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.
Born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, Pauline was the daughter of Annie (nee Butcher), a factory worker, cleaner and cook, and Bill Dorling, a labourer and hospital porter. After Ely high school for girls, she gained her teaching certificate at Stockwell College, Bromley, south London, in 1973. Her first job was as a religious studies teacher at a comprehensive school in Brent, in north-west London. She then taught at a primary school in rural Essex, before joining the Royal Opera.
In 1997 Pauline was made director of education and training at the Arts Council of England, rising to an executive director position. There she was the prime mover behind several major national initiatives including Creative Partnerships (2002-2011), which aimed to engage young people in schools with creative practitioners, and the charity Youth Music.
She became chief operating officer of Creative & Cultural Skills (CCSkills) in 2007, soon becoming joint chief executive and managing director of the National Skills Academy, a national network of further education colleges working with the creative industries. In 2013 Pauline became chief executive of CCSkills, where she was involved in creating High House Production Park, a regeneration project in Thurrock, Essex. Here she was responsible for the building of the Backstage Centre, a training and rehearsal space co-located with ROH workshops.
Pauline had lived with cancer since 2017. After retiring from CCSkills the following year she continued to remain active in the education and arts sector, in many trustee and chair roles.
Her career came full circle when she revisited the 1982 Arts in Schools report. Her 2023 report, The Arts in Schools: Foundations for the Future, which she and I wrote together, calls for arts subjects to be central to a rethink of England’s state education system.
Pauline was an unassuming powerhouse – a dynamo of ideas and great fun. A fabulous collaborator and strategist, she was always generous with her time and superb at navigating complexity to make positive things happen which would go on to have a lasting impact. She was appointed CBE in 2014.
In 1976 Pauline married Jeremy Tambling, an English lecturer and latterly professor of literature. He survives her, as do their children, Kirsten and Felix, and three grandchildren, Frances, Emil and Sidonie.
