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´óÏó´«Ã½ News has appointed Will Gompertz to the newly-created Arts Editor role. Will is currently Director of Tate Media at the Tate.

Will has worked in the arts since he was 18 years old (starting with jobs such as stagehand at Sadlers Wells) and founded a successful visual arts publication at the age of 25.

Since then he has written, produced, published and commented on the arts in the UK and internationally.

He has written recently for many publications including the Times and the Guardian and is currently the editor-in-chief of an arts website, culturecritic.co.uk, and an adviser to many of the country's leading Arts organisations.

He recently appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe in his one man show, Double Art History, and was voted one of the world's top 50 creative thinkers by New York's Creativity Magazine.

Will starts his new role in the next few months.

Helen Boaden, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Director of News, said: " This is an exciting appointment.

"Will has great passion, experience and knowledge of the arts. He is a great communicator and is full of ideas about how we could use new media more effectively to share arts news with out audiences. He will make an important contribution to our arts coverage in News and across the ´óÏó´«Ã½."

The creation of a new Arts Editor role for ´óÏó´«Ã½ News is part of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s deeper commitment to arts and music on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ throughout 2010, with a wide range of initiatives aimed at supporting cultural Britain and better serving the public.

These include ideas like the recent pan-´óÏó´«Ã½ Poetry Season, which saw poetry sales surge, and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3's year-long celebration of Purcell, Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has made a new commitment to partnerships in the arts, including working with the Arts Council England to transform public engagement by showcasing young talent, sharing technology and collaborating on live events.

There is currently a project in development with the Public Catalogue Foundation which could enable the public to view every one of the UK's 200,000 publicly owned oil paintings.

As part of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s pledge to improve collaboration with other institutions and create the best programmes across all our platforms, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ set up a pan-´óÏó´«Ã½ arts board, sponsored by Director of Vision, Jana Bennett, and Director of Audio and Music, Tim Davie.

Consisting of senior arts and creative leaders across the ´óÏó´«Ã½, the board has already met and appointed a new arts coordinator, Mark Bell, who is also the Vision Commissioning Editor for Arts.

PR