Sir Peter Bazalgette, non-executive chairman of ITV and honorary professor at the University of Manchester, is to deliver a keynote speech on Innovation, Growth and the Creative Industries to celebrate the first birthday of Creative Manchester in the city next week.
Bazalgette was knighted in 2012 for services to broadcasting and is currently non-executive chairman of ITV. He served as president of the Royal Television Society from 2010-2017, was a non-executive director of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and began a four-year stint as chairman of Arts Council England in 2012.
Bazelgette started his career as a researcher on Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life and went on the create shows including Ready, Steady, Cook and Changes Rooms for his own Bazal production house, which would eventually be absolved into Endemol.
The Independent dubbed Bazagette, in 2007, as “the most influential man in British television” as a result of his impact on the development of reality television and lifestyle TV programmes. Conversely, around the same time London Evening Standard TV critic Victor Lewis-Smith claimed that Bazalgette had “done more to debase television over the past decade than anyone else” for much the same reason. In 2017 he was commissioned by the government to conduct an independent review into the UK’s Creative Industries for their Industrial Strategy.
The Creative Manchester event is free and open to the public, although the organisers ask that attendees register via the eventbrite website in advance. It will also be live streamed via Creative Manchester’s socials. It takes place at the Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall from 5pm on Monday, October 3. It will be chaired by University of Manchester president Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell and feature a response to Bazalgette from Dr Abi Gilmore, from UoM’s Institute for Cultural Practice and Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre.
Creative Manchester, based at the university, is a research platform which co-ordinates and develops research on the Creative Industries and Innovation, Civic Futures and Creativity, Health and Well-being.
