Free.studio, the Aussie independent creative partnership founded by former adam&eveDDB managing partner and global Cummins&Partners CEO Michael McConville, has set up shop in London this week.
Eight founding members from a range of leading UK creative agencies and adjacent services have joined the partnership that is “a place where ideas go to be set free”.
London is the studio’s first international outpost, following its Australian launch in 2025.
The studio works at a business, product or organisational level, not only on advertising or marketing briefs. It’s built for the moments when a client knows they have a problem or an opportunity, but hasn’t yet worked out how to resolve it or express it.
The London founding partnership is led by McConville, the former Global CEO of cummins&partners who forged a successful career as an agency leader in London before returning to Australia.
Joining McConville are:
- Sophie Lewis, chief strategy officer, previously of M&C Saatchi and BBH.
- Geraldine Ingham, former global managing director of Range Rover, Global Head of Automotive at Meta, and Marketing Director of Volkswagen UK.
- Dino Burbidge, formerly of Sky Innovation Lab and the BAFTA-winning inventor of the Rubik’s Connected Cube.
- Dave Johnson, co-founder of The Glue Society.
- Christopher Ringsell, two decades of award-winning work for Women’s Aid, the RAF and the BBC.
- Steve Wioland and Matt Woolner, the creative team behind the John Lewis Always a Woman campaign.
- Steven Halliday, director, London, Commercial Director at the Gen Plus Group, and formerly of adam&eveDDB.
Free.studio taps into its network of free-folk, assembling projects from the right combination of talent, teamwork and tools. The studio operates as a membership: members chip in to cover the cost of running the business, so those costs don’t get bundled into client fees.
It also frees the studio to bring on disciplines and capabilities that wouldn’t sit comfortably on a traditional agency P&L. No layers or timesheets, clients only pay for talent and outcomes.
“This isn’t an agency, and we didn’t want it to be,” McConville said. “The best creative-and-adjacent people have been choosing for years between making work directly with the clients who need it, and sitting inside the longer process that protects the agency business first.
“We’ve built the thing that puts the trust where it matters – between the talent and the client, with the work binding them. Clients get the right people on the right brief, without the layers in between. Talent gets real work, real problems, real partnership with the people who want the same.”
Sophie Lewis, the chief strategy officer of free.studio, said: “The way free studio is built allows us to approach every client challenge neutrally – with no preconceived ideas about what the answer should be. We help work out the question and can put together exactly the right team to answer it.”
Since launching the business in Melbourne, McConville told B&T he has remained quiet, “partly to protect the model before someone else had a crack at it, partly because the work was just too good to interrupt”.
“In that time, we ran campaigns we’re proud of, helped founders find their marketing voice for the very first time, won pitches that surprised people, including us (but also, not really 😊), and built new businesses alongside our members that have since found investors of their own.
“I’ve never worked anywhere where such a high percentage of time was spent purely on solving problems and opportunities for clients and partners, creatively. No performance. No noise. Just good people running at real problems. We’re really careful about not wasting time on ourselves. That’s what our combined international experience and what our Australian sensibilities taught us. And now we think, London is ready for it.”
When free.studio launched in Australia, it had no clients, focussing on “building its home first”.
Free.studio is now building out the London partnership across strategy, technology, entertainment, cause-related, business-creativity – and a broader set of creative-and-adjacent capabilities that often don’t find a home in a traditional agency.
“In London, we’ve got extraordinary people, a community that’s already forming, and the confidence that comes from having already done this once. We’re applying creativity at the altitude of business strategy – not just campaign execution. That’s a genuinely different game and it’s a hell of a lot of fun,” McConville said.
“We’re already in conversations with some genuinely compelling businesses, including mental health brands, automotive, charities, and some organisations that are already well-regarded for world-class creative work.”
