{"id":135120,"date":"2025-05-27T05:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T05:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/135120\/"},"modified":"2025-05-27T05:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T05:32:08","slug":"leeds-digital-festival-founder-to-stand-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/135120\/","title":{"rendered":"Leeds Digital Festival founder to stand down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stuart Clarke, founder of\u00a0Leeds Digital Festival, has announced he\u2019s stepping down after this year\u2019s event.<\/p>\n

Clarke, who was awarded an MBE in 2022 for services to technology and was included in BusinessCloud\u2019s 2024 Northern Leaders list<\/a>, will be handing the day-to-day responsibilities over to Deb Hetherington after September\u2019s festival and assuming the role of non-executive chair.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cIt\u2019s been a huge privilege running the Leeds Digital Festival for the last 10 years. The festival, alongside our year-round platform Leeds Digital, has grown massively over the last decade, helping to promote the Leeds tech sector internationally, and creating a huge community.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom running the first festival in April 2016 with a staff of one (me) to building up a great team, it\u2019s been a lot of fun (with the odd sleepless night).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud of playing a part in developing the festival into the UK\u2019s largest open-platform tech event.<\/p>\n

\n

Trio of tech leaders recognised in New Year\u2019s Honours<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWhen a group of us in the Cross Keys in 2015 decided to shout about the incredible talent and innovation we have in Leeds, I\u2019m not sure anyone thought we\u2019d still be here in 2025. Thanks to all those in the room that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks are particularly due to Paul Berwin and Simon Palmer as our first directors, stepping down only recently. They set strong governance and compliance standards for the festival and I\u2019ve really appreciated their support and guidance over the years, as well as the joy they brought to our board meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig thanks also to Alex Craven (co-founder at The Data City), our \u2018enforcer\u2019 in those early years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe brought new faces into the board over the last few years, with Deb joining in 2020 and Sarah Hex coming on board last year. Both have\u00a0continued to build on our strong foundations whilst bringing fresh eyes and energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a pleasure to work with a talented team on the top of their game. Thanks also to the many people who have been part of the team over the years, with a particular shout-out to Alex Cole, who helped us through the Covid pandemic and was instrumental in launching our year-round Leeds Digital platform in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd thanks to all our sponsors, events hosts and attendees over the years \u2013 you built this community together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clarke is also the founder of UK Tech Week and a director of Paceline Strategy & PR.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Leeds Digital Festival<\/a> will run from September 22nd \u2013 October 3rd.<\/p>\n

The programme, which began as a series of 56 events in 2016, has grown to include over\u00a0200 events each year.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stuart Clarke, founder of\u00a0Leeds Digital Festival, has announced he\u2019s stepping down after this year\u2019s event. Clarke, who was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,25554,393,4884,1860,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-135120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leeds","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-businesscloud","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-leeds","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114578164746668063","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}