Anita Bhalla named new chairman of Performances Birmingham
THE charity that runs Town Hall and Symphony Hall Birmingham, Performances Birmingham Ltd, has announced that former senior BBC executive Anita Bhalla is to be its new chairman.
Ms Bhalla will assume her new post early next year, taking over from Roger Burman, the founding chairman of Town Hall Symphony Hall, who has been in post since 1991.
PBL said Burman was leaving the charity in a stable financial position, with record audiences in the past year, and a thriving learning and participation programme that is taking music into communities across the city.
He said: “It has been a privilege to serve Birmingham as chairman of one of the UK’s leading music organisations over the past 22 years. We are very proud of the wide range of musicians, orchestras, singers and bands we have brought to the city, the many partners with which we work across Birmingham, the musicians whose careers we have nurtured and the achievements of the tens of thousands of young people involved in our music education and community activities.
“Town Hall and Symphony Hall are at the heart of the city’s cultural life, as well as offering significant economic benefits, and I am proud to have been a part of Birmingham’s cultural renaissance over the last two decades.”
Ms Bhalla has been a trustee of PBL since 1996, and until recently worked for the BBC in a variety of roles, including overseeing the national network of Big Screens that show live relays of major cultural and sporting events, and founding the BBC Asian Network.
She has a strong commitment to public service, and serves as chair of the Creative City Partnership for the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership. She is also a former Governor of Birmingham City University and member of the Independent Commission on Social Justice.
More recently she has been part of the Birmingham Social Justice Commission, led by the Bishop of Birmingham. She was the first woman chairman of Circom, a Europe-wide group of public service broadcasters, and has won several awards including the Commission for Racial Equalities’ Race in the Media National Television News Award.
Ms Bhalla was awarded an OBE for her service to Broadcasting and Communities in 2009, and served as High Sheriff of the West Midlands in 2010-2011.
She said: “I am really looking forward to taking up my post, and helping to guide PBL during what will be a difficult period as public sector funding cuts bite. I am particularly keen to forge even stronger relationships with our artistic partners – including our resident ensembles and artists, such as the CBSO – to ensure that PBL presents a wide and diverse programme of events which reflects the demographics of our great city.”
