Mentoring, coaching, and consultancy
I work as a freelance mentor / coach / critical friend / facilitator / consultant.
If you’re interested in working together in one of these capacities, please email me. I’m likely to suggest we arrange an initial (free) 15-minute conversation, and take things from there.
🌱 You might be
- an artist or academic wrestling with a knot in your practice, a funding application, or trying to unstick a long-dormant project
- a small team or organisation looking for somebody to shape the container for a reflective conversation, or a project planning day
- a producer, curator, administrator or senior leader at a turning point in your career
- a larger organisation wanting to borrow a fresh pair of eyes
🌀 My approach
A couple of years ago, my son (who was seven at the time) said to me that “everything’s curious if you look at it properly”. That insight’s at the heart of how I think about the world too; I’m drawn toward the things that snag our attention, and tend to work emergently from there. On a related note, I came across this, from the artist Stephen Shore’s book, Modern Instances:
“attending to the world, and what our experiences trigger in us in the midst of life can produce a certain kind of friction — a friction that can scour the rust that has accumulated in us in the course of our lives.”
My approach to mentoring and facilitation work is rooted in having conversations that help to produce that useful ‘friction’.
⚙️ My experience
I’ve worked as an arts producer, director, fundraiser, charity founder, programmer, curator, radio documentarian, artist and more.
In practice, this has looked like:
🧪 co-leading a new strategy team for Europe’s largest multi-arts venue
💷 co-founding a charity that’s awarded more than £200,000 in grants to artists
🎓 directing the work of a university-based art gallery
📻 co-producing a 5* documentary for national radio
🎤 creating a new public programme of installations, festivals and events
✍🏾 being awarded a commission for a pamphlet of my photography + poetry
🎪 helping to establish a new venue for the BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals
📽️ making short films and music videos
📚 publishing an annual collection of phrases gathered from conversations
🗂️ and more
🙏🏾 Testimonials
Sidd has challenged me to step outside of my comfort zone, and this has been complemented by his patience and respect for my ways of working. As a result, Sidd’s mentorship has provided me with the space to explore the potential he has identified in me and my work at my own pace and via my own route. Of all of the qualities that make Sidd an exceptional mentor, it is his kindness that shines through to me the most.
Dr Tom Stanton, academic
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Our sessions came at a time of significant change. I reached out to Siddharth during a particularly challenging moment in my life. I was seeking change yet unable to see a way forward. It felt as if I were standing in the eye of a hurricane — overwhelmed by competing demands and priorities, having temporarily lost sight of myself. I needed support to find my way back.
Our sessions became a grounding ritual. Together we created a space where ideas could breathe and where I could reconnect with my creative instincts. Siddharth is warm and open‑minded, with the most wonderful human qualities; I felt instantly at ease in his company. His questions were gentle yet insightful, and his ability to listen deeply and reflect back the essence of my thoughts helped me slow down and notice the patterns I had been missing. I left every session with a new insight.
Working with Siddharth has been a quiet transformation. I feel calmer and more confident now, and others have noticed that I hold myself differently. I arrived feeling stuck and left with a renewed sense of myself — one that feels both grounded and hopeful.
Anna Sellen, artist
Sidd brings a unique combination of skills to everything he does: blending a keen artistic sensibility, lateral thought, precision, and highly attuned, reflective questioning (which is in itself a creative practice). This is coupled with a rare level of integrity, empathy and real sensitivity toward the people he works with, resulting in genuine positive change and transformation, both personally and professionally.
Whether he's building a coherent strategy in a complex organisational context, or supporting someone to grow their creative practice, Sidd provides the necessary framework, challenge, sharpness and clarity - always underpinned with kindness and care - while leaving enough space for those he collaborates with to arrive at new ideas and solutions they would never have found alone.
Laura Whitticase, organisational consultant, writer and coach
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Working with Siddharth rarely feels like ‘work’. We’ve collaborated in various ways over the years, and it would be hard to think of a colleague past or present who was more friendly and likeable. As a manager whilst at the Barbican, he offered me substantial freedom to programme within a clear set of parameters; his expertise often most valuable through specific interventions: what might be missing; avenues to avoid; where I might focus my attention; or how something might be tweaked.
He’s the closest thing I have to a mentor, I greatly appreciate his time, wisdom and ability to nudge things in the right direction with a keen-eyed, but light touch observation. More generally, he’s helped me to bring greater awareness to my professional life - not through honing my professional presence in some LinkedIn, humanoid way; but by offering useful prompts or thought processes to approach my work with.
Jamie Upton, public engagement specialist