Biography

Helen Burrows is the director of Private Office, a strategic consultancy enabling companies and individuals to take charge of their reputation. She is also an associate at the think tank Demos, leading a piece of work examining risk in the creative industries with Demos director and former Treasury Minister Kitty Ussher.

From 2008 to 2011 Helen advised Culture, Creative Industries and Communications Minister Ed Vaizey MP. As the sole policy advisor to Ed in opposition, she developed policy positions and wrote Ed's speeches. Topics covered include media, next generation broadband, the BBC, TV regulation, radio, mobile spectrum, broadband rollout, the Digital Economy Act, the creative industries, cultural education, libraries and arts policy. She remains involved in politics running the Conservative Arts and Creative Industries Network with Damian Collins MP.

From 2006 to 2008 Helen worked for Dance UK, establishing them as the lead lobbying organisation for the dance sector.

Helen has been a freelance photographer and writer since 2001. She has been commissioned in a wide range of areas, from reportage to music to fashion, increasingly coming to specialise in portraits and art projects.

She has travelled to Sri Lanka to photograph Tsunami projects for Help Age International and Mumbai to photograph Tim Supple's lauded production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. For two years she was first assistant to fashion photographer David Slijper, lighting and producing shoots for clients such as Vogue Italia, iD and Christian Dior. From 2001 - 2004 she was a regular contributor to music magazines M8, DJ, I-DJ and Mixmag, chronicaling the changing 00's London club scene.

She has an ongoing project exploring the relationship between movement, identity, space and emotion. The second series in this project, Skin on Skin, won an Association of Photographers Award in 2008.

Helen trained in photography at Central St Martins. She has worked in fashion for Nicole Farhi, and in the music industry for Ministry of Sound and Slice PR. She read Philosophy, Politics and Economoics at New College, Oxford.