On 11^th July 2017 Chris Bilton will co-present a workshop on innovation and leadership at Warwick in London’s venue in the old Google building near King’s Cross Station. Chris will be running the workshop alongside Linda Green, of Leading Creative Talent, formerly head of the BBC Leadership programme. Aimed at emerging leaders in medium-sized organisations, this one-day workshop will show you how to recognise and direct innovative ideas, how to lead innovation in others, and how to build a capacity to innovate at both individual and organisational level. Each participant will leave with an action plan to put these ideas into action in their workplace. Details of the event are available here.

We are saddened and shocked to report that on 23rd November 2016 Dr Anna Upchurch passed away, following a short illness. Anna was a Teaching Fellow in the Centre through 2008/2009, teaching on the MA in International Design and Communication Management, before moving to Leeds where she continued to work until shortly before her death. In 2008 she completed her PhD in the Centre, a study of the intellectual origins of the Arts Council; the book resulting from that research, The Origin of the Arts Council Movement was published in the same week as her death. Anna continued to be a friend of the Centre, working with colleagues on research projects, editing a book series for Palgrave Macmillan with her former colleague and friend Dr Ele Belfiore, and participating in the International Conference on Cultural Policy Research.

Anna was an imaginative and empathetic historian of cultural policy, a gifted teacher and a warm, kind-hearted colleague who brought the best out of everybody she worked with. It is a tragedy that her life and career should be cut short. Those of us who knew her will remember her with deep affection, for her generous, open spirit, the interest and care she showed towards her students, and the warmth and kindness she both embodied and inspired. Anna will be greatly missed by her friends and colleagues at Warwick, as well as by the many students, colleagues and friends who were lucky enough to meet her and work with her, at University of Leeds, at Duke University and around the world. If any former students would like to get in touch to share their memories of Anna, we would be happy to pass these on to her family.

The best of last year's MA dissertations are now available via the Centre's online publications page. Once again the work covers a wide range of subjects, from the 'sharing economy' of the couch surfing website Airbnb, through intellectual property rights in China, the 'seven basic plots' in advertising to a political economy analysis of Google. Congratulations to the authors, Katie Finley, Xiao Ma, Sandra Kaliszewski and Callum Goodwilliam. The winners were awarded a small prize at our annual degree congregation and we look forward to congratulating next year's winners in January 2015! Click here to read more.