Albert Read, Conde Nast’s MD, was on a mission to put the imagination back at the forefront of our lives. He touched on art, music, film, literature, science, and entrepreneurship, and joined the discussion to examine how the imagination had evolved through the millennia, and how readers could nurture and cultivate their own creativity.

His interlocutor, Will Gompertz, was a Director of the Tate Galleries and was then the Artistic Director of the Barbican. A household name from his time as the BBC’s first-ever Arts Editor, he was the internationally bestselling author of books distilling his insights from a lifetime of working with and learning from the world’s most creative people.

Albert and Will explored the genesis of ideas – from Thomas Edison’s serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs’ vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs’ approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. They taught us how to discover where to find ideas, how to foster skill in observation and connection, and how to be more attentive to the fluxes of our own minds.

In the new Age of Technology, it was more pressing than ever to harness the imagination in our day to day lives. This was explored in a one-of-a-kind meeting between two of the most imaginative, influential, and celebrated figures in the creative industries.

Speakers:

Albert Read has launched and led businesses for Condé Nast in the UK, and across Europe and Asia, overseeing titles such as Vogue, GQ, Wired, Condé Nast Traveller and Vanity Fair. A former journalist, he has written for the Spectator, the TLS, The Times and the Telegraph. He studied Classics at New College, Oxford and has an MBA from INSEAD.

Will Gompertz is a world-leading expert in, and champion of, the arts. Having spent seven years as a Director of the Tate Galleries followed by eleven years as the BBC’s Arts Editor, he is now Artistic Director at the Barbican. Will has interviewed and observed many of the world’s leading artists, actors, writers, musicians, directors and designers. Creativity magazine in New York ranked him as one of the 50 most original thinkers in the world. He is the author of the internationally bestselling What Are You Looking At? and Think Like an Artist, both translated into more than 20 languages. See What You’re Missing is his latest book.