“From Rags to Witches – Breaking Away from What We Know and Trust”

What happens when you ignore the rulebook, trust your storytelling instincts, and build a world out of scraps?

Gather close, dear friends, for a tale of magic, mischief, and a little bit of madness. It begins not in a castle or a grand theatre, but in a tiny Victorian basement in Reading, England, armed only with recycled furniture, borrowed costumes, and the audacity to believe that storytelling could transform four walls into another world.

This is the story of Deadlocked Escape Rooms: where low budgets became enchanted weapons, where rules were gleefully broken, and where “sensible business decisions” were cast aside in favour of bold experiments with actors, atmosphere, and sheer theatrical cheek.

“From Rags to Witches” is not just a tale of one company’s strange journey -it’s an invitation. A call to arms for every creator to step beyond comfort zones, to embrace the weird, the whimsical, and the risky. Because only when we break away from what we know and trust, do we truly lock up our audience and keep them spellbound forever!

In this talk, you will learn:
How curses (a.k.a. budget constraints) can become blessings in disguise.
Why stories, not props, are the true potions of immersion and will always outshine spectacle.
The secret power of balancing the quest for profit margins, with the pursuit of artistic mischief.
What the pandemic taught us about conjuring worlds out of thin air and reinvent fast -or risk fading into obscurity forever.
And how to make your players fall in love with escape rooms all over again -even when they think they’ve seen every trick in the book.