Audio Interviews

Emily Campbell - Q & A with Andrew Senior

Part One

Can I start by asking you how you came to work in the design sector and then what brought you to the British Council?
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That's quite an amazing transition from studying at Cambridge, English Literature - I assume thinking you might become an academic or something of that sort?
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So there you are in Pentagram, with the best job in New York, what brought you back to the UK and what brought you to the British Council?
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Can we move back for a moment to the whole question of the business of design and your experience working in the industry in the US, your experience here in the UK as someone who has commissioned design and critiqued design in different ways: what would you say is the difference in terms of the working environment? How is design perceived in the UK, how is it perceived in the US?
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So, in terms of design itself, did you see a great deal of difference between the design scenes in the UK and design in the US? Are there different trends there?
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Now graphic design is one of your passions, isn't it? I remember standing in the airport at Frankfurt with you when we were supposed to be catching a flight back to the UK and you were mesmerised by the display board. What is it that excites you about graphic design?
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Can I bring you back to the British Council now, in terms of the work that you do here. Can you explain to the people who are listening, what precisely your role is?
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Obviously at the moment we're here in London, in the course of the London Design Festival. What do you think is exciting about the Design Festival and, say, about 100% Design.
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Why do you think it is that London attracts design talent in that way?

So in a way it sounds like you'd agree with the American academic Richard Florida, when he says that amongst the critical factors affecting the development of a creative class, a creative sector, is the issue of tolerance and that London is that sort of tolerant city; it gives you those sorts of opportunities?

Can we spend a moment talking about language? How important do you think intolerance is to stimulating creativity?

I'm thinking though in terms of the Soviet Union, the ways in which people reacted against the system there - they were intolerant of the system - and how that actually sparked a great deal of creativity and there's an argument that perhaps there's been less creativity in Russia since then.
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That's interesting because many people around the world characterise the British as being caught up in tradition, straight-laced about things. Do you think that's really not the case?
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