Overnight Sensation was founded on the principle that if you want something done well, you should ask an artist.
Artists are resilient, multi-talented and genuinely interesting people. They understand how creative organisations work, what audiences actually respond to, and how to say something worth saying. That instinct for language and for storytelling is exactly what most strategic communications is missing.
I work with a small number of clients at a time, and I bring in a trusted network of specialist freelancers (writers, filmmakers, designers, photographers, all from the arts) when a brief calls for it.
About Tessa
I’ve spent twenty years working in and alongside arts organisations and charities: at director level, as a practitioner, and from inside rather than from the outside looking in.
I’ve held senior marketing, communications and fundraising roles at leading organisations including the London School of Economics and Cecil Sharp House, and I’ve advised everyone from The Modernist Society to Siobhan Davies Dance on communications and audience development. Recently I’ve worked with AMP, North East Museums, and Nesta’s Arts & Culture Finance. From 2017–23 I was a trustee at LUX, the artists’ film organisation.
I’m also a working writer and artist, with a studio at Salts Mill. I’m co-editor, with Bob Stanley, of Excavate: The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall (Faber, 2021), and currently working on my second music book for Faber. I write about arts and culture for publications including The Wire, Burlington Contemporary, Tribune and Corridor 8. I was a FACT × Jerwood Fellow in 2020–21, and my work has been shown at FACT, Wysing Arts Centre, The Tetley, Liverpool Biennial and Flat Time House, and reviewed in the Guardian, The Times and on Front Row.
I think the two things feed each other. The writing makes me better at communications. The communications keeps me sharp about audiences.
Overnight Sensation 