Nick Davies Joins Creative UK Council as Hachette UK celebrates National Offices Day

Nick Davies, Managing Director of John Murray Press and a member of the Hachette UK Board, has been appointed to the council of Creative UK, the membership body which represents, champions and supports the UK’s creative industries to ensure the best possible conditions for growth and success. Davies is the only representative from publishing on the current council, which covers each UK nation and region.

Davies is based in Bristol, the first member of the Hachette UK Board to relocate to one of the publisher’s five new offices outside London, and his appointment comes as Hachette UK celebrates its first National Offices Day on 22nd September. The publisher’s All Together employee network, chaired by Emma Layfield, Picture Book Development Director, North at HCG and Sarah Fortune, Project Editor at Orion, based in Manchester and Newcastle respectively, brought together Hachette UK staff and partners from cultural organisations based in Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle and Edinburgh for a virtual celebration of the vibrant cultural scene in those cities.

Introduced by David Shelley, CEO of Hachette UK, from the new Manchester office in Blackfriars House, Hachette UK’s National Offices Day comprised a series of talks and panel discussions by external and internal speakers including:

• A keynote speech from Claire Malcolm, founding Chief Executive of New Writing North
• A panel event on maintaining a connection when working away from the company’s headquarters with Matt Wright, CEO of Hachette Distribution in Didcot, James Peverill, Senior Marketing Executive at Hodder Education in Banbury, and Aerran Keller, Key Account Manager at Octopus in Chichester
• A panel event chaired by Josie Dobrin, CEO of Creative Access, on embedding yourself into your local community with Vanessa Amberleigh, genre lead for Preschool at BBC Children’s In House Productions in Manchester, Parys Gardener, a digital illustrator and board member at Watershed in Bristol, Viccy Adams, writer and literature officer at Creative Scotland, and Stefan Tobler, co-founder of And Other Stories Publishing in Sheffield
• A series of ‘spotlights’ on each of Hachette UK’s five new offices, including a tour of the offices and an introduction to the local team

Nick Davies commented: “Our five new national offices aren’t mini replicas of Hachette UK’s HQ in London. They are much more like start-up businesses – small, entrepreneurial, embedded in their communities and forging local links with other creative organisations. Our National Offices Day kick-starts this work and we’re incredibly grateful to Clare Malcolm, Josie Dobrin, Vanessa Amberleigh, Parys Gardener, Viccy Adams and Stefan Tobler for their contributions and advice. This work also ties in closely to my new role with Creative UK, helping to champion the creative sector across the UK and working to make the publishing industry more accessible and more inclusive.”
Hachette UK’s National Offices Day was organised by the All Together employee network, which aims to promote the recruitment, retention and development of people from low socio-economic status backgrounds and regional backgrounds.