Edward Hobson
Director of Partnerships
Edward is a passionate advocate of using design to improve people’s lives, he has a depth of industry experience in sustainable and resilient urban design and placemaking.
He spent a decade at CABE leading initiatives to expand the organisation’s remit. Notably he established the first national body, CABE Space, to take a strategic approach to green infrastructure and help raise the quality of parks and public spaces across the UK. He subsequently led the Sustainable Cities programme, corralling expertise to support UK cities’ design responses to climate change. He is a former Policy Director at Green Alliance, the environmental thinktank, where he oversaw advocacy and engagement with the Coalition Government on progressive energy, circular economy and land use policies across BEIS and Defra.
Edward joined Design Council from Innovate UK KTN, the UK’s innovation network, where as Head of Design & Innovation he delivered an unprecedented £6m of investment grants for early stage, human centred design to support companies across multiple industries, helping them to commercialised ideas to market through applying design thinking.
He holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield in Values in Urban Design and Planning and has authored several publications. In his diminishing spare time, he runs around after his two boys, cycles and plays guitar, though not all at once.
