I moved to London from Canada in 1996 to escape the cold winters and for a job with a British book publisher. Since then I've been Marketing Director at various publishers, including Oxford University Press and Orion, an online shopping mall, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The latter post prompted me, with business partner James Payne, to open PayneShurvell, a contemporary art gallery in Shoreditch, East London in June 2010. Although we closed the Shoreditch gallery in 2014, we continue to organise exhibitions and represent artists in temporary locations. When I'm not running PayneShurvell, I write on the arts, culture and travel. In addition to Forbes, I've contributed to Garageland, High50, Huffington Post, Yahoo, World Travel Guides and Zoomer. I'm also the arts and travel feature editor for Demagazine and a member of the Foreign Press Association. My photographer partner Paul Allen supplies the photos for our travel features which often include a music or art event and our travels have taken us to under the radar music and art festivals in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. In 2013 we won a French press award for a feature on the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France. I am the co-author of the Citysketch series of books which includes London, Paris and New York, published by Race Point and I'm the author of Fantastic Forgeries: Paint Like Van Gogh to be published in October 2016. Follow our adventures on Twitter at @jshurvell and on Instagram at @joshurvell and @andfotography.