This time last year it was virtually impossible to pin down Pippa Hale for a meeting.

This year she has time for cake and coffee before she even wants to begin talking about the Northern Art Prize (NAP).

"It's definitely a lot less frantic this year," she says sitting in the Tiled Hall which connects Leeds Art Gallery with the city's library.

Hale is director of NAP and the woman whose idea it was to stage a major prize in the North for visual art.

Last year saw the launch of the prize and ambitious Hale went at it all guns blazing, determined to make sure the prize and the events around it received as high a profile as possible.

She secured judges with a national standing, including Wakefield-born Turner prize winner Martin Creed and she worked tirelessly to promote the prize.

While not resting on her laurels this year, Hale is clearly satisfied with last year's mission accomplished.

Not that she'll admit it.

"I'm not running around like I was last year. This year it feels a lot more like we know what we're doing because we have the experience of last year and we're not coming at it for the first time," says Hale.

"But we still want the prize to have an increased national profile. We were pleased with the profile we received last year, but that doesn't mean we're satisfied."

I point out that last year the coverage was impressive to say the least. Hale's idea brought nationally important art critics, journalists and gallery representatives north of the Watford Gap.

"I'm ambitious, I want us to have an even more impressive profile," is Hale's response.

Hale is a rare creature, an artist who can communicate. She uses this skill for consultancy work, teaching artists about how to communicate with galleries, journalists and customers.

Three years ago she decided to put the skill to use in creating an art prize which would benefit the whole region.

"Art has always had its benefactors, but we seem to think that the art world lives in one little bubble and the business world in a completely separate one - and that just isn't the case," says Hale.

"You only have to look at this gallery - the names above the doors, the people who built these galleries, are business people who were benefactors of the art world.

Realising this, Hale approached a number of businesses and convinced them of a number of things.

First she convinced them that to have visual artists working in the North was a benefit to everyone. She then convinced them that the best way to stop the talent drain of artists leaving the region to go to London was to give them a reason to stay here - by increasing the importance and the profile of the visual arts for the North.

Taking her cue from the Turner Prize, which has seen the national profile of the visual arts take huge strides forward, Hale convinced businesses that the best way to achieve all of these aims was to create the Northern Art Prize.

Hale says: "We knew that it needed to be significant. It needed to have a significant amount of prize money attached and a high profile."
To this end Hale convinced Leeds based company Logistik to stump up the money to help make the event a success.

The design company, led by Dirk Mischendahl, invested £120,000 over the first three years of the award and global engineering firm Arup has also committed money to the prize.

The money means the cash prize for the award is £16,500 to the winner and £1,500 for each runner up - it makes it one of the most cash-rich prizes in the British art world.

The judges are equally impressive. The panel of four who have selected the shortlist and who will ultimately decide the winners this year are Iwona Blazwick, the director of London's Whitechapel Art Gallery, Louisa Buck, a writer and contemporary art critic, art collector Anita Zabludowicz and artist Georgina Starr, the Leeds born artist who has exhibited at the Tate Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Venice Biennale.

Hale is delighted with this year's shortlist, all of whom are already established artists and most have exhibited internationally.

She says: "It is all a part of positioning the prize at a national and international level.

"The amount of prize money, the quality of the work and the profile of the judges all add to the profile of the prize."

When she dreamed up the idea several years ago for the Northern Art Prize, Hale was frustrated that the visual arts in the North were not being given the importance they deserved.

Her frustration was not unfounded. When the Northern Art Prize was first announced it was not given a great deal of kudos. It was seen outside the region as a curiosity. Why did the North deserve its own prize for the visual arts?

"It wasn't about competing with London, we know that's impossible. It was about saying that there are artists working in the North, that their work is worth looking at and about making that something which was recognised on a national scale," says Hale.

At the launch of the prize, in the autumn of 2006, the great and the good turned out at Leeds City Art Gallery.

"It was then that I was convinced we'd done the right thing. We had brought a lot of the region's businessmen and women into the gallery, as well as the usual collection of artists you expect to see at that sort of event," says Hale.

"I think that was the key. We'd convinced the businesses with the money to invest in the arts that we were worth investing in."

Further confirmation came at last year's unveiling of the shortlist and then at the prize ceremony at which Leeds Art Gallery was packed.

With the work of the four shortlisted artists available for the public to see at Leeds City Art Gallery today, the venue is set to be packed once again.