More about Simon Evans
Creative business: policy, strategy, mentoring
Simon's career focus is helping people with both commercial and cultural goals to get the best of both worlds. He is most interested in projects that are ground-breaking in creative, political and business terms. His current policy focus is on the global effect of the growing creative economy on cultural trade and cultural diversity.
Simon has been engaged on assignments involving policy development, cultural strategy, cultural diversity, business planning, financing, information systems, organisational change, evaluation, physical development, animation programmes and other issues. His clients include public agencies such as UNESCO, UNCTAD, Council of Europe, EU, Arts Council England, NESTA, Visiting Arts, City Councils and regional development agencies around the world. His private sector clients include many small enterprises in the arts and media industries.
Since 1988 he has been a key player in the development of Sheffield’s Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ), a 40 hectare city-centre cluster of media businesses and attractions. He conceived of and consulted for the CIQ's first project-support programme, and then led on devising and making operational the CIQ's business support, physical regeneration and inward investment agencies.
Simon has worked as a policy consultant and public speaker in many different countries and cultures, including the UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Uganda, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Korea, Denmark, New Zealand, China, France, Slovenia, Brazil, Spain, Jordan, Ireland, Bulgaria, Belgium, Portugal and India. Simon sits on many advisory groups engaged in creative industry development. He is an advisor to the World Culture Forum, on the Board of Vincent Dance Theatre, and a Governor at Firth Park Community Arts College, Sheffield.
Entrepreneurship: innovation, risk and responsibility.
Most of the projects Simon has initiated have been ground-breaking in both cultural and commercial terms. Some have pioneered models and practices that have later gone on to find wide industry acceptance. Most have involved personal financial risk.
In 2001, Simon founded Creative Clusters, a conference and network for development professionals in the Creative Industries. The company has developed an advanced web-based event management system.
Simon conceived of and led the Hive project, a £12m. property development proposed for Sheffield Cultural Industries Quarter containing a media business incubator, live events venues, café-bar and shops. He secured seed funds and led a five-year process encompassing feasibility studies, market analyses, site option appraisal and surveys, planning applications, business plans and funding proposals. He brokered strategic political alliances and managed a diverse team of professionals, advisors and volunteers through a turbulent development period.
He set up Flying Carpet Productions (FCP) in 1988, raising investment capital against personal assets. The company was the first creative-industry start-up in what is now Sheffield's Cultural Industries Quarter. FCP produced art and entertainment events across the region: contemporary music, comedy shows, corporate parties, festivals, workshops, a science fair and the opening event for the European swimming championships. FCP also ran marketing, sponsorship and print distribution services. The company's entrepreneurial pursuit of multiple income streams was both innovative and profitable.
Live arts and entertainment: creating memorable experiences
Simon's career began with live events, as a producer and risk-taking promoter.
He was one of three Directors that conceived of and ran the first London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) in 1981. He was a partner/director in Café Graffiti, the Edinburgh Festival's first, largest and most innovative mixed-media venue, and for which the Scotsman newspaper created a special award in 1998 for its 'lifetime achievement'. In 1987 he set up ‘Fools Paradise’ in Sheffield (which at the time was the UK’s largest new comedy club outside London), and then the ‘Last Laugh’, which is still running.
He has worked on the production of hundreds of arts and entertainment events:
- Festivals, cabaret, theatre, world music, avant-garde, dance, opera, comedy, pop music, street theatre, pantomime, exhibitions, non-animal circus.
- Major theatres, concert halls, arts centres, swimming pools, hotels, pubs, nightclubs, malls, refugee camps, parks, streets, tents, warehouses, including conversion of many ‘found spaces’ into events venues
- London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sheffield, Brighton, Amsterdam, Hong Kong.
