A Class Act: Transforming socio-economic diversity in the creative industries

Dave O’Brien is a globally recognised expert on the cultural and creative industries. Since completing his PhD on urban cultural policy in the Department of Sociology at the University of Liverpool, he has written extensively on key issues in the cultural and creative economy. These include the use of culture in urban regeneration, how policymakers use evidence, the stratification of cultural consumption, and inequalities in cultural work.

Polly took up post at UAL in July 2022, having previously served as Chief Executive of Demos, the UK’s leading cross-party think tank, which brings citizen voice and lived experience into public policy discussions. Previous civil society roles include founding CEO of the Money & Mental Health Policy Institute and establishing the operations of the Women’s Equality Party. From 2010-2015 she was Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister, based in 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, having worked as a policy advisor to the Liberal Democrats since 2004.

Polly’s recent publications include The Gravitational State, The Humble Policy Maker, Living in the Exponential Age, and The Social State: From Transactional to Relational Public Services. She is a member of the Social Value Taskforce, a trustee at Shift Foundation, and a non-executive director of Registry Trust, a not-for-profit provider of credit data.

Pete Johnson joined British Screen Forum (then BSAC) as Chief Executive in September 2016. He was previously Chief Executive of The Authority for Television On Demand (ATVOD) since its Designation by Ofcom in March 2010 as the co-regulatory authority with responsibility for editorial content in On-Demand Programme Services.

In this role, he was responsible for ensuring that UK video on demand services complied with the requirements of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive as they apply to editorial content, and worked closely with the regulated industry through the ATVOD Industry Forum. He was previously Head of Policy and Business Development at the British Board of Film Classification, where he was responsible for all aspects of regulatory policy and research, and for the development of new classification services for both packaged media and video on demand providers.

Kayley is a highly experienced freelance production coordinator, working in factual content. She has managed programmes across a range of genres, including entertainment, music and observational documentaries in both the English and Irish languages for BBC, RTÉ and TG4. She is currently working with MakeMatic on their flagship ‘Essentials’ series: a series of 500 animated videos to complement the US History syllabus across all year groups.
Kayley is a proud Sutton Trust Alum and was delighted to serve on the Alumni Leadership Board from 2021-23, before stepping up as Co-Chair in the last academic year.

Nick is the CEO at the Sutton Trust. Prior to that, he spent most of his career as a consultant with Oliver Wyman, one of the world’s leading management consulting firms, where he was a partner and global co-lead of the Consumer and Retail Team. Nick also sits on the Social Metrics Commission, which addresses the definition of poverty and its alleviation in the UK and is a trustee of a local charity. Nick lives in Clapham and is a proud father of three teenagers.