Gini Simpson has over 25 years experience of working in the arts and its interfaces with health, social justice and learning. She is known for working with innovative ideas, in new spaces and translating novel thinking into action, engaging with emergent phenomena and trends and consider the arts to be a research engine for society in general. 

Key areas of expertise include income generation, diversifying income streams, enterprise, cross sector working, public engagement, governance, authentic participation and people management. She has set up large scale programmes linking different communities and networks, facilitating effective knowledge exchange and authentic co-creation, which can genuinely engage diverse people to contribute to solutions to big issues. 

Now Creative Lead at Hastings Commons, she has worked across the creative industries in institutions, small arts organisations and commercially in advertising and interactive TV. Previous key roles have included Head of Programmes at STAF, Head of Media Arts (SPACE), Senior Business Development Manager (Queen Mary University of London) and Head of Learning and Participation (Barbican). She is Chair of Furtherfield, an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation. Before this she was a social worker in Brixton, which continues to influence her work. She is the Artistic Director at Hear Me Out, a charity which sets up music programmes in immigration detention centres and shares music made there with the world. Consultancy clients have included IBM, Guildhall School, Hackney Community College, Daily Life Limited, Project Phakama and TATE Exchange. 

She is a single parent, lone breadwinner who has lived with mental health issues all of her life, which informs working practice and, “makes me better at my job.”