35. Mark Ball, Royal Shakespeare Company and Fierce!

Mark Ball, head of events and exhibitions, Royal Shakespeare Company, was the founding director of the West Midlands-wide Fierce! Festival, originally launched under the title Queerfest in 1998.

Born in Manchester and raised there and in Market Harborough, he read politics in Liverpool and began his career in theatre as administrator of Birmingham-based Geese Theatre.

He then moved to London to run Gay Sweatshop, but returned to set up the arts-promoting company Fierce! Earth, which has delivered a number of regular events alongside the Fierce Festival. Initially controversial for edgy contributors such as performance artist Franco B, whose show consisted of bleeding from self-inflicted wounds, Fierce demonstrated that it still has the ability to shock when this year's festival, in May, included an exhibition of sado-masochism.

However, Fierce! quickly earned respectability through collaborations with mainstream arts organisations and national attention through its innovative approach to programming, with low-priced, early-evening events targetting young people rather than established arts audiences.

It also revealed a taste for the whimsical as well as the controversial, with events like the Sky Orchestra - CBSO musicians flying over the city in hot air balloons at dawn - and an opportunity for members of the public, at their own risk, to have their hair cut by children. A collaboration with Birmingham Royal Ballet delivered a miniature ballet performed on and around a vintage London bus.

As well as earning a national reputation as an imaginative young producer, Mark Ball won the Institute of Directors' Young Director of the Year competition in 2005. He is also the recipient of a Clore Scholarship and is on the board of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In 2006 he linked up with the Royal Shakespeare Company to stage a Sky Orchestra event as part of its Complete Works festival, and he was appointed to his current post last October, with the brief of giving the RSC's events and exhibitions programme a radical new look to go with its rebuilt theatres in Stratford.