Justine Simons, OBE

Biography

Justine Simons is Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries. She has played a central role in the cultural transformation of London for two decades. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 by Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth for Services to Culture in London.

Justine founded and is Chair of the World Cities Culture Forum – the principle leadership network on culture and the future of cities, now grown to over 40 global cities reaching across six continents.

She led the capital’s biggest ever festival for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games with over 5000 events and is now overseeing its legacy. East Bank in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, is a new £1 billion culture and education district, the most significant for over 150 years.

She shapes London’s Investment Strategy for the Creative Industries covering film, fashion, games and design, growing their influence on the world stage. She has designed new policy innovations including the world’s first Creative Enterprise Zones, a new Culture at Risk Office to protect fragile cultural infrastructure, established the London Borough of Culture and hardwired culture into London’s planning system with the first Cultural Infrastructure Plan. 

Justine established the Fourth Plinth as the UK’s biggest public sculpture prize, is co-chair of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm and chaired the Mayor’s Suffrage Statue Commission placing the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square, suffrage campaigner Millicent Fawcett. She positioned culture at the heart of the Let’s Do London recovery campaign, attracting 800,000 visitors and bringing London back to life post pandemic.