A former adviser to the Tony Blair government is fronting a new alternative business structure supporting the creative sectors. John Newbigin OBE will be chair of the Counterculture Partnership, which has offices in east London and the Northern Quarter of Manchester.
Newbigin will step down this autumn from his role as chair of Creative England, a body set up to champion and invest in creative businesses.
His new firm is a boutique practice with 11 partners and six staff which purports to ‘remove the boundaries’ in the cultural sectors between funding, accounting, legal, business planning, project management and governance. Clients include the Royal College of Music, the National Media Museum and the Tate.
Newbigin said: ‘In just five years [Creative England] has made an imaginative and forceful contribution to growing the country’s creative economy – and I know it’s got even more to offer in the future.'
‘I’ve worked with Counterculture on many projects in the past, and I’m looking forward to the new challenge of building on their successes in the international market place.’
Newbigin was special adviser to culture secretary Chris Smith in the late 1990s. He was a policy adviser on environmental and cultural issues to then Labour leader Neil Kinnock from 1986 to 1992.
After politics, he was head of corporate relations for Channel 4 Television for five years before moving to Creative England.
He is a member of the government’s Creative Industries Council, chairman of the British Council’s Advisory Group for Arts and Creative Economy and on the advisory board of the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, University of London.
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