Professor Graeme Evans

Biography

Dr Graeme Evans is Professor Emeritus of Urban Cultures, Design and Creative Economy and Director of Cultural Industries Management (CIM Consultants), an art, architecture and design practice. His first appointment at UAL was as Head of Research and Professor of Cultural Studies at Central St Martins, including a large cohort of PhD students and as PI on several EU and EPSRC research projects on urban design and accessibility. In 2017 he rejoined UAL at LCF where he secured and ran a major £5m+ AHRC-funded project under the UKRI Creative Industries Clusters R&D programme. As Principal Investigator/Director with Prof Jane Harris he helped to coordinate a team of Co-Investigators and Researchers at UAL (LCF, Chelsea), Cambridge, Leeds, Loughborough and Queen Mary London universities, with industry partners from the V&A Museum to a host of SMEs in fashion, textiles and ICT firms in sustainable design/making, materials development and VR/XR visualisation research benefiting from £3+m in R&I investment.


Since 2012 he has been immersed in the regeneration of East London and adjoining areas and the development of research opportunities and collaborations with HEI, cultural and community partners arising from the relocation of the college to East Bank, Stratford in the Olympic Park in 2023. As part of AHRC-funded inter-disciplinary, socially-engaged research projects – Hydrocitizenship and Cultural Planning for Sustainable Communities - he has led several site-based installations, exhibitions and events, including London Festival of Architecture, Community Futures & Utopia, Three Mills and Hackney Wick/DenCity Festivals, and longitudinal cultural mapping of the tangible and intangible heritage of the area working with artists. environmental and cultural organisations. East Bank includes V&A East and nearby Archive/Storehouse, Sadlers Wells East, BBC Music Studios, British Council and local cultural partners including Hackney ‘Creative Wick’, several arts venues, Fashion District, FE Colleges and local amenity and community/tenant organisations.


Current Research
Recent research has focused on the role of Culture in Place Transformation, working with Dr Patrycja Kaszynska, including the AHRC-funded Future Trends series, authoring the research publication: 'Heritage and Placeshaping', arising from Coventry21 UK City of Culture. He was also a member of the AHRC-funded UK-China Creative Industries Research Group, led by Prof Hua Dong (Brunel/RCA)). He recently completed a study with Patrycja for the OECD on The Role of Culture in Regeneration and Place Transformation looking at the evidence and rationale for investment in major capital projects, events & festivals, cultural districts and grassroots community infrastructure, and which will serve as Policy Guidance for OECD member countries across the world.

On this theme, with Dr Kaszynska he has also been awarded a 1 year (2025/26) Research Network grant by the UKRI/AHRC-funded Creative Policy & Evidence Centre (PEC) on the theme of Creative Industries and Place. This network is investigating the relationships between Creative Industry Innovation and Place at different scales, including the role of HEIs/Art Colleges in R&D, student start-up and other place-based infrastructure and workspace - see: https://www.arts.ac.uk/knowledge-exchange/our-funded-projects/creative-industries-and-place.
This work culminated in an event on 23 April at UAL Sketch House, Finsbury Park. Graeme also presented on the project at the Creative PEC's Research Symposium at Newcastle University Business School (28-29 April), serving on an expert panel: 'Place-based approaches to unlocking creative industries growth'. A co-authored Discussion Paper arising from the Network will shortly be published by the Creative PEC.

Graeme also coordinated with Dr Alex Plows, Bangor University, an AHRC International Research Network on Arts & Humanities-inspired Waste Innovation SmArt Cities & Waste, working with artists, designers, waste authorities and environmental and bio-materials scientists. Workshops, pop-ups and interventions have been organised in Amsterdam, Maastricht, Bangor and London. Prior to this he has held several research awards from AHRC, EPSRC, ESRC and the EU, including Connected Communities and Sustainable Urban Environment programmes. He has also undertaken several commissioned research studies and toolkits for the Culture Ministry (DCMS) viz: Culture at the Heart of Regeneration; Culture and Placeshaping; Cultural Mapping; Heritage and Placemaking (Historic England Heritage Counts); Cultural Planning (HM Treasury); and Cultural Spaces (Creative London & Ontario Province/Toronto Metro), and has led studies for DCMS and Arts Council England on social and economic impacts from Lottery funded projects and major festivals (e.g. City of Architecture). He also convened the Mega-Events Research Network for the Regional Studies Association presenting at Milan and Shanghai EXPOs and London and Paris Olympics. He has also undertaken several evaluation studies for cultural development programmes including a longitudinal evaluation of the 5-year City Fringe Creative Industries City Growth Strategy, individual arts and cultural industries projects, and as project evaluator and assessor for grant-making bodies (national and regional arts, EU, AHRC, NERC, JPI Urban Heritage). Major European project awards have addressed urban environmental challenges: AGORA Cities for People; ISHTAR (Arts, Heritage & Transport); and SECOA (coastal/urban flooding and housing development). He has undertaken research on urban heritage (development & diversity) for the British Council, UNESCO and host agencies in Canada (Toronto, Quebec), S.Korea (Gimhae, Seoul), China (Shanghai, Nanjong, Nanjing) and Mexico. Graeme was a Design Quality Assessor for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and has been part of design teams on several projects in the cultural, healthcare, open spaces and urban design spheres including as member of Urban Design Action Teams (UDATs) on Alexandra Palace and Burgess Park, London.

Most of his academic roles for the past 30 years have been as director/founder of university research centres and research institutes in London and The Netherlands including the Cities Institute, Cenre for Leisure & Tourism Studies (CELTS), Art & Design Research Institute (ADRI) and CUES, Maastricht (below). His work has been included in successive RAE/REF submissions since 1996 across Art & Design, Architecture and Business Management Units of Assessment. He has also undertaken reviews of staff research outputs for several university departments in Art & Design and Media & Communicatons.

Prior to academe Graeme was director of an arts centre and social enterprise and environment charity in north London (Inter-Action) and director of a London-wide arts centre network organisation helping to develop the first detailed guidance on Arts Culture & Entertainment (ACE) for borough development plans /LPAC. Graeme has also had a parallel career as a musician/tutor, touring with bands (including playing to David Bowie at the Beckenham Arts Lab) and as MD of a youth jazz/rock ensemble, the London Fusion Orchestra in the 1980s. He continues to work as a session musician, including for Radio/TV and theatre.

Maastricht Euregion
From 2010 as Professor of Culture & Development, he ran a 3 year research programme (Limburg Province-funded) Culture & Urban Development from Maastricht University Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, where he established the Centre for Urban & Euregional Studies (CUES), working with local/regional government, communities, arts organisations and venues across three cross-border Euregions (Netherlands, Belgium, Germany). This focused on the Creative Knowledge Region imaginary; and emancipatory possibilities, cultural memory and landscapes, working with less engaged and disconnected communities outside of the main centres (e.g. Genk, Heerlen). This research also informed the shortlisted (last 3) Maastricht European City of Culture submission, and regional initiatives such as Fashion City and culture-led regeneration projects in the city and region, and led to the creation of a new Creative City module as part of the international MA Arts & Heritage programe.


Publications
Graeme has published over 120 journal articles and chapters with 10,000 citations of his work: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=graeme+evans&hl=en&oi=ao
His publications have been translated into Chinese, German, Korean and Turkish and his seminal book Cultural Planning: An Urban Renaissance has sold over 2,000 copies worldwide. Designing Sustainable Cities (Blackwell) provided innovative research on urban design in mixed-use areas and developments including the lived experience of occupants and users of these high density neighboruhoods. Recent publications include an edited book on Mega-Events, Regeneration and Placeshaping (Routledge) based on a Regional Studies Association-funded international research network he has convened since 2012, and he also authors the key chapter on London2012 for the Olympic Cities collection (Routledge 4th ed. 2024). His recent article on Graffiti, Street Art and Ambivalence features as the lead paper in a special issue of the Humanities Law & Literature journal. His latest monograph entitled Cultural Spaces: Production and Consumption (Routledge, 2024) critiques a range of designated and everyday cultural spaces and usage, from Arts Centres, Graffiti/Street Art, Heritage and Fashion, to Festivals, Digital Culture and Socially-Engaged Arts practice from the perspective of Lefebvre's Social Production of Space and (Cultural) Rights to the City. Future publications will further advance the Culture and Place theme.