Drew is Associate Director of ImaginationLancaster. He explores the connections between people, emerging technologies and possible futures. His work focuses on Art and Social Technologies, and he was instrumental in the emergence of the field of Locative Media. In his research, art offers a set of resources for envisioning social and technological change in a way that is inherently participatory, and for opening up disruptive spaces of play.

He has been a leading figure in the UK creative industries for 20 years, and has also pioneered innovative cross-disciplinary between the creative industries and academia, most notably through his role as founder and Board Member of FutureEverything, a research active community interest company, and via his new post at ImaginationLancaster. He runs a cultural and creative industries network called EVNTS, in which over the past 4 years 100 creative organisations and SMEs have taken part.

He is director and founder of Futuresonic Urban Festival of Art, Music and Ideas, which is conceived as a catalyst for moments of creative emergence across boundaries and has a distinctive focus on social technologies, art and the city. Through Futuresonic he has created the first major art exhibition on mobile and locative media (Mobile Connections, 2004) and the first major art exhibition on social networking (Social Networking Unplugged, 2008).

Areas of research interest include Social Technologies; Art & Technology; Sustainability in Urban Environments; Locative Media; The City and Technology; Everyday Creativity; Collaborative Art; Open Source Culture and the Public Sphere; Ethics, Privacy and Control. A recent art project was Loca: Set To Discoverable which premiered at ISEA2006 and ZeroOne in San Jose.

Website: www.futuresonic.com

Email: drew AT futuresonic.com