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.

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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

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

For almost fifty years, Ars Electronica has brought artists, researchers, educators and industry together to shape new ways for audiences to experience culture and technology. This session explores how placing artists at the start of the creative process can turn bold ideas into immersive experiences, public engagement and innovation far beyond the cultural sector. Drawing on a global model built through decades of experimentation, it reveals how creative organisations can generate new knowledge, forge unexpected partnerships and develop original experiences with lasting cultural and commercial value.

Veronika Liebl, Managing Director, Ars Electronica

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

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in collaboration with UKRI India, the India-UK Research into Creative Industries and Cultural Heritage programme explores how arts and humanities research can strengthen connections between people, communities and organisations across the UK and India. From supporting film festivals to uncovering the stories of post offices, this interactive panel will discuss how research can engage communities and create meaningful cultural impact. Join the panel as they explore how the cultural and creative industries contribute to thriving communities and shared prosperity. 

Talent gets you started. Resilience keeps you going. Creative Resilience is a new series of workshops that tackles the most pressing issues facing early career creatives today. Each one gives creatives the knowledge to meet these challenges with confidence.

The series opens with AI. Love it or loathe it, AI is changing the creative industries. In partnership with BRiGHTBLACK, this hands on session cuts through the hype and the fear. It looks at the risks, the ethics and how artists can protect their work. It also shows practical ways AI can take on the admin, funding bids and research that pull creatives away from making work.

Get informed. Get ahead. Stay in control of your creative future.

Simon Wilkinson, Co-Director, BRiGHTBLACK Productions Limited

What if an audience could reshape an opera as it unfolds? Step inside Ghost of the AI Empire, where a Japanese ghost legend collides with a sci-fi future ruled by superintelligent machines. This event offers a taste of how opera, Japanese Noh theatre, improvisation and gamification create an immersive storytelling playground for performers and audiences. Through an interactive performance followed by a panel discussion, explore how adaptive virtual environments, spatial sound and audience choices invite you into the storyworld as a playful spirit, shaping its unfolding drama. Can you save Osode from drowning as she and her AI lord cross the treacherous Sea of Japan?

Alexandra Huang-Kokina, Creative Director, Operactive Art

Camilla Seale, Opera Singer

David Petrescu, Lecturer, Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments, University of Manchester

Joe Ashmore, Opera Singer

Michelle Phillips, Director, Creative Manchester

Penny Nakou, Lecturer, Digital Media and Culture, University of 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.

Charlotte Gislam, Researcher, The University of Salford

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

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.

Keri Elmsly, Founder and Chief Curator, PACT

Mark Ball, Artistic Director, Southbank Centre

What happens when you bring AI-powered characters into immersive physical experiences?
Meaning Machine has extensive experience creating AI-powered characters and immersive, location-based games. This session explores what happens when those two strands come together in CultureQuest: character-led quests designed for museums. Building on learnings from projects including LANDER 23, created with Punchdrunk, the talk will explore how CultureQuest brings AI characters to life within museum spaces, sending visitors on interactive quests that encourage discovery and build deeper connections with collections.
Joined by Dr Richard Cole from the University of Bristol, the team will share research and design learnings from their initial implementation at Bristol Museums, and how these are shaping the next stage of the project: a pilot with the Science Museum Group at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester.

Richard Cole, Senior Lecturer in Digital Futures, University of Bristol

Thomas Keane, Co-Founder & Creative Director, Meaning Machine

Attention has become one of the defining challenges of the experience economy. As our environments become increasingly saturated with information, stimulation and digital mediation, how do we create experiences that enable people to engage and experience together? Bringing together architecture, experience design and the psychology of attention, Tateo Nakajima and Professor Polly Dalton explore how environments shape attention. From concert halls and immersive environments to public space and large-scale wellbeing settings, they examine how space, sound, light, material and technology work together to influence perception and support shared experience.

Polly Dalton, Professor of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London

Tateo Nakajima, Chief Development Officer, Therme Group

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.

Aaron McPeake, Post Doctoral Research Fellow, University of the Arts London

Deepa Mann-Kler, CEO, Neon

Myra Appannah, CO-DIRECTOR / ARTIST, BRiGHTBLACK

Pod Bluman, Project Director, Bluman Associates Ltd

What does it really take to build a creative career today? In this interactive roundtable, Emerging Innovators come together to discuss life at the start of a creative career. Each table is themed around the Innovators’ own experiences and interests in the sector. Their insights will help shape a new toolkit for organisations that want to better support early career creatives. The conversation then continues in our Reverse Mentoring session, where they take their ideas to industry leaders.

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

Nicola Osborne, BRAID Creative Industries Lead, Institute for Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh

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

AI is reshaping culture faster than creative industries can set the terms. So how can cultural organisations shape the terms of AI use while making informed decisions about it today? Octavio Kulesz and Oonagh Murphy connect international cultural policy with the practical choices facing cultural leaders, artists and organisations.

Octavio Kulesz, Director, Teseo

Oonagh Murphy, Director, Responsible AI Cultural Leaders Academy Arts Council England

What if the next generation set the agenda? Our 2026 Emerging Innovators are artists, technologists, researchers and producers already making their mark across the UK, nominated by leading organisations for the quality of their work. In this session they share their expertise and honest insight into how talent is found, supported and kept in the sector. If you are a senior leader in industry, policy or funding, we invite you to join them, listen, share your own knowledge and take part in candid, two-way conversations. Come away with fresh perspectives and ideas you can act on. For anyone shaping the sector’s future, this is a session not to miss.

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

From Massive Attack’s pioneering ACT 1.5 show to the West of England Clean Power Pilot, this session explores how creative experimentation can accelerate the clean energy transition. Drawing on new research from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, speakers will examine the evidence, practical lessons and partnerships needed to replace temporary diesel power at scale. Looking ahead, the conversation will consider phase two and how this emerging model could be adopted by combined authorities, live events, screen production and energy partners to create sustainable change.

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.

BEYOND’s Growth day explores how we fund and scale creative innovation sustainably, bringing together investors, founders, policymakers and cluster leads working to unlock the creative industries as one of the most dynamic investment frontiers of our time.

This breakfast opens that conversation. Join us to explore good, sustainable growth in practice, from grants and seed investment through to venture capital, debt and accelerator support, including GM Business Growth Hub’s Creative Industries Accelerator, with funders and founders working across CreaTech and IP-driven growth offering a practical guide to the investment landscape
shaping Greater Manchester’s creative economy.

Co-hosted with GM Business Growth Hub. Part of BEYOND’s Growth day (Build, Fund & Scale).
8-9.30am open to Conference and Festival ticket holders.

How do we understand and measure growth in the creative industries? Join Giorgio Fazio (Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre) and Iain Bennett (The Fifth Sector) for a high-level scene setter exploring the drivers of economic growth. Balancing national evidence with local and regional perspectives, this fireside chat will examine critical trends – from the influence of AI and the freelance workforce to the impact of devolution. Together, they will bridge the gap between data and policy, setting the stage for the day’s discussions on funding, innovation, and the future of the sector.

Giorgio Fazio, Director of Research; Professor of Macroeconomics, Creative PEC; Newcastle University

Iain Bennett, Creative Alchemist, The Fifth Sector

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 Innovate UK Business Connect for a fast-paced, facilitated networking session designed specifically for creative innovators, founders, and industry partners. This interactive session will help participants build valuable new connections, exchange ideas, discover collaboration opportunities and expand their networks across the creative industries ecosystem.

Through a series of structured conversations, attendees will meet potential collaborators and explore innovation challenges and opportunities. Whether you are seeking partners for future R&D projects, exploring routes to funding, or looking to connect with others working at the intersection of creativity and technology, this session provides an opportunity to make meaningful connections in a short space of time.

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

Wake The Tiger transformed the storytelling ambition of Boomtown Festival into Bristol’s permanent, artist-led Amazement Park. Now the team is taking its original concept to London. Chief Commercial Officer Lucy Jarjoura joins Creative UK’s Hannah Long to share the realities of building a category-defying business without a blueprint. Together, they examine the choices, pressures and partnerships behind its growth, from protecting creative integrity to securing investment and expanding at speed. The conversation considers what productive relationships between founders, leadership teams and funders look like, and what it takes to grow an ambitious creative business without losing its distinct identity.

Hannah Long, Portfolio Manager, Creative UK

Lucy Jarjoura, Chief Marketing Officer, Wake The Tiger

Creative growth does not follow a single path. BLACMEX co-founder Kwame Safo joins Siân Prime to trace his journey from independent creative to building the UK’s first Black music export office. Grounded in the decisions that shaped that journey, the conversation explores the trade-off between income and visibility, the limits of conventional business models, and the need for infrastructure that reflects culture and community. It considers how funders can recognise different forms of ambition, and why sustainable growth may mean opening markets and creating opportunities for others rather than pursuing venture capital.

Kwame Safo, Co-Founder, BLACMEX

Siân Prime, Academic Lead: Enterprise, Innovation & Incubation, Goldsmiths

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.

Audra Gill, Head of Creative Industries, Arts and Humanities Research Council

Cathy Kerfoot, Creative Industries Programme Director, UKRI

Richard Cox, Senior Investment Manager – Translation and Commercialisation, AHRC

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.

Cathy Kerfoot, Creative Industries Programme Director, UKRI

Joanna Choukeir, Deputy Director Creative Industries, Innovate UK, UKRI

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 explore new perspectives on sustainability in the cultural and creative industries, highlighting the role of craft and design in supporting economic growth. Drawing on projects funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s India-UK programme, panellists will reflect on progress to date and discuss how international collaborations can deliver lasting impact while maintaining a sustainable approach to growth. They will also consider the future direction of this work and its implications for the wider cultural and creative industries sector. 

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

Cat Drew, Chief Design Officer, The Design Council

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.

Audra Gill, Head of Creative Industries, Arts and Humanities Research Council

Lamberto Coccioli, Director, CreaTech Frontiers

Richard Koeck, Director, Music Futures

You can’t talk about growth without talking about the next generation. As the creative industries develop and lay plans for the future, they are too often discussed rather than heard. Today’s decisions will shape their careers, and they will be tomorrow’s leaders and decision makers. Supporting them now is how we strengthen and future proof our industry.

This panel brings together people who have built, led and lived youth programmes. They have worked in arts organisations, grassroots creative tech, youth councils and policy making. They’ll share what works, what doesn’t and why there is no one size fits all. They’ll also look at how youth participation can go beyond a box ticking exercise and lead to real change.

Young creatives aren’t waiting in the wings. They’re ready to lead.

Fahadi Mukulu, BEYOND Emerging Innovator , BEYOND Studio

Josie Durant, Senior Project Manager, BEYOND Studio

Nicola Osborne, BRAID Creative Industries Lead, Institute for Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh