Andrew Hopkins: Rethinking Ownership in a Digital Creative World.
- Isobel Arden
- Jun 23
- 6 min read
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Meet Andrew Hopkins.
In this interview, Mark created Andrew Hopkins' Fantasy Cultural Year from the answers to some easy questions to which there are no wrong answers.
Mark had an imaginary magic wand and a time machine so expect some surprises, laughs, anecdotes and conversational detours.
For decades, businesses have organised their data around a central assumption: gather everything in one place, secure it there, and extract value from it later.
Andrew Hopkins thinks that assumption no longer holds.
After a career spanning consulting, mobility, the Internet of Things, digital products and business transformation, Andrew has arrived at a deceptively simple question: if data is now created and used across billions of devices simultaneously, why do we still manage it as if it belongs in one place?
It is a question that sits at the heart of his work as President of PrivacyChain, where he is helping develop a distributed approach to data management in which every individual data record carries its own security, permissions and history.
His work is driven by a long-standing passion for artists and, in particular, human-made art in all its forms, with a strong personal connection to music and the cultural impact it carries across time and memory.
PrivacyChain was created in response to a fundamental shift in how creative work is distributed and consumed online. Andrew draws on the legacy of the early internet era—particularly the disruption caused by peer-to-peer file sharing and the challenges it created for the music industry—to highlight an unresolved problem: creators often lack meaningful control over how their work is used once it enters digital ecosystems.
Rather than attempting to rebuild the creative industries from the outside, PrivacyChain operates as a foundational infrastructure layer that integrates with existing platforms.
At its core, PrivacyChain is a content and data management platform designed to operate at the individual file level. This means that each piece of creative work can carry its own rights, permissions, and usage rules wherever it moves online. By embedding rights management directly into content itself, the platform enables artists, rights holders, and creative organisations to retain control while still participating in modern distribution models.
Importantly, PrivacyChain is not positioned as a traditional consumer-facing application or a replacement for existing creative platforms. Instead, it sits behind the systems creators already use, enabling those systems to function in a way that respects ownership, attribution, and monetisation at a granular level. This approach is intended to unlock new possibilities for sustainable revenue models, reduce friction in rights management, and provide greater transparency in how creative assets are used across digital environments.
Andrew is not a career technologist in the narrow sense. His experience stretches from business strategy and operations through to new ventures and emerging technologies. He has held senior leadership roles at Accenture, where he led major initiatives across mobility, IoT and Industry X.0, working with organisations grappling with rapid technological change and new business models.
Throughout these roles, one characteristic has remained constant: a willingness to challenge accepted wisdom.
His own philosophy is neatly captured by a phrase he often uses:
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a seriously bad idea when it comes to business.
Markets evolve. Technologies shift. Customer expectations change. Organisations that refuse to rethink established models risk being overtaken by those willing to ask different questions.
That perspective now shapes his work on distributed intelligence, autonomous systems and data architectures designed not simply to store information, but to understand, protect and govern it at source.
Andrew's focus is not on predicting the future.
It is on preparing organisations for a future that has, in many ways, already arrived.
Andrew Hopkins' Fantasy Cultural Year ... with a magic wand and a time machine to hand.
Andrew Hopkins begins his Fantasy Cultural Year in a place that has stayed with him for many years: Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.
The city itself is energetic, noisy and full of movement, but Topkapi offers something quite different. Perched above the Bosphorus, it is a place of calm and reflection. Andrew remembers walking through its gardens and courtyards and being struck by the sudden stillness that exists within one of the world's busiest cities.
As the evening sun settles over Istanbul, he sits outside with a simple gin and tonic beside him. On the table rests a much-loved copy of Cry, the Beloved Country. The book holds a special significance. Its author, Alan Paton, later became Andrew's stepfather, and the novel has remained an important presence throughout his life.
Playing quietly in the background is Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, a song that perfectly captures Andrew's lifelong relationship with music. He admits that songs often transport him instantly back to particular moments and memories. But this is not simply a nostalgic journey.
Andrew has been invited by a fictitious philanthropic family foundation to spend a year exploring how creators around the world might gain greater control over their work and their digital lives. The journey begins in London.
There, overlooking the Thames, Andrew is welcomed by a community of young artists and creators. Together they discuss ownership, creativity and the opportunities emerging in a changing digital landscape.
That evening, despite describing himself as an "old rocker at heart", he chooses ballet. Specifically, Swan Lake. He speaks not as an expert, but as an admirer of its grace and beauty, qualities that continue to resonate regardless of artistic background.
Dinner afterwards is easy to choose: a good curry. Having grown up in Durban, South Africa, Andrew retains a lifelong appreciation for Indian cuisine and fond memories of the flavours of his childhood.
The next destination is Dubai. Although he arrives without a particular reason for choosing it, the city feels appropriate: ambitious, fast-moving and future-facing.
From there, the journey continues to one of Andrew's dream sporting occasions: the Hong Kong Sevens. A passionate rugby supporter, he delights in the atmosphere and shared celebration that make sport feel, in his words, very close to performance art.
Tokyo follows.
There, technology and creativity merge in an immersive gallery experience where Andrew steps inside the surreal world of Salvador Dalí. Initially tempted by the landscapes of Turner, he eventually opts for Dalí's dreamlike imagination, eager to experience the strange and unexpected from within.
The cultural itinerary then returns to London.
He revisits the exhilaration of seeing the Rolling Stones live and reflects on a lingering regret: being in London at the time of Live Aid, yet deciding not to attend. It remains one of the few cultural opportunities he wishes he could relive.
At Shakespeare's Globe and the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, Andrew rediscovers his love of Shakespeare, remembering performances where even the rain became part of the entertainment.
For musicals, there is unfinished business. He chooses Jesus Christ Superstar, a production he has always wanted to see, while acknowledging the friendly household rivalry with his wife, who performed in Godspell.
Opera follows, and Andrew selects Puccini, drawn not so much by the technicalities of opera as by its emotional force and drama.
Film night proves surprisingly difficult. Eventually, he settles on Local Hero, a wonderfully eccentric film whose charm, humour and soundtrack by Mark Knopfler have never lost their appeal.
Finally comes his hero lunch. His first instinct is Winston Churchill. Not because Churchill was perfect—quite the opposite. Andrew is fascinated by flawed individuals who rise to extraordinary challenges and remain deeply human in the process.
Yet as the conversation comes to an end, he quietly revises his answer.
His real hero lunch, he says, would not be with politicians or historical figures.
It would be with artists ... Artists who are making a living from their creativity.
Artists who control how their music is heard, how their work is displayed and how their ideas are shared.
Because beneath all the discussion about data, AI and technology lies a much simpler ambition: To help creators retain ownership of what is uniquely theirs, and to give them more freedom to shape their own future.
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Mark Walmsley FRSA FCIM AGSM
Chief Culture Vulture
Arts & Culture Network
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