Global Insight
Ben Evans: London Versus The World
Ben Evans is the Director of the London Design Festival, which he co-founded with Sir John Sorrell in 2003.
The Festival celebrates and promotes London as the creative capital of the world and has inspired similar events in many international cities.
Prior to this, he was a partner and the creative director of LIVE, a branding and marketing business that he co-founded in early 2000. From 1997 to 2000 Ben was Content Editor at the Millennium Dome where he led the development of the exhibition areas.
He is 47, married to the architect Amanda Levete and they have 4 teenage children. He lives in London.
The stats are impressive. The creative economy equates to 7% of GDP, 1 in 6 of every new job and hundreds of thousands overall, tens of billions of revenue. Meanwhile our European rivals are nearer 2% of GDP.
London is an epicentre of creativity. We excel across the creative industries- indeed being good at lots of things is a feature of our fair city. In my world, design, there are probably 20 plus different disciplines where we can sensibly claim to be very good. One measure of this is the sheer volume of great things going on. I find I endlessly miss something I’d like to do or see simply because there are not enough days in the week. Spoilt rotten we are and variety is the spice of life.
Before you question that, go to the bourgeois monoculture of Paris, the Milan which barely functions, the New York that has lost its way. It gets worse. Try authoritarian Singapore, copy cat Hong Kong, or we have no idea what we are doing Moscow.
London is top and the rest of the world knows it. There are doubters but they are more likely to reside in SW9 or N16 than Milan or Tokyo. But more on them later.
Reputation is everything. It is what keeps our world buoyant. We want to be seen as a creative mecca where everyone is cool, where the best ideas are conceived, where the future lives. Such a reputation brings work in the form of new business. The domestic market is not enough, we have to export our creative talent. Sometimes I worry that the myth of our creative leadership exceeds the reality, but why ruin the story.
A reputation also has a magnetic effect. It attracts talent from across the globe to live and work here. Some come to be educated and stay. Some arrive just wanting to soak up the atmosphere and seeking opportunity. Some set up business here.
It's obvious also that new talent helps to feed and shape our identity and reputation. Many of our design stars don’t carry a British passport but they bring a fresh perspective from elsewhere. Foreign journalists covering the Festival often ask about the British design identity. I think that is a bit of a non-question. Creativity is borderless these days. It still surprises people quite how international London has become.
For those like me, who grew up in this city in the 70s when the creativity in London was near invisible, the world we live today was unimaginable. Yet, amid the grimness were the makings of a new sector. There was energy and excitement; creative businesses started employing more than a couple of people.
It is worth reminding ourselves it has taken two generations to get where we are today. The Alan Fletchers of the world are now sadly gone (although there is a show of his work in the Festival). We all owe thanks to the pioneering work of Pentagram and the like for they have helped build our collective reputation. That is where we have a head start. We have a mature creative sector and a well-worked system – the art & design schools – churning out new talent. For now. When the best students start going elsewhere after the new fees kick in that talent pool will decrease.
But everyone else is playing catch up. Every city wants a creative reputation. If design showcasing is a measure, there are now over 80 global cities with design events when ten years ago there were less than five. While we might now struggle to name a Chinese designer it is only a matter of time. There are currently 1.2 million Chinese design students which is more than the rest of the world put together. And Chinese consumers want ‘designed in China’ not ‘made in China’.
Back to the cynics. We are our own worst enemy sometimes. Talking down than up creative London. If you believe what I have said here we must be more than glass half full people otherwise our premier position will go elsewhere.
