Creativity + Technology + Culture + For Everyone
Taking the energy of BEYOND Conference off the stage and into the room, each event is immersive, social and FREE — expect live performances, hands-on workshops and conversations you won’t find anywhere else. Festival is the chance for everyone to be part of the conversation. It recognises the success and value of previous Fringe events and brings them into the heart of the programme – events like last year’s Creative Mixer at Hot House in Salford — a sell-out night of live performance, spatial audio, digital art and creative tech.

Produced in partnership with Salford City Council, MediaCity, University of Salford and GM Business Growth Hub.

Register for your free ticket to be the first to hear about FESTIVAL events.

Four talks open the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Experience Day programme, delivered on behalf of UKRI. Each offers a case study in access-led R&D: a rhythm game built from beats created with migrant communities; an exhibition curated with and for blind and visually impaired people; an immersive theatre piece exploring menopause and bodily autonomy; and haptic technology that turns live music audiences into active participants. Different artforms, one golden thread: UKRI-supported research putting underrepresented groups; voices and experiences at the centre of the work.

Deepa Mann-Kler, CEO, Neon

Myra Appannah, CO-DIRECTOR / ARTIST, BRiGHTBLACK

Pod Bluman, Project Director, Bluman Associates Ltd

A look at the partnership behind Universal United Kingdom Resort, one of the largest ever investments in the UK tourism sector and a destination set to become the UK’s most popular visitor attraction.

This conversation will look at the planned theme park and resort and also consider the investment in transport, infrastructure and skills needed to realise a project of this scale. How can it create new opportunities for performers, designers, technicians and creatives, build a new talent pipeline, and stimulate sustainable growth across the region? Join senior representatives from Universal and DCMS to learn more.

Puy du Fou is an award-winning history-themed destination ​in France and Spain based on large-scale historical productions with no rides and no licensed entertainment franchises. Its world-class live shows combine performers, animals, purpose-built landscapes, machineries and concealed stage technology to create what the team refer to as, ‘a movie, live’. As the company develops a new UK park near Bicester, this session reveals how its model will be translated for British audiences, how local historical advisors, universities and specialist suppliers will shape the work, and what its arrival could mean for skills and innovation across the UK’s live experience sector.

David Nouaille, Chief International Development Officer, Puy du Fou

Where does the audience really sit in the development of creative and cultural work: an afterthought, or part of how it’s made? This panel brings together researchers working across audience research, inclusive design and immersive technology to discuss access, representation and what the evidence says about participation, and how technology can be used to amplify underrepresented voices.

Angela Chan, Professor of Creative Industries, CoSTAR National Lab

Ken Wilder, Professor of Aesthetics, University of the Arts London

Sarah Atkinson, Professor of Screen Media / Director ADAPT-AI, King’s College London

As audiences seek more immersive and participatory encounters, familiar stories, characters and fantasy worlds are moving beyond the screen and into physical places. A new generation of interactive technologies can make those places responsive; recognising visitors, remembering their choices and adapting to their actions. This session explores how recognisable IP can become a place audiences actively shape, creating encounters that feel personal while preserving the shared experience. How can audiences shape a familiar story without losing what makes it distinctive? Can an experience feel personal and still be shared? And what creative possibilities emerge when that world plays back?

Kate O’Connor, Executive Chair, Animation UK

Kim-Leigh Pontin, Interactive Experience Creative Lead, Merlin Entertainments

What does the experience economy look like in 2026, and where is it going next? Professor Andy Miah sets the agenda for the day by examining forces redefining how experiences are created and valued. From audience behaviours and AI-driven discovery to participatory culture and the convergence of physical and digital space, he reveals a sector in transition. Drawing on events, festivals, sport and place-based innovation, this session identifies the shifts that policymakers, researchers and producers need to understand and act on now.

Andy Miah, Chair of Science Communication & Future Media, University of Salford, Manchester

Video games sit at the vanguard of the experience economy, but their value reaches far beyond entertainment. GAMEHEARTS explores how games connect people to culture, communities and one another and what happens when the games sector collaborates with sport, heritage and live performance. Drawing on research with Ubisoft, City Football Group, Imperial War Museums and the London Symphony Orchestra, this lightning talk reveals how gaming can create new experiences, broaden access and help cultural organisations meaningfully engage younger, more diverse audiences.

Garry Crawford, Professor of Cultural Sociology, The University of Salford

From emotionally responsive robots to mechanical performers taking the stage, Creative Robotics is opening new possibilities for storytelling, performance and entertainment. Dr Hooman Samani’s work brings together social robotics, human-robot relationships and artistic practice, treating robots not simply as tools but as expressive agents and creative collaborators. Grounded in research spanning robotic theatre, cultural robotics and embodied interaction, this visual and impactful talk explores what robotic performance means for the experience economy: how audiences engage, feel and remember.

Hooman Samani, Creative Robotics Reader, University of the Arts London

The Southbank Centre’s new Creative Intelligence festival turns the Centre into a public testing ground for the relationship between art, technology and human agency. It invites audiences to encounter digital innovation and AI through demos, installations, performance, debate and hands-on experimentation. Two months later, co-curators Keri Elmsly and Mark Ball will share what they learned from this live public prototype: how people engaged, where barriers remained and how cultural institutions can make technological innovation open, participatory and genuinely public.

Join fellow delegates to celebrate creativity, collaboration and innovation. Explore new projects shaping the future of immersive storytelling and creative R&D — and connect with the people making it happen.

Funded by AHRC in collaboration with UKRI India and the British Council, the India-UK research into creative industries and cultural heritage is a three-year programme investigating innovative ways to connect arts and humanities within and across the UK and India. From contributing towards the film festival sector to connecting stories of post offices, join our panel as they discuss how to engage the human in research, and how communities and research can be intertwined. This interactive panel will explore the ways that the cultural and creative industries foster prosperous and empowered communities.

Presented by UKRI India

How can we experience a place before it exists? David Edge, Experiential Environments Practice Leader at Arup, reveals how technologies developed through film, gaming and immersive environments are changing the design of buildings and infrastructure. Through Arup’s Experience Labs and high-fidelity digital simulations, designers, communities and decision-makers can inhabit proposals together, testing not only how places look, but how they will feel, function and be experienced.

David Edge, Associate Director, Arup

Join us to explore good, sustainable growth in practice, from grants and seed investment through to venture capital, debt and accelerator support.
Co-hosted with GM Business Growth Hub.

A look at the partnership behind Universal United Kingdom Resort, one of the largest ever investments in the UK tourism sector and a destination set to become the UK’s most popular visitor attraction.
 
This conversation will look at the planned theme park and resort and also consider the investment in transport, infrastructure and skills needed to realise a project of this scale. How can it create new opportunities for performers, designers, technicians and creatives, build a new talent pipeline, and stimulate sustainable growth across the region? Join senior representatives from Universal and DCMS to learn more.

Gidon Freeman, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Universal Destinations and Experiences

For fifty years, Aardman has created characters and stories loved around the world. Emma Hardie, Aardman’s Executive Commercial and Brand Director, shares how craft, character and emotional connection become lasting commercial value. From creating Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, to expanding into new platforms, immersive experiences and creative partnerships, discover how Aardman takes its unmistakable worlds into new places with purpose: choosing opportunities that bring audiences closer, open new possibilities for growth and protect the creative integrity of its intellectual property. A story of imagination, stewardship and fifty years of knowing what audiences love.

Caroline Meaby, Head of Programmes and Engagement, OKRE (Opening Knowledge across Research and Entertainment)

Emma Hardie, Executive Commercial and Brand Director, Aardman

How do we redesign funding so marginalised creators can access it, and unlock new kinds of innovation in the process?

Join Ida XR Studio and XR Stories as they convene representatives from UK research institutions responsible for distributing R&D funding and creative practitioners to ask what a genuinely inclusive funding ecosystem looks like, and how the creative technology sector can build one. The session will unpack the barriers to applying for funding, share research findings, and discuss community-designed recommendations for developing more open innovation practices.

Part panel, part open exchange – join the session to help shape what comes next. Presented by XR Stories and IDA XR Studio

Join XR Stories to explore new research on the range of virtual production infrastructure at UK higher education institutions (HEIs). Discover the capabilities and applications that are driving CreaTech research and innovation, and hear about the challenges facing people working at the facilities.

With much of this infrastructure enabled by significant institutional and public investment, the panel will reflect on the challenges of moving from initial capital investment to long-term sustainability, and the priorities shaping the future of CreaTech R&D infrastructure in the context of new UKRI investment in a second Creative Industries Clusters Programme and new CoSTAR Labs.

Presented by XR Stories

This panel will reframe the ways sustainability in the cultural and creative industries are considered, placing craft and design as vital and considerate players in the economic market. They will reflect on the current progress of their AHRC India UK projects, and discuss how to stay sustainably minded when transforming outputs into impacts, and whether slow growth, when intentional, can achieve more in the context of international collaborations. . As well as looking forward to explore the future of their work, and where this places the cultural and creative industries sector.

Presented by UKRI India

Design is everywhere. From film and fashion to digital, gaming, architecture and advertising, design is the golden thread that connects industries and turns ideas into experiences, products, services and businesses that people can use, love and trust. New evidence from the Design Council shows that design generates £136.7bn of UK GVA, with two-thirds of that value created by designers working beyond traditional design industries. Discover how design, across the Creative Industries and beyond, is driving innovation, commercialisation, productivity and good growth in every part of the UK.

Presented by The Design Council

The Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Growth Day programme opens with its biggest announcement of the year: a DCMS minister reveals the new wave of AHRC Creative Industries Clusters, framed by Cathy Kerfoot’s IS8 context-setting. Followed by Richard Cox’s introduction to AHRC’s first Commercialisation Strategy, and CoSTAR previews live funding opportunities landing this autumn. Four moments, one message: public and place based investment in creative R&D is entering a new, more joined-up phase.

What does a genuinely joined-up approach across UKRI look like for the creative industries? Building on the Creative PEC’s landscape overview earlier in the day, this closing panel brings together UKRI research councils to map the pipelines forming between AHRC’s infrastructure and talent investment and Innovate UK’s route to scale. The conversation asks what coordination between these bodies actually unlocks in practice — and what it means for creative businesses trying to grow.

Following the highlights stage announcement, this session gives the new Creative Industries Clusters an opportunity to introduce themselves in more depth. It will feature short films from each cluster, followed by a conversation between the current cohort, MusicFutures and CreaTech Frontiers, and the incoming clusters about the lessons learned so far. Open to the wider audience for anyone who wants to know more about the newly announced clusters and future opportunities.