Ben Fawkes

I move between the creative and the commercial, as comfortable developing an idea from nothing as running the operations that bring it to life.

My background is eclectic. I studied English Literature in Cardiff, spent three years in Switzerland managing ebusiness and asset-management consulting for the industrial technology firm Endress+Hauser, and then joined SoundCloud in Berlin as one of its first 35 employees. At SoundCloud I created the company's first content partnership programme for spoken word and non-music audio, a space that didn't exist before I built it. That instinct, to find the gap and fill it, has defined most of what I've done since.

Some things I've started from zero: a spoken word partnerships division at SoundCloud; a bilingual podcast production business in Berlin that grew to €680k+ in annual revenue; the Institute for Sound & Music, a non-profit that built the ISM Hexadome and toured it to museums and festivals across Europe and North America; and my own music practice, which has taken me to a residency at ZKM Karlsruhe and a BBC Radio 3 commission.

Lately that instinct has taken a new form. Rather than only producing and commissioning, I now build things myself. I direct AI tools like Claude, ElevenLabs and Suno to take an idea from a first prototype to a live, working product: a children's audio app, a live generative soundscape of Berlin, an online sound exhibition. I don't come at this as an engineer. I direct the tools that do the heavy lifting and bring the producer's judgement about what is worth making and how it should feel. It's the part of the work I'm most excited about right now.

I'm a strong communicator, comfortable pitching to a room, negotiating a deal, writing a strategy document or getting on a plane to make something happen. I like connecting people and I'm organised enough to keep the details from falling through the cracks. I'm based in Berlin, available for freelance work, and always interested in interesting projects.