I’m Abi Stephenson, Butterley’s founder.
I'm a curator and producer of ideas-led events, festivals and award-winning animations.
As the senior curator of the RSA’s celebrated year-round events programme, I spent ten years inviting the world’s brightest academics, authors, politicians, journalists, policymakers, practitioners, activists and artists to share their latest thinking on our stage.
You may have already seen my work online if you’ve heard the squeaky pen on the RSA Animate whiteboard or spied the sandwich-proffering goat in THAT ‘Brene Brown empathy video’. I edited and produced these viral animations to help the ideas shared in our live events go even further.
Or you may have come across my work if you’ve hunkered down in the big-top tent at Wilderness Festival or Camp Bestival for one of my many pop-up festival events, or listened to a podcast on the ABC’s Radio National of one of my panel debates, or taken a seat in the RSA’s 250-year old London auditorium to hear David Attenborough speak about climate change.
I commissioned hundreds of exciting event broadcasts – keynote addresses, panel debates, comedy nights, salons, radio tie-ins, political speeches, and major festival pop-ups – and innovative digital formats like the award-winning, 100+ million viewed RSA Animates and RSA Shorts series, which kickstarted a whole genre of YouTube explainer videos and animations.
With over a hundred events, three-quarters of a million YouTube subscribers and thousands of high-profile contributors on the stage each year, curating and live-producing the fast-paced programme was an exhilarating and enlightening ride with the world's greatest minds.
Prior to the RSA I ran major author events at Waterstone’s Bookshop, and the Brighton Festival’s renowned Books and Debate programme.
I have a Joint Honours degree (1st Class Hons) in Philosophy and English from the University of Sussex, where I fell down a rabbit hole of Wittgenstein and Beckett (here’s an interview I did with my Alma Mater recently) whilst also running around after authors and other cultural titans at bookshops and festivals (ask me about the time I had a cigarette break with Status Quo on the bookshop fire escape).
We won the 2020 Webby Award - ‘the Oscars of the Internet’ - for the RSA Shorts series, and I am also a judge for the Webby Awards (different category!) every year.
I gave the keynote address at the Viborg Anibiz Animation Festival in Denmark; judged the RSA Student Design Awards for many years, and collected the Silver Dolphin at Cannes Media and TV Festival for our RSA Animates. I'm a member of the IADAS (International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences), Advance (Australians achieving abroad) and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. I was the runner-up in the Lascaux Review Creative Non-Fiction Prize in 2020.
I’m passionate about bringing great stories to life through cultural events and animation.
If you have a big idea you want to share through animation, a speech you want polished, a roundtable you want to convene or a literature festival you’d like your city to host - please get in touch!
