The social networkers - meet London's alchemists

If you want to get something done in this city - make a film, stage an exhibition, host a charity event, arrange for 260 5ft model elephants to appear (miraculously) in London's parks and squares - then you need more than chutzpah and cash; you need myriad connections and enough charisma to ensure that your contacts always take your call. These are the traits that link London's leading social architects. People like Trudie Styler, at whose Tuscan retreat film projects such as

These are London's social alchemists, a small group of highly influential people who seem to know everyone and organise everything that matters; their contacts are extensive and unrivalled, and an invite to a dinner at their table will see you seated next to a powerful pic'n'mix of politicians, poets and princes.

Charm, maintains Charles Finch, is the key attribute of a social alchemist. The son of the late film star Peter Finch, Charles has worked as a Hollywood producer but now, in his 40s, publishes the niche magazine Finch's Quarterly Review and he has also launched a clothes brand, Chuc's Dive and Mountain, and put on events at Cannes, the BAFTAs and the Oscars. His pre-BAFTA party, co-hosted with Chanel, was attended by his friend Kevin Spacey, as well as Emma Watson, Thandie Newton and Rosamund Pike. 'I believe you can achieve much with good manners and good ethics,' he says. A bit of glamour helps too. At Cannes, his HQ is the terrace of the Hotel du Cap; in London his pre-BAFTA dinner takes place at Annabel's. He recalls his greatest feat of social alchemy as being when 'Pacino and Leonard Cohen came to a couple of my home dinners in my Hollywood days'. Two legends in one room.

Another key characteristic of the social alchemist is a tireless dynamism which the average person can find a little exhausting; I must admit that I feel tired just looking at the rolling twitter feed of self-styled 'cultural diplomat' Pablo Ganguli, a one-man mission to promote British culture abroad.

'I could live without food for four days but I can't live without email,' the 27-year-old tells me over mint tea. Martin Amis, Polly Morgan, Charles Saumarez Smith, Stephen Frears, Hanif Kureishi - you name it, they're all on the Ganguli iPhone speed-dial, usually thanks to having at some stage received an enthusiastic email requesting their presence at one of his events. 'My phone is like the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, it's all in here!' he says.

His company, Liberatum, specialises in the import and export of ideas, which might sound a bit nebulous but, Pablo tells me, involves exposing artists and writers to new experiences which he hopes will inspire them, at the same time as promoting contemporary culture abroad. His greatest successes have included last year's Istancool, a Turkish delight celebrating contemporary arts and attended by Daphne Guinness and her lover, the French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy; and the St Peter's Ball in Russia, a celebration of the impact of St Petersburg on Western culture. Pablo's ambitions are big. He wants to 'connect Britain's finest minds with the rest of the world'.

Despite his commitment to British culture, Pablo has only been living in London for two years. Originally from Calcutta, where his father is an art historian, he has been working his magic since the age of 17, when he became half of a real diplomatic couple. His boyfriend of six years, until 2006, was Simon Scadden, the first openly gay member of the British diplomatic corps to live overseas with a gay partner as his official consort. When Scadden was made High Commissioner of Papua New Guinea in 2000, Pablo set to work creating PNG's first film festival, swiftly followed by a conference on women's rights (the country has one of the world's highest rates of domestic violence and rape). Festivals and events in New Delhi, Mumbai and Moscow followed. This spring, there's a Stephen Jones millinery exhibition co-hosted with Istanbul's most prestigious fashion label, Vacco, as well as an autumn programme of curated events, including Uber-Rio, in celebration of the explosion in contemporary culture in Brazil.

Josephine Hart, the creator of Poetry Hour, a now legendary programme of readings performed by great actors from Jeremy Irons to Dominic West, is the grande dame of London alchemists. Josephine, originally from Ireland, maintains it's all down to poetry, rather than her own irresistibly impish charm and good contacts - she is married to Maurice Saatchi, advertising mogul and former Tory Party chairman. 'It's not persuasiveness. It's passion,' she insists. 'The actors [who work for no fee or expenses] share it, it's as simple as that.' The readings take place at The British Library, where guests have included her friends Princess Michael of Kent, Antonia Fraser and Sir Bob Geldof.

Hart spends most of her time writing novels, the most famous of which, Damage, was made into a film starring Irons. The solitude of this existence makes her an even more exuberant hostess. 'The poetry is like a glorious explosion. The concentration of the audience is so intense that we're all on an absolute high afterwards and have a terrific party...' Her proudest moment was 'reading Eliot at Harvard with Eileen Atkins and Brian Dennehy', at the end of which they received a standing ovation.

Currently planning a poetry week at the Donmar Warehouse, she has yet to confirm her readers. 'There is something dreamlike about the way the people you need seem somehow to be there,' she says. 'Or friends tell other friends... I have been blessed with my friends.'

'I was quite reclusive as a youngster,' says Trudie Styler, who was an actress when she first met her husband, Sting. 'Acting,' she believes, 'is a good teacher of the art of social alchemy - plays and films are all about what happens when different people come together. Exploring that idea gave me the confidence to make things happen myself.'

Of all Trudie's achievements, she is proudest of her Rainforest Concerts in New York, held once every two years. They are 'always an unusual mix of amazingly talented people. Last year we had Sting and Elton John in semi-drag singing 'Hey Big Spender' with Dame Shirley Bassey Another year Bruce Springsteen sang a mash-up of 'O Sole Mio' and 'It's Now or Never'. The shows are such successful fundraisers we even got into the Guinness Book of Records.'

Trudie's private events are just as interesting and influential as her public ones. It is here that the real power-playing takes place. For a swinging evening Trudie suggests 'an element of fun - like Scottish dancing, ice-skating, blindfold trance dance - a diverse guest list with people from all different walks of life, and adventurous table-planning. The unlikeliest friendships can spring up between people who might not normally mix; you just never know what people will spark in others. It's always good to have a few guests who are willing to throw themselves into the spirit of things. At one of Sting's birthday parties we had some morris dancers who got everyone to join in, and watching Robert Downey Jr, Kevin Spacey and David Walliams shaking their bells was nothing short of priceless.'

Another film world alchemist is Katrina Pavlos. A thirty-something, LA-born NY-LON impresario, she is the co-founder of Grand Classics and Inhouse, a series of film screenings all over the world, with regular dates at the Electric Cinema on Portobello Road and Soho House in New York. The first ever Grand Classics screening was hosted by the late Anthony Minghella. Pavlos claims to have over 500 names in her Rolodex and is most proud 'of the Grand Classics events where we had filmmakers presenting the movies that inspired them, and surprised them by inviting people from their selected choices: Julianne Moore presenting Robert Altman's 3 Women and Altman joining; Mira Nair hosting Tootsie and its director Sydney Pollack joining.'

'Coming from a small country like New Zealand, where it's literally one degree of separation between you and a farmer on an Otago sheep station you sort of have to get on with everyone,' says Sigrid Wilkinson, co-founder of Arts Co, a company that dreams up bespoke cultural events, whether it's finding contemporary artists to create work for Keane's latest album, buying works for private collectors or hiring a canal boat to get collectors to some of London's most exciting artists' studios.

Wilkinson moved to London after studying art history in New Zealand, and met her business partner Isabella Macpherson in 2003 at the opening of the Saatchi Gallery at County Hall. They founded Arts Co in 2006, and in the five years since, it has become a go-to for cultural players. The British Fashion Council recently got them to create an all-week programme of events during Fashion Week, taking VIP guests behind the scenes to design studios as well as on to the front rows of shows. Arts Co helped Livia Firth kick off the Green Carpet challenge, her attempt to wear ethical fashion throughout the awards season. Bloomberg brought in Arts Co to commission a series of works using the firm's industrial waste. The most surreal is a pond made of discarded monitors; stressed analysts can sit and watch beautifully animated drawings of dragonflies, ducks and frogs, flipping about on the surface.

'I lose my BlackBerry so often that I have to start again each time, a great way to keep it down to a top 100,' says Sigrid when pressed on the contents of her contact book. And Arts Co recently added a third blond to their number when they were enlisted by the Mayor to help draft Cultural Strategy, his arts policy for London. Adept as they are at hosting events, they had a couple of stipulations: 'We made sure we did our speech before Boris, because we knew he would have the audience in stitches,' says Macpherson. Something of a social alchemist himself, Boris has long known the value of making people laugh. At least he wasn't morris dancing.