Ben Wolstenholme

My passion is to become a better storyteller.

My interests span many areas of creativity; story, art, design and ...water. I guess I am an idealist, I tend to want to make things with a strong meaning, and then look for a systemic way for them to exist and evolve.

To me stories hold the most exciting ideas, and manifest the most emotional response. Stories provide a place for systems to be built and thrive - whole worlds, characters, plots - a 'storyworld' to give it a name. My goal is to build storyworlds - I have a long way to go but I have some relevant experiences that are moving me towards this mountain.

I'm a co-founder and Chairman of Moving Brands, which started in London in 1998. I'm very proud of Moving Brands - it's a fiercely independent creative company doing amazing work. MB is brimming with talent and works with the very best companies in the world - and after 17 years - just beginning to take it's place at the pinnacle of branding. To me a brand is a storyworld. Brands need a story at the heart - and a system to convey that story - a system that can live and breath over time.

The most interesting storyworlds are built like this - across multiple touch points - weaving in more meaning with every encounter. I am most interested in fictional storyworlds - parallel worlds where my mind can roam, invent, plot. I am working on a couple; the first of which is called MONO.

In 2011, I handed over the CEO role at Moving Brands to an incredible team, and co-founded Madefire. Madefire is a storytelling business that's pioneered Motion Books - a new reading experience for device reading. It is backed by True Ventures and has an amazing team of creators and technologists involved from Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) and Bill Sienkiewicz, to Toni Schneider (Wordpress), Mike McCue (Flipboard) and Sina Tamaddon (Apple). An incredible journey already. The Madefire platform is built in a browser and open to anyone. The Madefire App won a Best of the App store.

I'm British, and moved from London to San Francisco in 2009. I have a BA(hons) in Graphic Design and Film from Central Saint Martins in London, I sit on the Alumni board of University of Arts London as well as on the Style council for Mr Porter - though I'm fast devolving to jeans and a t-shirt - California life :).

I'm marred to Nanu and we have a son, Teifi and a daughter, Neve. We're having a lot of fun together.