My friend Robert Hutchison, who has died aged 76, was a promoter of culture and the arts with exceptional versatility and range. The Winchester poetry festival, Wilfred Owen Association and Winchester Action on Climate Change are three of the recent successful ventures he led.

The youngest of three children of Terence Hutchison, and his German-born wife, Loretta (nee Hack), Robert was born in Baghdad, where his father, later an eminent economic historian, was teaching English. The family fled to India when he was two weeks old, to escape the approaching German army.

He first set foot in Britain when he was five. Educated at St Paul’s school, London, and Trinity College Dublin, Robert took up a prized BBC general traineeship on graduating in Mental and Moral Science (now philosophy) in 1963. This led to jobs as senior editor at Penguin Books from 1967 to 1969, and as the Arts Council’s first senior research and information officer from 1973 to 1979.

He met Lizzie Kessler, an urban designer, at a party in London in 1976, and discovered a shared enjoyment of Irish music and the countryside. They married in 1982 and had a daughter, Sarah.

In the 1980s, Robert was senior research fellow at the Policy Studies Institute. There he pioneered new forms of social and economic research underpinning national and, especially, regional arts provision, and published Amateur Arts in Britain (1991) and The Politics of the Arts Council: The Making of the English Opera Class.

Briefly, in 1981, the first director of the Green Alliance, the now prominent national environmental association, he was also a founder-trustee of the arts environment charity Common Ground. Politics took him to Shrewsbury, where he was the SDP parliamentary candidate in 1987 and subsequently a Lib Dem Shropshire county councillor.

Robert was committed to the healing power of the arts and their provision at devolved levels. With the creation of regional arts boards in 1993, he became deputy chief executive and director of arts at the new North West Arts Board. From there, in 1996, he was appointed chief executive of Southern Arts, which took him to Winchester, until the controversial abolition in 2001 of regional arts boards. The following year he became chief executive of Oxford Inspires, leading the city’s bid to become European Capital of Culture 2008. Liverpool’s bid won.

On retiring in 2006, he founded Winchester Action on Climate Change, campaigning effectively for reductions in the city’s carbon footprint. He also became chair of Twin Trading, one of the parent bodies of Cafedirect and an important player in the fair trade movement.

In 2013, he spearheaded the biennial Winchester poetry festival, building on his earlier successful creation in 1989 of the Wilfred Owen Association, and was trustee and vice-chair of the Poetry Society between 2011 and 2014. From 2010 to 2015, he was a Lib Dem councillor on Winchester council.

Cultured and principled, Robert brought encouragement and warmth wherever he worked.

He is survived by Lizzie and Sarah.