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THE POLITICS OF DESIGN(Evening Standard Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) He's advised Kinnock and Blair, has Gordon Brown on speed dial, and last week filledTrafalgar Square withTom Dixon chairs. Helen Kirwan-Taylor says Ben Evans is London's design fixer You would have to be a shortsighted, subterranean space cadet not to notice that London has recently been overtaken by design. Last Thursday, Trafalgar Square was covered in 500 polystyrene 'New' chairs designed by Tom Dixon, all of which were given away to the public after the event. Four hundred thousand visitors are presently loitering around the city trying to take in over 200 projects, ranging from product and graphic design to architecture, in just about as many neighbourhoods that make up the London Design Festival. Three years ago, Giorgio Armani (who opened Armani Casa on New Bond Street during this year's festival) wouldn't have spent his time discussing chairs. But now consumers and collectors have cottoned on to the fact that design has become what art used to be, before every hedge fund manager and Russian zillionaire felt the need to buy whichever artist made the most noise. Design is so hot these days that when Louis Vuitton launched a new handbag with Zaha Hadid, all anyone could remember was Zaha Hadid, and something about a purse. 'Design is having a contemporary art moment,' says Ben Evans, the 43-yearold James Dean-ish looking founder of the London Design Festival, which runs through to the end of the month. Apart from being the second half of a power design couple (he is living with the architect Amanda Levete of Future Systems), Evans is Labour aristocracy. His mother is Baroness Blackstone, the former Education and Arts minister. His father is Tom Evans, an economist. He counts David Miliband among his closest friends and he ran both Kinnock and Blair's election campaigns. His Islington dinners are famous for their mixture of artists, designers and politicos because, says one friend, 'he has the best address book in London'. Last year's opening celebrations for the London Design Festival were presided over by Gordon Brown: when it comes to producingthe goods, Evans knows who to call. He acts like a cross between Nick Jones and Tom Dixon. His usual uniform of lowslung, faded jeans, T-shirt, tennis shoes and a three-day growth is very 'design' (designers tend to affect a total loss of interest in fashion and sometimes personal hygiene). But when it comes to his ability to influence the right people and push things through, he's all Jones. He counts among his mentor's previous bosses Lord Puttnam, Sir Jocelyn Stevens, Peter Mandelson and, indirectly, Tony Blair. 'Evans is very subtle in his approach,' says Julian Vogel, of Modus PR, who met Evans 11 years ago at a party with Tessa Jowell. 'He knows the heavyweights in politics, but he also knows everyone in the creative fields; he's been able to tap into all those worlds and find funding without appearing pushy'. Nigel Coates, architect, designer and Professor of Architecture at the RCA says, 'For me the best people are full of contradictions. Ben Evans is one of these and that's why I love him. He's a hybrid of West End swagger and East End savvy.' In the early days, it was a question of trying to persuade people to participate in the festival. 'Now the pendulum has turned the other way,' he says 'and it's more a question of what we are able to fit in'. This is largely thanks to the sudden status of design as the new art. 'Designers are now treated like superstars and every company is clamouring to work with them,' he says. I had the good fortune to travel from Milan to London with Zaha Hadid last spring; crowds separated as she walked past, but unlike pedestrian Hollywood celebrities, no one dared speak to her. 'Architects and designers are seen as modern-day masters,' he goes on, 'they are the real stars'. At the selling exhibit of sculpture at Chatsworth mounted by Sotheby's, not only was the curator selected from the design world (Janice Blackburn), but among the Damien Hirsts and Antony Gormleys was a Ron Arad chaise longue. 'We don't see art and design as being separate anymore,' says Francis Outred, a director in the contemporary art department of Sotheby's. And now that Hadid has started commanding art prices at auction and Mark Newson has got into bed with Larry Gagosian, everyone is watching. 'Ever since art got bigger and harder to hang, there has been a gradual shift by collectors to design,' says Amanda Levete, who is exhibiting two pieces for Alasdhair Willis's Established & Sons during the festival. 'Objects are now more collectible and they have the same capacity to say something about their owner.' Everyone is now aware of design, but when Evans first thought up the idea of starting a design festival that would emulate what Cannes does for movies and Edinburgh does for performing arts, no one was interested. 'Here was Newsweek saying that London is the hippest, most creative city in the world, but when we launched we had more attention from the Italian financial press and the Korean papers than we did from anyone here.' The first year (2002), it was pretty much just Ben Evans and his partner, the branding expert John Sorrell - he was responsible for the controversial British Airways rebranding campaign - who showed up at their own launch party. By last year Gordon Brown was presiding over events, and this year Terence Conran took the podium with 500 guests, many of them gatecrashers from the fashion industry. Evans's House in Islington that he shares with Amanda Levete and her 11-year-old son (he has three daughters from a previous marriage) is pretty neutral except for the bright red carpet, the trademark of Future Systems (who designed the Lords Media Centre among other things). The couple are exasperatingly in love, answering each other's sentences and dodging phone calls from the Mayor's office and just about everyone else's office, too. They met over the boardroom table at Artangel (an art charity that commissions nonrepresented artists) and, says Evans, 'it was love at first sight. She moved in on the first of July and changed only the sheets and the carpets'. Alone, Evans can persuade just about anyone to do anything, but with Levete (second only to Zaha in stature) in tow, there isn't really anyone who isn't on their speed dial. Evans came to design through a series of accidental jobs. He studied architecture and design history at Manchester, and moved to the Royal College of Art where he did an MA in Cultural History. Told to mount a graduate show, he had no clue what to do, until he came up with the theme 'The Cultural Significance of Nightclubs'. This landed him a job. 'I got a call from Michael Peters [a design consultant in the Eighties and Nineties, famous for the Tory party torch] who said, "Come and write some speeches for me on design, business etc."' By 1992, Neil Kinnock had heard of Evans' persuasion skills (someone from his team had also seen his graduate show) and asked him to come on board and mastermind an event that the media could later film. It was more a question of what they couldn't film though. 'In those days, what we got was mostly bad press; the tabloids would get kids with ink on their hands to ask for a handshake. They would come carrying ice cream cones that they would rub on his trousers, it was very hostile.' Evans learned how to cope with any amount of wiliness but Kinnock's defeat in 1992 left him jobless. 'I thought, "Bloody hell, what do I do now?''' he says. The job had made him new friends, including David Puttnam whose advice he later sought. Puttnam suggested advertising and gave Maurice Saatchi a ring. 'I arrived in the then Berkeley Square office. It was like visiting the Sun King: you had to walk through three anterooms, and the receptionist got more and more beautiful with each space.' Saatchi offered him a job, but he opted for J Walter Thompson instead. 'I went in to do strategy and planning but ended up writing about Philadelphia cream cheese. This was the down point. I just couldn't get motivated by housewives in the Northeast; I lasted 11 months.' Then came another call: this one from Sir Jocelyn Stevens who had been a rector at the Royal College of Art and also remembered Evans' nightclub graduation presentation. He was now the chairman of English Heritage and he needed a 'bright young thing' to work for him. Evans was given the title of 'Special Advisor to Chairman and CEO'. Now firmly planted within the epicentre of cultural Britain, he started making new contacts, one of them being John Sorrell, who had just become Chairman of the Design Council. 'Together we produced a blueprint for the future of the Design Council that would make it lean and efficient and tie together all kinds of activities,' he says. In other words, an early version of the design festival. One third of Europe's designers are educated in Britain, yet no one was paying attention. Meanwhile, David Puttman was now on the Arts Council lottery panel and needed help: 'He wanted to know what his role should be'. The two were soon ensconced at Claridge's, masterminding half a dozen different projects. 'Producers like Puttnam would say: "I really need 500 dancing white horses", and they would be delivered the next day. I really learned how to get things done.' Together, Puttnam and Evans invented NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts). 'We were unstoppable,' he says. Evans was now also back teaching at the RCA under Nigel Coates when the call came in from Tony Blair. 'I was asked to come back and be a member of his election team setting up events under Peter Mandelson.' This time, though, there would be no trouser smudging or hostile, inkbearingkids. 'No one could get past us; if someone had a criminal record, we knew about it. There was no angle that the press and media could get to that we hadn't covered. It was a military operation.' Blair made it into office and, as a thank you, Evans was offered the job of 'content editor' at the Millennium Dome, one of his less glorious achievements as it turns out. He admits it was a hard job ('not anywhere as hard as organising this festival though,' he says) but he remains fiercely loyal to Mandelson. 'In private, he is an entertaining, kind man who brings presents for the children. I always thought he got an unfair amount of criticism. Everything was stacked against us from the start.' The Millennium Dome was an unmitigated disaster so Evans was once again unbusy. 'I called up John Sorrell and we had a drink. He had just sold his brand and identity business (called Newell and Sorrell) and was ready to start the next thing. We felt that London was unusual in that it has all this talent, but no major festival of its own. We wanted to pull all these disciplines together and give it a voice'. Forty-five organisations participated in the first festival in 2002, but pretty soon Evans got everyone, including 100% Design, the V&A and the Design Museum, to participate under one giant umbrella. 'We doubled the following year, and continued to do so for the first three years,' he says. 'We have now reached a critical mass.' Evans's message that London is a big creative centre may have fallen on deaf ears in the early years, but Gordon Brown said it no less than three times last year. In order to help the public, Evans and Sorrell have printed a comprehensive guide of all the events, but you will need more than a solid pair of walking shoes to take it all in. Designers who once scoffed at London, only showing their faces in Milan, are conducting press conferences. Power lunches are taking place, most of them way beyond modest design budgets. Many of London's biggest venues, including the Truman Brewery, are showcasing young designers who until very recently, had nowhere to see and be seen. Last year the serious design hunter-gatherers such as Murray Moss came snooping, and discovered talent such as Ian Abell of Based Upon, whose metal alloy turns furniture into art (but at design prices). Design is having a contemporary art moment, but without the self-importance, foul language or bad dress sense. Even if a Hadid table now fetches hundreds of thousands of pounds, it still has to hold a bowl of soup, or it's not design. Copyright 2006 Evening Standard. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire. |