Justine Simons OBE (UK) - Deputy Mayor for Culture & Creative Industries, London, Founder, World Cities Culture Forum

Justine Simons is Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries. She has played a central role in the cultural transformation of London for two decades. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 by Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth for Services to Culture in London.

Justine founded and is Chair of the World Cities Culture Forum – the principal leadership network on culture and the future of cities, now grown to over 40 global cities reaching across six continents.

She led the capital’s biggest ever festival for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games with over 5000 events and is now overseeing its legacy. East Bank in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, is a new £1 billion culture and education district, the most significant for over 150 years.

She shapes London’s Investment Strategy for the Creative Industries covering film, fashion, games and design, growing their influence on the world stage. She has designed new policy innovations including the world’s first Creative Enterprise Zones, a new Culture at Risk Office to protect fragile cultural infrastructure, established the London Borough of Culture and hardwired culture into London’s planning system with the first Cultural Infrastructure Plan. Justine established the Fourth Plinth as the UK’s biggest public sculpture prize, is co-chair of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm and chaired the Mayor’s Suffrage Statue Commission placing the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square, suffrage campaigner Millicent Fawcett. She positioned culture at the heart of the Let’s Do London recovery campaign, attracting 800,000 visitors and bringing London back to life post pandemic.

Chris Michael - Deputy Editor, Cities, The Guardian

Clive Dutton OBE - Co-founder, The Line: East London Sculpture Walk

Clive is an internationally recognised urban regeneration expert.

He was involved in the Olympic regeneration legacy in East London, working for the London Borough of Newham where he was Executive Director of Regeneration and Inward Investment. Projects included the creation of a city within a capital city in Stratford, the redevelopment of Canning Town,the regeneration of the Royal Docks and the innovative Meanwhile London Project.

Clive was previously Director of Regeneration and Planning for Birmingham City Council, where he was awarded the Midlands Property Personality of the Year in 2009.Projects included the Big City Plan, New Street Station redevelopment, The Cube, the Library of Birmingham, Longbridge redevelopment, Eastside and City Park.

Prior to that he held senior positions at numerous metropolitan authorities, an Urban Development Corporation and a City Challenge Partnership. He produced the Dutton Report on how to regenerate West Belfast, following the Good Friday Agreement.

He worked for UK Government on the Urban White Paper, assisted the UK Urban Task Force and was a member of the Oldham Independent Review.

Clive was also Director of Regeneration for a major UK private developer.

He has presented at myriad international events and has been published widely.

He was awarded an OBE for services to urban regeneration in 1998.

Mohammad Al Shehhi - Chief Operating Officer, Dubai Design District