Jay Corless

Jay joined the London Design Festival in April 2008.  He brings to the team over a decade of experience in media development, public information and global event planning at the international level.  In 2007 during a sabbatical year away from the United Nations System he completed a Masters degree in Enterprise Management of the Creative Arts, University of Arts London.  His thesis, supervised by Lord Smith of Finsbury, on the effects of international creative industry policy on local creative agencies will be published in June 2008.

From 1995 to 1997 Jay was an integral part of a team that developed UNESCO’s first generation global Internet presence.   The site with over 30 million pages is ranked third among UN websites in visitor numbers and has a readership that covers the six official languages, English, Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese and Arabic, of the Organisation.  He then participated in the rollout of an institution wide content management system that was quickly followed by a second community oriented portal servicing the 192 Member States of the Organisation.

In 1998 and 1999 he assumed a larger public information role for UNESCO.  In this position he coordinated the youth programme for the United Nations Pavilion at the 1998 World Expo in Lisbon, Portugal, UNESCO’s participation at the Armada of the Century in France while overseeing a growing Internet portfolio.  In 2000 he accepted a project to redesign and revamp UNESCO’s culture sector Internet strategy.  This position led immediately to a nomination as project coordinator for developing UNESCO’s communication and activity calendar for the 2002 United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage.

During the 2002 to 2006 period he joined the Director-General of UNESCO’s executive cabinet as a communications officer.  There he worked to successfully bring the United States of America back into full membership within the Organisation and coordinated the UN’s participation at the Aichi World Expo of 2005.  The UN Pavilion in Aichi received over 12 million visitors in six months.

Last year during a paid sabbatical he carried out an in depth study of UK creative industry policy.  During the research he traced the creative economy movement from a national idea to a global phenomenon. He also sought to understand how the different levels of policy, international, regional, and national, effect local creative institutions. His study will be published in the summer of 2008.