Project Team

Stephen Hilton

Stephen Hilton is the Connecting Bristol Programme Lead. He started out as Bristol City Council’s Corporate Consultation Manager in 1999 and quickly established a leading role for Bristol City Council in the area of innovation, consultation and participation. The city was named European City for eDemocracy 2006 and Stephen received a personal award as BT Innovator of the Year in the National Government Computing Awards.

Previously, Stephen completed a Master’s degree in Social Research Methods, awarded by the University of Surrey with distinction. He worked as an independent researcher for several years on projects ranging from user-centred reviews of homelessness projects and family support strategies, through to evaluation work on community regeneration initiatives.

Steve is a member of the Social Research Association and of the Local Authority Research and Intelligence Association (LARIA) and in his spare time likes to paint ugly portraits of beautiful people. Email Steve

Helen Bream

Helen is a Connecting Bristol Project Manager concentrating on the delivery of Digital Environment Home Energy Management Systems or DEHEMS, an exciting EU collaboration focused on how intelligent meters and sensors can be used to create more accessible and user-friendly management systems for home energy, moving beyond energy ‘input’ models that simply monitor the levels of energy being used to a more dynamic ‘energy performance model’ approach that also looks at the ways in which the energy is used and the impact on users.

Previously she worked as Network and Internet Services Manager for Bristol City Council Children and Young Peoples Services (CYPS) where she dealt with such diverse issues as the instigation of a community wireless partnership engaging with the local community and major telecommunications providers, undertook the task of lead work stream manager for Bristol’s Digital Challenge bid and acted as ICT technical lead and Authority Representative of the ICT Services contract for Bristol’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Pathfinder project.

Helen is a PRINCE2 and MSP qualified project manager and a member of the Chartered Management Institute and has been actively involved with a myriad of multi disciplinary projects and programmes across many sectors including ICT consultancy, fund management, local government, local, national bids, and national programmes.

In her spare time she enjoys travelling, with one of her favourite spots being Las Vegas – not for the gambling but just the awesome sights!

Watershed Team

The Connecting Bristol team would like to extent particular thanks to Dick and Clare at the Watershed for their practical help and personal support in putting together the bid and establishing Connecting Bristol as the city’s digital development agency.