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Immersive Arts is a three-year national programme of funding and support for creative practitioners which launched in 2024. The organisation held its first conference earlier this month, and chose Bradford – the 2025 UK City of Culture – for the occasion. Over three days and seven venues, delegates listened to talks,

Gijs Geers, founder of DarkPark, is a pioneering force in the escape room industry. In an inspiring presentation, he unveils the secret ingredient behind DarkPark’s unforgettable experiences, revealing for the first time how an invisible layer leaves a lasting impact on players. This talk was recorded at the Immersive Experience

What is it like to be a tree? To see the world through the eyes of another animal? To breath yourself into your own body? These are some of the ideas Barnaby Steel, (co-founder and creative director at Marshmallow Laser Feast) will be exploring in this talk. Their work uses

Take a deep dive with Jeroen van Hasselt (Co-Founder, Entered), into the trials and triumphs of producing a unique, 200-minute-long game experience such as Demise of the Gricers, that pushes the boundaries of conventional escape game design. Explore the intricacies of world-building, next-level player equipment, narrative & system design, player

Join Lukas Rauscher (Crime Runners), Dan Wiseman (The Detective Society), Bob & Nikki Kimber (Hysteria Escape Rooms), and Andrew Preble (Escape My Room) as they explore the advantages of episodic storytelling and how each approaches it differently. The panel will discuss why they choose this format, how it fosters player

Join Creative Director Ivan Carić and performer Emily Carding as they share the challenges and lessons from running a 24-hour interactive experience set in the eerie world of horror and weird fiction. Discover how they blended immersive theatre, deconstructed storytelling, puzzles, and hospitality within the atmospheric setting of a 17th-century

Adrian Hon (Game Designer and Author) is a prolific maker, writer and fan within the Immersive Entertainment space who has spent the past two years attending, assessing and discussing dozens of experiences around the world. He will be sharing key trends that are resonating well with audiences within the sector,

Jenny McNeill takes a deep dive into how to use food as a tool for conveying narrative and engaging the imagination. From understanding the key emotions that food and communal eating extract, to discussing how truly immersive food content can sit within larger scale experiences. Finally, we’ll cover how food

Sami Hamid from Glitch Studios pulls back the curtain and reveals how wearable XR headsets can be implemented into live staged theatre performances, bringing virtual characters and set pieces to life alongside real actors. This talk touches upon the technical implementation of AR, how it works with your AV setup,

Andy Barnes (Director, Entourage), Mairi Nolan (Puzzle Game Designer), Tom Lionetti-Maguire (Founder of Little Lion Entertainment), Farouk Dean (Co-Founder of NEXUS and Cellar Door) and Mark Sarfo Kantanka (Co-Founder of NEXUS and Cellar Door) in an open Q&A session, for our panelists and the audience to wrestle with the problems

Join Michael Badelt from INTYA Creative as he explores turning mistakes into a success: How a small immersive scare attraction went from “Okay“ to “Oh Wow!!“ Hear about the sometimes surprising learnings made through the iterations and how those were incorporated back into the show to create an experience that

Simon Brind discusses concepts of Agency and Alibi in the creation of Larp and their connections to creating meaningful experiences for participants. In this talk he explores ‘Agency’ – the ability of an active participant in a story to make decisions that change the story in meaningful ways (and what