Iain Bennett

Speakers

Iain Bennett

Director

The Fifth Sector

 

Speaker Biography

Iain is a creative industries expert with 30+ years’ senior management experience in private and public sectors. His work emphasises the leading role of culture and the creative industries in the renewal and growth of places, spaces and economies across the world. He founded The Fifth Sector in 2011 and in the last five years has delivered creative sector mapping and cluster strategies in Liverpool, Manchester, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Tees Valley, Derby, Leicester, West Sussex and Greater Brighton, Hampshire, Somerset and Herefordshire.
He has previously advised the British Council on creative industries mapping in North Macedonia and supported development of Albania’s tech cluster for Swisscontact, an NGO.

He was an agent for actors and directors at international talent agencies including William Morris and ICM.

As Sector Leader for Digital & Creative Industries at Northwest Regional Development Agency (2006-11) he wrote the first regional strategy for digital and creative industries and managed a series of skills and infrastructure programmes to support the £1 billion development of MediaCityUK in Salford. From 2012-14 he was a project director of Department for Culture, Media & Sport’s £150m Superconnected Cities programme, directing investment in digital infrastructure in London, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester and Salford.

As Associate Director of BOP Consulting (2014-19), he wrote an international Creative Industries strategy for UKTI (now the Department for Business & Trade); advised Festivals Edinburgh on International Best Practice in Digital Festivals Technology; devised strategies for the computer games cluster in Leamington Spa video games and the fashion cluster in London’s Olympic Park.

Iain has an MA in English from St Catherine’s College, Cambridge and an MBA from London Metropolitan University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Arts & Humanities Advisory Board at Royal Holloway, University of London.

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