Nick Ewbank Associates

Nick Ewbank is one of the UK's leading authorities on creative urban regeneration. He was the founding Director of the culture, education and regeneration charity The Creative Foundation and, with the philanthropist Roger De Haan CBE, steered the ground-breaking project to revitalise Folkestone from its inception in 2001 until 2010. Prior to his work in Folkestone, Ewbank was the Director of Devon's leading arts centre, Exeter Phoenix Arts and Media Centre, for seven years. From 1988 to 1994, he was Director of the Old Bull Arts Centre in Barnet, North London, establishing its reputation at the time as one of London's most innovative arts centres.

Nick founded NEA in 2010 and has led on all its projects, including location-specific work in Hastings, Essex, the Isle of Sheppey, Canterbury and North London. He has also led NEA's work to establish a new national philanthropic funding stream for cultural organisations. Nick is a Visiting Lecturer at City University and Canterbury Christ Church University and writes for a number of periodicals and publications. He is an Academician of the Academy of Urbanism, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Kent Ambassador.

Stephanie Mills has three decades of design and development experience in architecture, urban design and independent film production. Mills has worked within interdisciplinary teams to realise a broad variety of projects in Europe, Southern Africa and North America. These range from infill housing to large scale master plan frameworks and the translation of client briefs to formulate design principles, guidelines and implementation strategies. More recently she has been researching how to foster social innovation in cities. This is founded on an interactive workshop and events based approach with mapping and talk walks as part of the public engagement process. The aim is to nurture self-organising initiatives, to facilitate alternative ways of learning and co-production while improving the utilisation and vitality of buildings and the public realm in order to foster resilience and sustainability. In 1999 she established Cite Design Limited a London UK based consultancy which aims to to incite new perspectives, processes and ways of doing things.

Fred Gray is a researcher and writer specialising in the history and contemporary character of the Western and particularly British seaside. A social scientist and historian, he has degrees from the University of Hull and University of Cambridge. For over three decades Fred worked at the University of Sussex, Brighton, becoming a senior academic and experienced academic manager before leaving Sussex in 2011. His current research interests include the history of Western seaside architecture; the contemporary social and economic condition of seaside resorts; coastal regeneration through interventions in arts and culture, higher education and architecture and urban design; and the cultural history of the relationships between society and nature at the seaside.

Paul has more than 20 years experience in strategy development, project delivery and funding, with a particular focus on business planning, partnering and alternative service delivery models.

Paul's ethos is all about pragmatic innovation, essentially applying new ideas and solutions that are robust and effective.

Much of Paul's work is focused on helping Clients secure external investment without increasing current spend. Solutions developed involve using external expertise to deliver more efficient services and using the savings generated to support the costs of investment in facilities. He can assist in developing the business plans to demonstrate the benefits of partnering and subsequently help manage the procurement of the necessary external expertise and investment.

Paul is also working with a number of partners to develop more affordable design solutions to modernise the leisure and cultural infrastructure, as well as harnessing the growing social enterprise movement to develop new models of community ownership and management.