Join Belfast’s first full AR trail exploring the hidden heritage of James Connolly, Irish Republican leader. The walking trail takes you on a tour of the city, stopping at some of the most historically significant sites associated with Connolly while exploring Belfast’s political, industrial, feminist and working class history and the city’s role in shaping Ireland for the next 100 years.
BEYOND in-person ticket holders can reserve a place on this tour once registered. NB: Only 10 places available

If street art is your thing, join Adam Turkington for the Seedhead Tour. Street artists from across the globe have joined a new breed of Belfast based street artists to leave their mark on the city, and in particular in the Cathedral Quarter. You will experience street art which speaks of love, of laughter, of anger, of beauty and of defiance but most of all it speaks of Belfast and the place that it’s becoming. 
BEYOND in-person ticket holders can reserve a place on this tour once registered. NB: Only 20 places available.

Preview the World Premiere of Department Story by Pioneers of immersive, site-specific theatre production, Big Telly Theatre Company. Department Story is a site-specific production set in empty retail units in Belfast’s City Centre which smashes together flash theatre and physical fiction in a killer spree through a department of stories, where everything returned has a tale to tell. Take stock, grab your shopping list and be sure to ask the staff (?) for help.
But of course, this is no ordinary Department Store. Customers have choices but alongside choice comes great responsibility and before long there are decisions to be made.
Available to both in-person and virtual delegates. NB: numbers limited to 40 in-person and 40 online participants

A final chance to see the Immersive Arcade Showcase, which is part of the Immersive Futures Lab at BEYOND and experience some of the most influential British immersive productions from the last twenty years. The project has been commissioned by UKRI, as part of the ‘Audience of the Future’ challenge. Visit the Immersive Arcade online.

A chance to meet, mingle and enjoy dinner with the BEYOND speakers, exhibitors and fellow delegates. Open to all BEYOND ticket holders in Belfast – just confirm your attendance and dietary preferences after buying or registering your ticket.

Andrew Chitty, Challenge Director, UK Research and Innovation

Susan Hayes Culleton, BEYOND MC, HayesCulleton Group

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Peter Bazalgette, Chairman, ITV plc

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The Screen Media Innovation Lab (SMIL) is bringing Virtual Production facilities to support the fast growing creative economy of Northern Ireland, but the vision goes beyond physical infrastructure. This session tells the story of how SMIL came about and asks what is the real value and true potential of both Virtual Production and SMIL.

Anthony Lilley OBE, Co-Director, Scenario Two

Declan Keeney, Director of the Ulster Screen Academy, Ulster University

Eric Carney, Founder/CTO, The Third Floor

Fiona McLaughlin, Co-founding Director, TAUNT Ltd

John Greer, Director of Economic Development, Belfast City Council

Watch “On Demand”

Deirdre Hargey, Minister for Communities of Northern Ireland, welcomes BEYOND attendees to Belfast.

Deirdre Hargey, Minister for Communities, Northern Ireland Executive (Sinn Fein)

Watch “On Demand”

Time to stretch your legs, network and visit the Immersive Futures Lab showcase, which features outputs from creative research-led projects exploring new and novel ways to push the boundaries of what is possible in creative technologies.

Meet and find out more about the creatives and their R&D projects being showcased in the Immersive Futures Lab.

This session features makers from the projects Curatours, Seeds of Life, Wasted: Into the Microverse, and Dragon Legends.

Meet and find out more about the researchers and their R&D projects being showcased in the BEYOND Poster Exhibition.

The researchers in this session will be Lewis Smith, Georgios Varoutsos, Constantin Popp, David Cotter and Tessa Ratuszynska.

This workshop and live demo will step through some of the technical processes and tools used to create Dream, the Royal Shakespeare Company collaboration with the Philharmonia, Marshmallow Laser Feast and Manchester International Festival, and explore the power of these technologies to create new digital stages for performance. Led by Dream movement director Sarah Perry and performer Maggie Bain (who played Cobweb) this is an opportunity to see the technological processes used and learn how performance makers are adapting their craft for these new mediums.

James Turnbull, Producer, Royal Shakespeare Company

Maggie Bain, Actor, Royal Shakespeare Company

Sarah Ellis, Director of Digital Development, Royal Shakespeare Company

Sarah Perry, Movement Director, Royal Shakespeare Company

At a time when the UK government is talking about national skills shortages across multiple sectors, is it time for the Creative Industries to take a different track, and time to recognise that skills issues in regional and local creative economies need regional and local solutions? 

But can place-based talent pipelines be created and nurtured to  successfully fuel growth in regional and local creative economies? How are different places across the UK approaching the question of where we need to get to and how we can get there? Where is this working and who can we learn from?

Dominic Lusardi, Advisor/NED, Digital Thinkers

Emma Turner, Head of Film CPD and Future Skills, ScreenSkills

Frank Lyons MBE, Interim Executive Dean of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Ulster University

Rachel Nicholson, Head of Institution, Backstage Academy

Rosalind Coleman, Producer, Punchdrunk

Watch “On Demand”

The recent Logan Review in Scotland identified ‘Education and Talent’ as one of the three fundamental pillars for a successful Technology Ecosystem. 
Building on the previous session around talent pipelines, experts in funding and business development from Scotland and NI discuss the two other essential dependencies identified in the Logan Review – social/ physical infrastructure and funding – and explore how these map to strategies already in process to support screen and data-driven tech (AI/ AR/ VR) within the two regions.

Chris Speed, Director Creative Informatics, University of Edinburgh

Ian Browne, COO, Ignite NI

Richard Williams, Chief Executive, Northern Ireland Screen

Watch “On Demand”

Meet and find out more about the creatives and their R&D projects being showcased in the Immersive Futures Lab.

This session features makers from the project Pianola Nova.

Meet and find out more about the researchers and their R&D projects being showcased in the BEYOND Poster Exhibition.

In this session the researchers will be Mohammadreza Mazerei, Louise Bryce, Philip O’Neill, Christine Singer and Lora Markova.

Clwstwr is pleased to bring you an audio experiment specifically designed for Gruff Rhys latest solo record – Seeking New Gods. As part of his Clwstwr-funded project, Hissing Currents, Gruff and Kliph Scurlock partnered with the BBC R&D team and delved into sound via the Audio Orchestrator Tool. Jon Francombe from the BBC R&D team joined them on their journey of exploration all supported by Robin Moore and Ingrid Murphy. The team set out to challenge the traditional record release and create an immersive surround sound home set up. During this discussion you’ll hear directly from the makers, learn that this experiment pushed this record into the top 10 as it outsold Elton John and be invited to try the experiment for yourselves. NB: For the experiment you’ll need at least 4 devices (e.g. 1 desktop / 1 tablet / 2 mobile devices)
 

Gruff Rhys, Musician

Ingrid Murphy, Academic Lead (Lecturer), Cardiff MET

Jon Francombe, Lead Research & Development Engineer, BBC

Kliph Scurlock, Musician

Robin Moore, Digital Innovation Consultant, Shwsh

Watch “On Demand”

This workshop will focus on the role of SODA in driving the digital agenda and will feature industry leaders and place specialists. The discussion, will examine how digital can drive economic growth whilst also contributing to the identity of a location. It explores how SODA a diverse, multidisciplinary and visionary school of digital arts providing cutting-edge facilities, rigorous practical teaching, sector-leading research, and impactful knowledge exchange is building the talent pipeline and shaping the creative and digital industries in Manchester and nationally. It will consider the wider role of HEIs in fostering innovation and growth and other examples of successful clusters.

Graham Hitchen, Head of Strategy and Policy, Creative Industries/Industrial Strategy programmes, UKRI

Joanne Evans, Creative Industries Impact and Partnerships and Development Manager, University of Exeter

John Willis, Innovation Lead, Knowledge Exchange, Manchester Metropolitan University

Kirsty Fairclough, Reader in Screen Studies, Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange, Manchester Metropolitan University

Nicola Osborne, Programme Manager, Creative Informatics

Meet and find out more about the creatives and their R&D projects being showcased in the Immersive Futures Lab.

This session features makers from the project Surround Stories Lab.

An insight into how fashion is drawing on production skills in order to create one of the first really functional implementations of the Metaverse – generating entirely new markets and freeing designers from the traditional constraints of place

Alex Lambert, Creative Director, Happy Finish

Watch “On Demand”

Meet and find out more about the researchers and their R&D projects being showcased in the BEYOND Poster Exhibition.

In this session meet the researchers Andy T. Woods, Isabelle Velhurst, Jamie Gledhill, Laetitia Forst, Don Duncan, and Judith Ricketts.

Fashion experts from academia and industry explore the distinctions between the three levels of the new Fashion Metaverse, the opportunities and issues presented by each, and the tools required to support the next generation of designers and fashion entrepreneurs as they navigate these new worlds and markets.

Alex Lambert, Creative Director, Happy Finish

Jade How, Head of Fashion, Lockwood Publishing

Jane Harris, Professor of Digital Design and Innovation, Director of the Fashion, Textiles and Technology Institute (FTTI, UAL), University of the Arts London, London College of Fashion

Leanne Elliott Young, CEO & Co-Founder, Institute of Digital Fashion

Mike King, CEO, Numerion Software

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Digital is exciting – but it isn’t the whole story for fashion and textiles. Drawing on innovative case studies using recycled or unwanted materials, this fireside discussion explores the tangible value of physical location to designers freed from geographical constraints.

Dawn Ellams, Research Fellow, Future Fashion Factory, Royal College of Art

Kate Goldsworthy, Co-Director, Centre for Circular Design, University of the Arts London

Noshua Watson, Managing Director, Interwoven Impact

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What does the world look like through the eyes of a horse? Alan Hook introduces his research using immersive technologies to explore the borders between human and non-human animals.

Alan Hook, Associate Head of School – School of Communication and Media, Ulster University

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Susan Hayes Culleton, BEYOND MC, HayesCulleton Group

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Another opportunity to visit the Immersive Futures Lab. at BEYOND in Belfast. The showcase features outputs from creative research-led projects exploring new and novel ways to push the boundaries of what is possible in creative technologies.

Meet and find out more about the creatives and their R&D projects being showcased in the Immersive Futures Lab. In this session meet the makers of projects The Maze, Tramway Revisited Trailer, Reel Reality, and Interrobang?!.

An informal networking event for all BEYOND delegates, speakers and exhibitors with live performance from local singer/songwriter Malojian. Stevie Scullion (Malojian) created an immersive experience with NI Screen’s Digital Film Archive launched as part of the BFI’s Britain on Film Coastal initiative. The evening couples Malojian’s beautiful, archaic music with this pioneering immersive footage and promises to be a unique event. 
NB: This event has changed time and venue to due to Covid restrictions.

Susan Hayes Culleton, BEYOND MC, HayesCulleton Group

Watch “On Demand”

This workshop and live demo will step through some of the technical processes and tools used to create Dream, the Royal Shakespeare Company collaboration with the Philharmonia, Marshmallow Laser Feast and Manchester International Festival, and explore the power of these technologies to create new digital stages for performance. Led by Dream movement director Sarah Perry and performer Maggie Bain (who played Cobweb) this is an opportunity to see the technological processes used and learn how performance makers are adapting their craft for these new mediums.

James Turnbull, Producer, Royal Shakespeare Company

Maggie Bain, Actor, Royal Shakespeare Company

Sarah Ellis, Director of Digital Development, Royal Shakespeare Company

Sarah Perry, Movement Director, Royal Shakespeare Company

Sinead O’Sullivan, a researcher at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, investigates how the long-standing trend towards digital presence at work, which has been massively accelerated by our experience of lockdown, is changing how we manage creativity and innovation. And how, in turn, this is challenging our traditional notions of cities – and nations – and how we inhabit them.

Alex McDowell, Director, World Building Institute and the World Building Media Lab

Mark Lutter, Executive Director, Charter Cities Institute

Parag Khanna, Founder and Managing Director, FutureMap

Rosanna Covacich, Co-founder, The Place Bureau

Sinead O’Sullivan, Senior Researcher, Harvard Business School

Watch “On Demand”

A third of creative business hubs are outside of the UKs big cities, and beyond them lie thousands of small innovators, entrepreneurs, creative practitioners and businesses, many in remote places. Regions where creative economies are dispersed face unique challenges as they grow, but are also ideally placed to reinvent themselves for the digital age, create new jobs, bring investment and provide a unique sense of place and place-making. This panel looks at what is needed if we’re to support and grow the creative economy in these places.

Emily Sorrell, Innovation Designer

Joanne Evans, Creative Industries Impact and Partnerships and Development Manager, University of Exeter

Josh Siepel, PEC Work Strand Lead for Creative Clusters, Innovation and Access to Finance, SPRU, University of Sussex and Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre

Karen Cross, Academic Strategic Lead for Fashion Management, Events, Tourism and Hospitality, Robert Gordon University

Watch “On Demand”

What is it like to be a Northern woman? Who exactly is a ‘Northern woman’? Lucy Hammond gives us a sneak preview into how Pilot Theatre’s latest project, ‘Monoliths’, combines commissioned writing, captured soundscapes and virtual worlds within a performative context to draw audiences into the inner worlds of some of the many identities shaped by a single region.

Lucy Hammond, Projects Producer, Pilot Theatre

Time to stretch your legs, network and visit the Immersive Futures Lab showcase, which features outputs from creative research-led projects exploring new and novel ways to push the boundaries of what is possible in creative technologies.

In this video piece Augmented Reality Product Designer Campbell Orme asks if and how AR can change our relationships with places.

Campbell Orme, Product Designer, Facebook Reality Labs

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You don’t need to be an academic to see how important the creative industries are in defining and supporting growth in places across the UK. However, research can be used to stimulate complex and necessary conversations with policymakers and industry about the creative industries’ relationship to their environment. This session, hosted by the AHRC-funded Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) will explore what data tells us about creative clusters from the Shetland Islands to Cornwall, and how policymakers and industry can use that evidence to make better choices.

Eliza Easton, Head of Policy Unit, Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, Nesta

Hyojung Sun, Research Associate, Ulster University

Tarek Virani, Associate Professor of Creative Industries, UWE

As the medium becomes more popular, what responsibilities do AR makers have to place – and the communities that live there? Angela Chan, an expert in innovative inclusion in storytelling, talks to leading AR makers to find out how it can be used to open up both places and our imaginations for new encounters with history, our environment and each other – before questioning how we should address the potential issues around accessibility, inclusion and ownership that this opening up of place can unlock.

Angela Chan, Head of Inclusion / Doctoral Researcher, StoryFutures, Royal Holloway, University of London

Nosa Eke, Writer/Director

Paul Clarke, Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies, Artistic Director, University of Bristol, Uninvited Guests

Rob Morgan, Creative Director, Playlines

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Founder of Belfast-based agency Yellow Design, Michael McGlade, explores their work in Belfast and London that is remaking and revealing new aspects of place, past and present, through AR.

Michael McGlade, Creative Director, Yellow Design

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Time to stretch your legs, network and visit the Immersive Futures Lab showcase, which features outputs from creative research-led projects exploring new and novel ways to push the boundaries of what is possible in creative technologies.

Meet and find out more about the creatives and their R&D projects being showcased in the Immersive Futures Lab.

Lucy Hammond, Projects Producer, Pilot Theatre

In this roundtable, will consider the tricky challenge of equitable and collaborative international innovation. It will introduce Bristol+Bath Creative R+D’s new international programme, HERE+THERE which brings together people from the creative technology sectors in Nigeria, South Africa and South Korea with creatives in Bristol and Bath. In a nine month collaborative enquiry, selected creative practitioners, businesses and academics will explore responsible technology development, future business models, and models for international collaboration/touring. It will explore what it means to create work in local contexts that translates globally, exploring dynamics in innovation and creativity from different perspectives.

Jo Lansdowne, Executive Producer, Watershed

Simon Moreton, Senior Research Fellow and Co-I Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, UWE

Tarek Virani, Associate Professor of Creative Industries, UWE

Tony Bhajam, Inclusion Producer – Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, Watershed

Filmmaker, Seán Murray and Artist Deepa Mann-Kler explore life and work in relation to notions of ‘place’ and ‘Identity’ in Northern Ireland. They discuss two very different stories and journeys in illustrating what belonging means and how the physical environment affects people, both deeply and generationally.

Deepa Mann-Kler, Chief Executive, Visiting Professor, Neon, Ulster University

Seán Murray, Film Maker, Relapse Pictures

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Angela Chan extends her inquiry into how immersive technologies are changing the landscape of public space art and intervention, talking with celebrated artist & filmmaker, Baff Akoto, about his work around identity, community and diverse perspectives in places of historical protest, the emergent role of the digital creative, and the opportunities and issues this shift are revealing.

Angela Chan, Head of Inclusion / Doctoral Researcher, StoryFutures, Royal Holloway, University of London

Baff Akoto, Conceptual Artist, Independent

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In September 2021, the UK government published, through its Intellectual Property Office, a major 224 page report into UK music creators’ earnings in the digital era. It received widespread international media coverage, including from Guardian and the Times. In this first public event of the report, the four authors summarise their methods and findings, reflect on the extraordinary developments that have made musicians’ earnings an issue of major public interest and controversy in recent times, and discuss some potential implications of their research for further international research.  

David Hesmondhalgh, Professor of Media, Music and Culture, University of Leeds

Hyojung Sun, Research Associate, Ulster University

Richard Osborne, Associate Professor in Music and the Creative Industries, Middlesex University

Martin Green, director of Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, introduces the UK-wide programme taking place in 2022, presenting 10 major creative collaborations across science, technology, engineering, arts and maths.

Martin Green CBE, Chief Creative Officer, Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, and Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games

‘Belfast is my city. That is where my imagination is most alive’.
Award-winning writer Glen Patterson has consistently put his home town at the heart of his novels, using its rich and layered past to explore the complexity of individual moments in history – and unpicking how its ultimate direction of flow is directly shaped by the interaction of complicated individuals within collective contexts.
Hear his personal reflections on the role of place in the creative process.

Glenn Patterson, Writer

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Andrew Chitty, Challenge Director, UK Research and Innovation

Paul Moore, Director of Creative Industries Future Screens NI, Future Screens NI

Susan Hayes Culleton, BEYOND MC, HayesCulleton Group

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VIP ‘Hang out with Hodor’ tour will showcase the mythical lands of Westeros and Essos with Flip Robinson, body double for “Hodor” and “The Mountain”.  Hear behind the scenes stories first hand, meet the Game of Thrones jewellery makers, have morning coffee at a castle and lunch at the Bushmills Inn. 
BEYOND in-person ticket holders can reserve a place on this tour once registered. Only 10 places available.

Bespoke Winterfell Tour to the castle and Demesne. Not for the faint hearted – during the tour you will enjoy a Game of Thrones Archery Experience in the film set from the first episode in Season One, Tyrions Tomahawk Axe Throwing, a visit to Audley’s Castle which overlooks Strangford Lough and a Synchronised Sword Sparring Challenge. Lunch and transport provided.
BEYOND in-person ticket holders can reserve a place on this tour once registered. Only 30 places available.