My friend and colleague Pauline Tambling, who has died of cancer aged 68, played a huge role in the arts education world for four decades. She was one of very few people to work successfully across arts education, employment, and policy development at a national level, for organisations including the Royal Opera House, then Arts Council of England, and the National Skills Academy.
Having started out as a teacher, in 1983 Pauline became the first education officer for the Royal Opera (the ROH having recruited an education officer for the Royal Ballet the previous year), as a result of the recommendation in the 1982 Gulbenkian Foundation Arts in Schools report that cultural organisations create education posts. The “Write an Opera” scheme she created in 1985 is still going, as is the European network of opera education departments that she co-founded.
