech: Designs for Digital Downtime at Protein Gallery and DESIGNING_SOUTHAFRICA’S ‘A Nation Under Construction’ for the 2012 British Council International Architecture and Design Showcase.
Dionne has as Master’s from the University of London Institute of Paris and a BA in English Literature and History of Art from the University of Leeds. Her passions include music, literature and photography.
Projects
- Adjaye AssociatesWorking directly with principal and founder Sir David Adjaye to drive all new business activity, maintain relationships with existing clients and VIPs and manage a team of communications coordinators as well as in-house and external designers for offices in London, Berlin and New York. Instigating and managing marketing, media relations and self-initiated projects including exhibitions, books, products and one-off commissions. It was a role with Lots of travel and the opportunity to work with an
- Relight Your FireANNA doesn’t do standard meet-ups or boring networking events. Instead we do Relight Your Fire: a chance to get together, share the highs and lows of the life of a freelancer or creative SME owner, have a laugh, drinks and food and re-connect with why you started doing it all in the first place If you’re a Dots member and are based in Bristol or Cardiff, we’d love to have you at one of our free events coming up at DeskLodge, Tramshed and Watershed. Check our Eventbrite page for tickets https:
- Central Saint Martins, Fashion in Film Festival 2013Whilst Senior Research Fellow Marketa Uhlirova was on maternity leave I was hired to keep her seat warm. The primary focus of the role was the organisation of the festival 'Marcel L’Herbier, Fabricating Dreams’ a special season dedicated to one of France’s most innovative but internationally overlooked directors featuring screenings at BFI, Horse Hospital, Ciné Lumiere. Concurrently myself and the team continued work on Birds of Paradise: Costume as Cinematic Spectacle (Koenig Books, London, 2013), Marketa’s deep exploration into three distinct historical episodes in European and American cinema - pulling together several specially commissioned academic essays and hundreds of images. I also co-organised the symposium that accompanied the film festival. The role also involved overseeing the re-launch of the Fashion in Film website and PR strategy for the L’Herbier festival This was all very much a collaborative effort with Marketa, Inga Fraser, Prof. Caroline Evans and many others.
- Wolff OlinsWhilst here I was the PR for the London and Dubai offices. Responsible for disseminating the thought leadership of the Principals and other senior team members as well as promoting project-related news. Together with COO (now CEO) Sairah Ashman and a crack internal team I co-curated Design Like You Give a Damn at the House of St Barnabas, the first in the Dirty Rotten Socials series in collaboration with Pioneers Post. I was responsible to putting together the list of speakers which featured co-director of design at the RSA Nat Hunter; RCA Design Interactions tutor and co-founder of Auger Loizeu James Auger; Chris McGinley from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Age and Ability Research Lab and Steven Johnson of Collaborative Change. The event was featured in Time Out and Design Week. Here it is on Vimeo!
- PlotMy role is to bring strategy, structure and proactivity to Plot’s new business and marketing, working with the two talented co-founders whose skills and combine interaction design, innovation consultancy and systems and service design with teaching and lecturing extensively (RCA, Carnegie Mellon University, Hyper Island and SVA) Recent clients include Harvard GSD and the BBC. Plot is also currently working on a self-initiated project exploring financial services can be re-designed to eliminate the poverty premium phenomena, the first phases of which have been featured in The Fintech Times.
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Projects credited in
- Clever Boxer talk: How to hustle (even if you're an introvert)"The mistake most people make is they forget to hustle, all the time, every day." - Dionne Griffith5
Work history
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ConsultantHeyday London
London, United KingdomFreelance
Freelance consultant specialising in marketing, brand and business development advice for creatives companies and individuals in design, architecture, arts and culture
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Senior Director Business DevelopmentUnited Visual Artists and Another Space
- London, United KingdomFreelance
Now communications director and formerly full-time new business, client relationship development and future commissions for artworks, installations and spatial design projects. Working with curators, marketing and brand directors, property developers architects and technology companies including Pace Development (Thailand), British Land, Nike, Bureau Betak, MONA, Fondation Cartier, Paris Opéra Ballet, Selfridges, FutureCity, Allies & Morrison, Google Creative Lab and AKQA.
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Skills
- Events
- Marketing PR
- Visual Arts
- Editing
- Client Services
- Design
- Marketing
- Marketing Strategy
- Communications
- Client Management
- Creative Thinking
- Copywriting
Education
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MA Paris Studies History and CultureULIP
- Paris, France
MA Paris Studies History and Culture
Inspire; Curatorial Practices in Contemporary Arts and CultureArts Council England
- London, United Kingdom
Part-time course, part of the Inspire programme
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