William Sieghart

Founder and Chairman of Forward Thinking, an NGO which works with the leadership of all parties on both sides of the divide in the Israel/Palestine conflict

William Sieghart is founder and Chairman of Forward Thinking, a London-based NGO founded in 2003. Forward Thinking works with the leadership of all parties on both sides of the divide in the Israel/Palestine conflict. In particular FT has built a close relationship with the right-wing parties in the Israeli government coalition and with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the West Bank, Damascus and the diaspora.

William has had a distinguished career in publishing and the arts. He founded Forward Publishing in 1988, one of London’s leading magazine publishers. He was also the founder of the Forward Poetry Prizes, Britain’s largest prizes for poetry and National Poetry Day. For many years he was a member of the Arts Council and Chairman of its Lottery Committee. He is currently Chairman of the Arts Foundation, Streetsmart – a homelessness charity he founded in 1998 and Forward Arts Foundation. William is a Trustee of the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Free Word, Reprieve, Cuba Studies Trust and on the advisory committee of the British Institute of Human Rights.

Winning Words is a national initiative conceived by Sieghart, founder of National Poetry Day, to incorporate poetry into the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is a major project of the Forward Arts Foundation and profiled by the BBC. The permanent poetry installations throughout the Olympic Park are being supported and delivered by the ODA, as part of their strategy to integrate art into the Park, and the temporary poems displayed during the games are part of LOCOG’s strategy to animate the Park.

Sieghart is also a published author and a regular broadcaster.