Biography
Professor Dr Anne Kathleen Bamford OBE, FCGI is an Australian arts educator. Governments have used her research when they set standards for arts education. She directs the International Research Agency, presides over the Education Inspiring Peace Laboratory, and is Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney.
She trained as a teacher in Sydney and taught visual arts in schools before moving into the university. A difficult year at primary school, she has said, turned when a teacher let her learn through drawing, drama, making and movement. That experience set the course: arts not as an extra, but as a way of learning that should be open to every child.
At the University of Technology Sydney she was Program Director for Creative Arts in the Faculty of Education. In 2002 she completed a PhD there on the qualities of primary art teachers. UNESCO then invited her to Paris. As a World Scholar in 2005–06 she led the first worldwide survey of arts education, published as The Wow Factor (2006). She gave the opening keynote at the UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education in Lisbon that year.
Later posts took her to London: Director of the Engine Room at Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London; Director of Education for the Archdiocese of Southwark; and Strategic Director of Education, Skills and Culture for the City of London Corporation, working with schools and with cultural institutions including the Barbican, the Museum of London and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She has described eighteen years based in Europe and the UK, with much of the work spent in other people’s classrooms. National evaluations followed for Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Iceland, Hong Kong, Ireland and Norway.
She is the former holder of the City of London post. Her present work sits with the International Research Agency and the Education Inspiring Peace Laboratory, alongside the Sydney adjunct post and, in 2026, a visiting professorship at the University of Iceland. The How Factor (Waxmann, 2026) returns to the global picture twenty years after The Wow Factor, this time on how arts education is made to work.
Developing a love of learning is one of the greatest gifts you can give a person. On receiving the OBE, 2018
Recognition
- OBE, Queen’s Birthday Honours 2018, for services to education. The official list names her as lately Director of Education, Archdiocese of Southwark. The City of London, where she was then Strategic Director, announced the honour the same week. Queen Elizabeth II presented it.
- Fellow of the City & Guilds of London Institute (FCGI), 2026.
- Freeman of the Guild of Educators, London, elected 2010.
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
- Outstanding Educational Research Award, 2002, and a Best Single Book Title award, 2004, as recorded in her biography for the International Society for the Performing Arts. She has also received a UTS excellence-in-teaching award.
- Shortlisted for British Female Innovator of the Year, 2006.
- Portuguese medal for services to arts education, connected with the 2006 UNESCO World Conference.
- Finalist, Advance Awards 2021, Education & Research.
Academic background
Doctor of Philosophy
Thesis: The qualities of primary art teachers. The thesis records her earlier awards as DipTeach (KCAE), BEd (UNE) and MEd (UNSW).
Master of Education, Creative Arts
Bachelor of Education
Taken while she was already teaching art in Sydney.
Diploma of Teaching
Posts
- Director, International Research Agency
- President, Education Inspiring Peace Laboratory
- Adjunct Professor, University of Sydney
- Visiting Professor, School of Education, University of Iceland (2026)
- Former Strategic Director of Education, Skills and Culture, City of London Corporation
- Former Director of Education, Archdiocese of Southwark
- Former Director of the Education Commission (United Kingdom)
- Former Director of the Engine Room, Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London
- Former Program Director (Creative Arts), Faculty of Education, University of Technology Sydney
- UNESCO World Scholar, 2005–06
What the work is about
- Quality in arts education, including the difference between education in the arts and education through the arts
- Fusion skills: creativity, collaboration, communication and the other capabilities employers and schools now ask for together
- National evaluations of arts and cultural education
- Lifelong learning, inclusion, and the place of culture in social cohesion and peace
- Visual literacy, new technologies and emerging literacies