Andrew Chitty Creative Economy Champion | Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

Andrew Chitty is the AHRC’s Creativity Economy Champion and Professor of Creative and Digital Economy at Royal Holloway University of London. His role with the AHRC is to develop more innovative, impactful and sustainable relationships between the Creative Industries and the academic community. Most recently this has resulted in £100m of programmes that represent the first investments in Creative R&D from the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy.

With three decades of experience in the creative industries, Professor Chitty’s career began in television, where he focussed on the cultural impact of science and technology before founding his first company, a BAFTA-winning digital agency that developed transformational services for clients across the creative economy. He is a former Vice Chair of the IP producers’ trade body PACT, a board member of Creative Skillset, and a founding director of Creative England. Andrew has also worked across policy and regulation as a ministerial advisor and non-executive at OFCOM, the media and telecoms regulator. Andrew trained originally as a neuroscientist before being seduced into the media.