Elena Schmitz is the British Council’s Head of Arts Wales, where she leads the British Council’s arts and culture work in and for Wales. From collaborating with Welsh Government on their campaigns of Wales & India 2024, and Wales & Japan 2025, to the renewal of an MOU with the Arts Council of Wales, Elena has also worked with leading festivals in Wales on their international programmes – from Focus Wales, Green Man Festival to Hay Festival, as well as collaborating with Amgueddfa Cymru on bringing the British Council’s commission for the Venice Biennale, John Akomfrah’s Listening All Night to the Rain, to Wales.
She has more than 20 years’ experience of working in senior roles in the Welsh arts sector, including contemporary circus company NoFit State Circus and Wales’ national company for literature development, Literature Wales. She is a British-German dual national, and an alumna of the Centre for British Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin, where she also briefly worked for the British Embassy. Before taking up her current role in summer 2024, she was a member of the British Council’s UK Arts & Creative Economy Advisory Group.
She is living testament of the ultimate power of art to connect people and build trust, having learned English and been drawn to the UK originally through her passionate love of the Beatles when still in school in Germany.