Now Head of Dance at Creative Scotland, Paul Burns has worked across the UK in areas including producing, programming, coaching, mentoring and organisational leadership.

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Having graduated in History of Art he began his career working for Arts Council England, West Midlands in the Visual Arts and Policy departments. He went on to work for a music social enterprise organisation, developing innovative approaches to music education whist presenting commercial events with hip-hop, UK garage and grime musicians.

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A move into dance, initially as a producer, led to Paul working for DanceXchange on the inaugural International Dance Festival Birmingham, going on to lead the programming, producing and artist development activity of the organisation and festival from 2008 until 2014.

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On leaving DanceXchange, Paul began a period of freelance consultancy, which included leading a UK-wide project on international dance showcasing, devising and leading a project exploring artists’ curatorial practice, and supporting the development of a number of organisations and artists working in dance and contemporary performance. During this time, he also undertook a number of short-term leadership roles with major UK dance organisations including Yorkshire Dance (Leeds), Greenwich Dance (London), The Place (London) and Dance4 (Nottingham). He moved to Edinburgh to take up the post at Creative Scotland in 2018.

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Paul is a Total Theatre Awards judge and has been on selection panels for the British Council Edinburgh Showcase, the Made in Scotland showcase, the Sky Arts Futures Fund, BE Festival, Dublin Dance Festival's Reimagining Ireland platform, and the BBC Performing Arts Fund.