Robin Simpson

Robin Simpson has been Chief Executive of Creative Lives since September 2005. Robin is the Chair of the Steering Group for the national Get Creative campaign – a partnership between the BBC and hundreds of arts and cultural organisations across the UK. He is also the Chair of Peterborough Presents, the Peterborough Creative People & Places Consortium. Robin was a founding Trustee of Luminate – Scotland's creative ageing organisation. He has been a Trustee of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and a member of the ChangeUp Volunteering Hub Scrutiny Committee. Robin has served on committees and boards for several Government Departments including: the Office for Civil Society (Cabinet Office); Department for Culture, Media and Sport; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Robin completed his MBA with the Open University Business School in 2002.

Before joining Creative Lives Robin was Deputy Chief Executive of Making Music – the national umbrella body for amateur music making, supporting over 2,000 amateur music groups throughout the UK, including choirs, orchestras, and music promoters. Previously, he worked as General Manager of the British Federation of Festivals, supporting the volunteer organisers of more than 300 festivals of music, dance and speech and drama across the UK. Robin has substantial experience of working with volunteers, having also worked for six years for the Royal National Institute for the Blind, managing a team of over 130 volunteer readers to record academic textbooks onto tape for visually-impaired students.

Robin is a keen amateur French horn player, currently a member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra. He is also a perennial ballroom dancing student, a frequent theatre-goer, an enthusiastic reader of contemporary fiction, an insatiable consumer of classical and world music and a keen blogger at culturalplayingfield.org and culturaldessert.blogspot.com.

“For those of us who voluntarily practice some form of arts activity in our own time – and some estimates suggest that this includes almost half the adult population, playing in orchestras, singing in choirs, acting, dancing, painting, lace-making etc. – it’s often difficult to articulate exactly why we do it. But it usually becomes such a significant part of our lives we genuinely feel we couldn’t do without it.”