Neil
Christopher
I work at the confluence of people, place and program, bringing creative leadership to the strategies, environments and experiences that connect organisations with their people.
From global workplace and organisational change to entertainment and programming, the question is much the same: how do you turn strategy into something people can actually experience?
People
Understanding the organisation, its culture, leadership, behaviours and the people who will use the place.
Place
Turning strategy into physical environments: workplace, interiors, circulation, identity, brand and experience.
Program
What happens there: activity, content, entertainment and the things that make a place active, social and memorable.
A career connecting strategy, design and experience.
The interesting part is often what happens between the strategy and the finished project.
My work spans that entire journey: understanding the organisation, framing the problem, developing the strategy and shaping the creative response. I set design direction and lead teams through concept development, design and delivery, connecting the client’s ambition with a clear idea and the experience it creates.
That means being equally comfortable with senior leadership, HR and business strategy as I am with designers, artists, consultants and delivery teams. Whether shaping organisational direction, leading a design or developing a program, I bring people together around an ambition they can understand and contribute to. In submissions and pitches, I translate the brief and the ambitions beneath it into a strategic and visual story. The objective is a clear idea, thoughtfully developed and made real.
The idea matters. Making it real matters. But it’s the space between the two where it finds its life.
Across Australia, New Zealand and Asia, I have led the creative direction and design of projects, alongside the strategies, teams and client relationships that make them possible. As a Design Director and Principal, I worked with clients to understand their ambitions, develop a compelling design response and guide its evolution. At Gensler I combined this with regional leadership as APME Technology Firms Practice Area Leader, working with organisations including Meta, Microsoft, Adobe and Citrix.
My work with organisations such as Johnson & Johnson and Cochlear put me on the other side of the equation, developing workplace strategies and standards themselves. At the Asian Development Bank, workplace became a vehicle for organisational change across a 150,000 sqm campus.
More recently, arts leadership and entertainment programming have extended that thinking rather than taken it somewhere else. As Managing Director and Founding Co-Director of Sydney Choreographic Centre I worked across programming, partnerships, funding and audience development. At Calgary Stampede, I now work across guest experience strategy, programming and venue planning at festival scale. The thread is still people, place and experience, with program adding another layer to how places are activated, understood and enjoyed. Creative placemaking is woven into this thinking: connecting the character of a place with culture, participation and shared experience.
Strategy & Design
Change & Visioning
& Experience
Collaboration
“Extraordinary experiences sit at the confluence of people, place and possibility.”