Andy Salmon’s career has been shaped by a longstanding commitment to inclusive growth, creative enterprise and entrepreneurial leadership across education, culture and the creative industries. After completing a British Academy-sponsored PhD on the avant-garde modernist novelist Henry Green within three years, he began his professional journey working with excluded communities in both the UK and the United States, teaching across Higher and Further Education and developing innovative cultural and educational initiatives.
During this period, Andy established a national precursor to apprenticeships in television with Imago Television and central government support, helped create the Garage Theatre and Arts Education facility with Norwich Theatre Royal, and became a founding member and East of England representative for the National Skills Academy for Performing Arts alongside English National Opera. He also played a key role in founding The Forum in Norwich — one of the UK’s first digitally immersive public spaces developed in partnership with the BBC and Norwich City Library — and was awarded two Fulbright Teacher Exchange Scholarships to work in Los Angeles and rural Georgia. Alongside this, he successfully led the turnaround of a failing Creative and Performing Arts centre, which later achieved recognition as the best in the East of England by Creative and Cultural Skills.
In 2008, Andy joined Anglia Ruskin University as Deputy Dean for External before serving for two years as Acting Dean. There, he expanded his work internationally, establishing a global recruitment network of more than 60 partners generating over 500 international students annually, while also leading creative industry collaborations and bids across Europe in areas including design, serious games and regenerative development. His work connected universities, regional stakeholders and creative industries through partnerships with institutions such as University of Cambridge and the Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences. During this period, he also served on the board of Cambridge Live, secured Chinese Government Grade 1 partnership status with Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and directed the CoDE Research Institute for Cultures of the Digital Economy.
At Bath Spa University, Andy served as Dean of the newly formed College of Liberal Arts before becoming Pro Vice-Chancellor External. His leadership focused on building external engagement, innovation and cultural partnerships. He established the University’s first External Affairs Unit, revitalised Bath Spa’s regional and national cultural partnerships ecosystem, and created its first Knowledge Exchange promotion pathway for academic and professional services staff. He also led the University’s successful 2022 brand review and developed the pioneering ISTART/FWD Further and Higher Education vocational partnership.
Andy additionally founded Bath Spa’s first Short Course Unit, delivering adult reskilling and upskilling opportunities to more than 2,000 learners, and contributed nationally as a tutor on the National Centre for Entrepreneurship in Education’s Entrepreneurial University Leaders Programme between 2018 and 2021. His expertise in policy and inclusive growth has led to collaborations with regional and national organisations across education, culture and economic development. He has served as Chair of Corporation for Bath College and held board positions with the regional CBI, Futures West, the Holburne Museum, the BaNES Future Ambitions Board and as co-chair of the BaNES Innovation and Creativity Board.
Andy is currently leading a major project with the Fashion Museum Bath and the Key Cities Group focused on regenerating Bath’s cultural and creative economy as a national creative canvas. His current interests centre on design-thinking approaches to the higher education “polycrisis”, devolution and the opportunities for new forms of sectoral and external alignment. In 2026, he was honoured to become Director of the Entrepreneurial University Leaders Programme at the National Centre for Entrepreneurship in Education (NCEE).