Paul Bourne

Paul works in creative engagement in four connected ways; as a theatre director, a business storyteller, an entrepreneurship teacher and as a corporate and startup consultant.

He is the Artistic Director of Menagerie, a Cambridge-based professional theatre company which creates and tours theatre productions worldwide. Formerly Artistic Director of The Frankfurt Playhouse and of Center Stage New York, Paul regularly freelance directs and teaches theatre in the UK, Europe and the US. Over the past 30 years he has directed and produced over 90 professional productions in 12 different countries. He has also been the Artistic Director of The Hotbed Festival of New Writing since 2002 and Co-Director of Divadlo 6-16 (Prague) since 2016. He is Chair of the Jury for two International Theatre Festivals; in The Czech Republic and Bulgaria. He teaches directing and performance skills as an international expert at Theatre Schools in Brno, Belgrade and Prague.

In Executive and Entrepreneurship Education, Paul’s key areas of interest and research are; working alongside artists exploring creativity in the workplace, presentation skills, enterprise thinking, collaborative working, communication impact, storytelling, pitching skills and transformational leadership.

He has most recently focused on two key areas: cultural transformation (running his EPIC programme: Engage. Perform. Inform. Challenge), with the Dubai Stock Exchange, Liverpool Football Club, Slaughter & May, Zurich Insurance and Nike, and communication impact (CSI Lab: Content. Style. Impact), for McLaren Formula One, United Nations Young Global Leaders, Fairtrade, United States Armed Forces, Novartis and Infosys.

Paul’s work as a personal coach has been utilised by many companies and individuals worldwide including Lloyds of London, Procter & Gamble, TTP and Nike. Paul is also currently working with CARBON13 Cambridge as Storyteller-in-Residence, supporting over 100 Venture Builder Start-ups focusing on developing new carbon reduction businesses.

Paul teaches enterprise and creativity as an Associate at St Andrew’s University, as well as on the Masters in Entrepreneurship, EnterpriseTECH, MBA and EMBA at Cambridge Judge Business School and as an Associate Professor in Enterprise at Stockholm School of Economics.

As an international arts consultant, Paul works with a wide variety of organisations including Trans Europe Halles (Arts Planning), Wroclaw and Kaunas ECOCs (European Capital of Culture; Audience Development) and Creative Kosice (Artistic Interventions in the workplace).

Paul has 3 TEDx talks: “How to Tell Stories That Matter”, “The Power of Personality” and “How to be Lucky”.