Timothy Allen

Timothy hosts the Free Cities Podcast, the Foundation’s long-running interview series on the people who build, live in, and advocate for Free Cities. Across more than 180 episodes he has sat down with city operators, economists, legal scholars, residents and sceptics, turning a niche policy debate into an accessible, human conversation that reaches listeners on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and Pocket Casts.

He brings a 25-year media career to the microphone, starting in London’s Fleet Street as a multi-award-winning photographer and later producing films for the likes of BBC Earth and the Discovery Channel. As the Foundation’s Creative Director he also directed Zones of Progress, the documentary on the past, present and future of Special Economic Zones.

The BBC commissioned him in 2008 as the dedicated stills photographer on Human Planet, the first time the corporation had attached one to a landmark series. He spent eighteen months moving between four film crews across more than forty countries; the series went on to win two BAFTAs and an Emmy.

His own photography has been commended seventeen times at the Travel Photographer of the Year awards, and he took the overall title in 2013. The subject he keeps returning to is people living in places and in ways that are disappearing, which is an unusual grounding for a movement otherwise staffed by economists and lawyers, and it shows in how the Foundation’s films look and in the questions he asks on the podcast.