Simon Hayter | Where Data, Digital Transformation and AI Meet Creativity.
- Isobel Arden
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
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Meet Simon Hayter
In this interview, Mark created Simon Hayter's fantasy cultural year from the answers to some easy questions to which there were no wrong answers.
Mark had a magic wand and a time machine at his disposal, so expect some surprises, laughs, anecdotes and conversational detours.
Since becoming independent in 2026, Simon Hayter has been using his experience in data and digital transformation to advise organisations on how technology can actually be useful — rather than simply being the thing everyone is talking about.
As an independent consultant with SJH Advisory, Simon specialises in digital and data transformation, helping companies think about their digital strategy, make better use of data and work out how emerging technologies, including how artificial intelligence can fit into organisations.
He is also an adviser to The Athlete Place, a digital learning platform supporting athletes, parents, schools and sporting organisations.
There is, however, an interesting bit of tension in Simon's story.
For someone who has spent so much of his career around technology, data and corporate transformation, his original interests were much closer to the humanities and arts. That background has stayed with him, and it has helped shape the question that increasingly interests him: what happens when creative thinking and technology stop operating in separate rooms?
The creative and cultural sectors produce enormous amounts of knowledge, ideas, experiences and material, yet technology can sometimes feel like something being imposed from the outside rather than something developed alongside the creative process.
Artificial intelligence has made that conversation considerably louder, but for Simon, it's not simply whether AI should be used. It is how technology, data and AI can support creative people without getting in the way of creativity itself.
Simon is particularly interested in helping creative people and organisations understand what they already have, what they could be doing with it and where technology might genuinely make a difference. That could mean improving digital strategy, understanding audiences, making better use of existing data, developing digital products or considering where AI fits into a wider business model.
His experience gives him a useful perspective on the problem. He has spent years working with large organisations and complex data environments, including senior digital and data leadership roles. He previously served as Chief Digital Officer at Knight Frank, where his work included digital strategy, digital products and the development of data capabilities. His career has included work across real estate, financial services and retail, giving him experience of organisations with very different customers, structures and commercial pressures.
His approach has consistently been about connecting the dots: business needs, customer experience, data, technology and the people expected to make all of it work.
That ability to translate between different worlds is arguably one of the most relevant parts of his work for the arts and culture sector.
Artists, cultural organisations and creative businesses do not necessarily need another person telling them that they should "embrace digital transformation". They instead need someone who can look at the complicated collection of systems, information, audiences and opportunities already sitting in front of them and work out what is actually worth doing.
The most useful technology is therefore not necessarily the most complicated technology. It is the technology that helps people understand something, make something, reach someone or solve a genuine problem.
Thankfully, Simon is here to help with just that.
His work with organisations such as OMNIA Digital reflects this wider positioning. Simon is described there as a Digital Strategic Partner, with more than two decades of experience building and scaling data and digital capabilities across complex organisations. His role sits around bringing together technology, data, digital products and commercial strategy.
He has also appeared in conversations about the practical realities of AI transformation, including AI CRE Academy, where he has discussed why AI initiatives can fail several months after launch.
Simon Hayter's role is linking data, digital technology, artificial intelligence, business strategy and creativity. As an independent adviser, he has more freedom to choose where that experience can be useful, particularly with creative people and organisations looking for practical ways to make technology work for them.
Simon Hayter's Fantasy Cultural Year ... with a magic wand and a time machine to hand.
Every Arts and Culture Network member is invited to embark on a Fantasy Cultural Year—an imaginary twelve-month journey designed around their passions, curiosity and imagination.
At 6pm on a warm June evening, Simon Hayter is sitting outside the visitor centre of Stonehenge with the ancient stones still visible in the distance. A pear and elderflower mocktail on the table and beside it is Franz Kafka's The Castle.
Stonehenge makes sense as the starting point because Simon is fascinated by the question of why it survived. Thousands of years of human history happened around it. Cultures arrived, settled, invaded and disappeared. Yet the stones remained.
For Simon, that mystery is part of the point.
Then the fantasy begins.
A wealthy family foundation has discovered Simon's work in data, digital transformation and AI and decides that what the creative world really needs is someone who can ask useful questions about technology without immediately turning everything into a technology project.
Simon is given a year to travel around the world, meet creative people and explore how artists, cultural organisations and creative businesses are using data, digital technology and AI — and where they could be doing more.
There is also a television crew following him, a book deal, a TED-style talk at the end.
And, because this is a fantasy, all travel is first class.
Simon chooses Beijing as his first destination. He has never been to China and wants to start somewhere completely unfamiliar.
Before leaving, the foundation gives him one final instruction: for the next twelve months he can listen to only one type of music. He chooses trip-hop.
In Beijing, the first cultural stop is dance. The time machine is brought out, and Simon chooses Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Dinner afterwards is Lebanese.
Next stop: India.
Simon wants to experience an Indian Premier League cricket match. Cricket may not be his absolute favourite sport, but the atmosphere is the attraction.
Then it is back to Japan, this time to Tokyo.
There is a new digitally enhanced art gallery where visitors can step inside famous artworks using virtual reality. Simon chooses Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí.
Instead of standing in front of a painting, he walks around inside it. Images become environments. Two dimensions become three. The strange becomes even stranger.
It is precisely the sort of experience that makes Simon interested in technology in the first place: not technology because it is impressive, but technology because it can change how people experience something.
Then comes the return to London. The foundation gives him five nights for five cultural experiences.
Monday is music. The time machine takes Simon to Spike Island, where the Stone Roses are performing.
Tuesday is theatre. Simon has two contenders: The Stones in His Pockets, which he remembers seeing around twenty years earlier, and an Oscar Wilde play, having read Wilde but never seen one performed live. The time machine wins again. He gets The Stones in His Pockets.
Two actors become an entire cast through movement, timing and performance rather than elaborate costume changes. It is exactly the kind of theatre Simon finds clever: simple in its mechanics, complicated in its effect.
Wednesday is musical theatre. Matilda the Musical. One of Simon's children is performing in it, so there is no debate. The global cultural mission can wait. Sometimes the best seat in the theatre is the one where you are watching someone you know walk onto the stage.
Thursday is opera. Simon chooses Mozart's The Magic Flute to hear the Queen of the Night's aria performed live.
Friday is film night. The destination is the Sphere in Las Vegas.
The screen is enormous. The auditorium is enormous. Everything is enormous.
Simon chooses Star Wars. Not just one film, either. The whole experience. Digitally remastered. Immersive. Surrounding the audience in a way that turns watching a film into something closer to entering one.
By now, the foundation has stopped pretending this is a normal consultancy project.
The year continues.
Simon meets artists using data in unexpected ways. He talks to creative businesses experimenting with AI. He visits cultural organisations trying to understand their audiences without reducing them to spreadsheets. He looks at digital products that genuinely improve access and others that exist mainly because somebody thought they sounded impressive in a meeting.
Not How much AI are you using?
Not How digitally transformed are you?
But: What becomes possible because you are using it?
Simon is given one final question: if he could sit down for a two-hour lunch with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?
His answer is Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Simon is drawn to Dostoevsky because of the way his writing explores human behaviour. Crime and Punishment is one of the books that has stayed with him, and he finds it fascinating that characters created in a completely different time and culture can still feel recognisable today.
Leo Tolstoy would join them, followed by William Shakespeare — giving Simon the rather enviable opportunity to sit at a table with three writers whose ideas about humanity have survived centuries of technological, political and cultural change.
Simon Hayter's contact details.
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Mark Walmsley FRSA FCIM AGSM
Chief Culture Vulture
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