Immersive Experience Summit 24

For over 70 years, Imagineers have applied a mix of technology, architecture, and story to bring Disney’s Parks and Resorts to life. That’s a lot of collective wisdom and ‘better mistakes next time’ honed over generations of projects.

Join Sara Thacher as she looks back at her last decade at Imagineering and shares the hard-won lessons from designing, planning, and building the magic.

waltdisneyimagineering.com

As a prolific maker, writer and fan within the Immersive Entertainment space, Adrian 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, common pitfalls and traps that he has identified across immersive strands and areas of learning and opportunities that could be adopted to offer more relevant, resonant and sustainable experiences for a spectrum of emerging to seasoned immersive experience goers.

The talk will also draw upon his recent interviews with founders and leaders of the biggest immersive experience organisations in the world.

Former CEO and founder of Six to Start, co-creator of Zombies, Run!, the world’s most successful smartphone fitness game, and lead designer of Marvel Move. Currently writing a book about the rise of immersive experiences.

mssv.net

We’ll 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 can be monetised within a customer or branded experience.

Jenny McNeil specialises in designing and delivering immersive and experiential events with a food focus for well known brands across the UK and beyond.

With a background in marketing & events, Jenny is also a professionally trained chef and for the last 10 years has built a body of work within the immersive dining scene.

Feast + Fable

An in-depth dive with the creative and production teams from Parabolic Theatre, Illusion, Entourage and Clockwork Dog who created Bridge Command, a unique and pioneering interactive experience that allows players to be the bridge crew of their own star ship. 

bridgecommand.space/

Join Punchdrunk Senior Producers Lauren Storr, Sophie Hewlett, and Sarah Georgeson as they discuss navigating the ever-changing world of immersive theatre.

This 60-minute session will explore how professionals from diverse backgrounds are entering and influencing the field, and how Punchdrunk is adapting to new trends, audience expectations, and technological advancements.

Engage with the Senior Producers as they share their perspectives on staying relevant in a rapidly evolving industry, the impact of emerging technologies, and the challenges and opportunities of maintaining innovation in immersive experiences.

Ideal for those interested in the future of immersive theatre, this conversation will offer valuable insights on how to thrive in a dynamic and growing field. This discussion will be chaired by Georgia Figgis, Community and Creative Engagement Manager at Punchdrunk.

punchdrunk.com/

Boomtown is the largest interactive theatre in the world, aiming to create an accessible, playable space where the audience can imagine new versions of themselves, new futures for themselves, try new realities on for size and become what they’ve always dreamed of becoming.

Starting in 2009, Boomtown has kept a narrative throughline throughout, becoming deeper, more intricate and more multi-faceted year-on-year. In this talk, Megan Clifton (Head of Narrative) will go over what she has learnt in her three years holding the storyline, the challenges of managing a truly collaborative fictional world, and how the ground-up model of interactive storytelling continues to find its feet.

Head of Narrative at Boomtown Festival, connecting all crews and departments to deliver an interactive collaborative narrative over 4 days.

Sitting between writer and experience designer, Megan likes to create strange and beautiful interactive environments, treating the ridiculous with reverence to empower the audience to be, say and do things they would never feel able to in ‘normal’ life.

Accessibility is key; Megan’s work is never just for immersive theatre lovers, preferring instead to focus on those who may never have had an immersive experience.

Megan also works as a Narrative Consultant for Wake the Tiger Amazement Park, co-runs Super Nothing TV (a live-streamed interactive TV-themed experience for festivals) and won awards from No Proscenium and Room Escape Artist for her lockdown online game ‘Wizards Against Lizards’ which was subsequently adapted for Shambala festival.

boomtownfair.co.uk

meganclifton.com

Live experience designer from Germany. Scare attraction creator and professional nerd. Loves immersive theatre and is passionate about experience design in general.

intya.net

Richard Warp is an Emmy award-winning composer, sound designer and music technologist with over 10 years’ experience in creating interactive audiovisual experiences that explore the connection between music and the brain, with a particular interest in surfacing our emotional responses to the music we listen to.

Erica Warp, PhD is a neuroscientist and interdisciplinary thinker using data, science, and wearable technology to create innovative experiences that connect people with their minds and bodies. 

With over 10 years of product leadership experience in edtech, neurotech, and healthtech, including as VP of Product at EEG wearable company EMOTIV, Erica brings a unique mix of expertise to her work. 

She is currently Director of Neuroscience for Brainstorms and Head of Labs at Kinda Studios, where she conducts novel research and collaborates on data-driven experiences to make our biology more visible, understood and felt.

The Brainstorms experience, created by Richard and the team at Pollen Music Group in a joint venture with Richard Wright Music Ltd, offered a unique opportunity to deploy some of these ideas at scale.

brainstorms.uk

‘Agency’ – the ability of an active participant in a story to make decisions that change the story in meaningful ways (and what that means for dramaturgy). 

‘Alibi’ – the idea that the participant experience can be designed in such a way that they can act or behave in ways that they would not normally act. 

‘Bleed’ as well – which is the transfer of experience from participant to character or from character to participant.    

Simon Brind has been making larps since 1986 and has written for and produced events in the UK, Poland, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. His PhD research was on the tension between authorial intent and player agency in participatory fiction.

avalonlarp.studio

Choosing Children was a dramatic and interactive live spectacle for an intimate audience, which aims to be fully accessible and inclusive. Audiences can request British Sign Language, Audio Description, and/or Captioning in every performance through an integrated Access System.

In this session, Laura Wilkinson and Ben Fredericks will talk about the development process for incorporating accessibility in the show from the outset, lessons learned, and where accessibility in immersive can go from here.

benfredericks.co.uk/

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 technology as a means to expand our senses, creating perspective shifts on ourselves and our relationships to the more than human world. “Alienation from nature and the loss of the experience of being part of the living creation is the greatest tragedy of our materialistic era. It is the causative reason for ecological devastation and climate change.’ — Dr. Albert Hoffman, discoverer of LSD-25. Artist Statement Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) is an experiential artist collective.

We believe in the power of stories to tickle senses and shift perceptions. Our work takes people on a multisensory journey to where imagination and information collide. From coders to poets, chemists to ventriloquists, brands to institutions, we collaborate with specialists in all disciplines.

To explore new forms of culture, interrogate our relationship with the world around us and leave a glittery slug trail as we journey through the cosmos. We tell stories that untangle, entangle and flavour our reality, blurring the lines between art, immersive experiences, XR and film. Alive in galleries, museums, public spaces, parks, nature reserves and the metaverse, our work is grounded in research. Designed to carve out space to expose, explore and expand our relationship with the living world.

Barnaby Steel is an artist and creative director of London-based experiential art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast.

Barnaby’s art practice centres on the senses; enticing audiences into states of expanded perception, a space where the boundaries between bodies blur. His work is deeply rooted in scientific observation as a window that allows us to look through and beyond our own experience, to understand the complexities of things hidden from the naked eye.

His work steps outside the human-centred worldview, exploring the threads that weave us into relationship with the more than human world.

Immersive Theatre Reimagined – Using augmented reality to transform the traditional stage into an immersive experience tailored for children.

www.glitchstudios.co

Rematch reimagine the greatest stories in sport as live immersive events. Part immersive theatre, part festival, Rematch allows audiences to time-travel back to experience these stories as if they were there.

Over 78 shows, Rumble in the Jungle Rematch gave fans in London the opportunity to travel back to Zaire 1974 to witness the Greatest boxing fight in history between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

This was surrounded by the Zaire 74 music festival that brought the greatest black music artists of the era to the stage. But this was bigger than a boxing fight. It was a story of positive change, new beginnings, and banishing stereotypes whilst pushing limits, with historical relevance. Dive into how  that resonated with a broad and diverse cast, crew, audiences and communities alike.  

Les Seddon-Brown, CEO and producer of Rematch takes us through the makings of this unique show and how they were able to engage a higher-than-average attendance by first time Immersive goers of all ages and members of the global majority.

rematchlive.com

Both Les Enfants Terribles & SWAMP have a long legacy of delivering award-winning, innovative Immersive Entertainment experiences, leading to their signature styles and expertise being sought out by brands for experiential campaigns. 

Join them to learn more about their journey from entertainment providers to established brand collaborators as they share how they made a meaningful transition, what they wish they had known in the early days and the benefits, opportunities and challenges of the brand engagement and immersive entertainment worlds coming together.

SWAMP is a full-service brand experience agency dedicated to increasing the quality of storytelling for brands, businesses and entertainment audiences. Founded from a creative core of immersive theatre makers, they have created award-winning, critically acclaimed immersive and experiential work for global brands all over the world.

Through their creative and production teams’ rich history working at the pinnacle of immersive entertainment, SWAMP has forged a path of innovation and daring backed up by watertight results. SWAMP is also the only brand experience agency with its own Originals department – creating unique, ticketed experiences for the general public.

www.swampexperience.com

Farouk is an award winning Event Director and Consultant with 20+ years of pioneering creative led strategy and content for clients (B2B) and uniquely incubating in-house brands (B2C). 

Alongside Mark, Farouk is co-founder of NEXUS a business innovation hub and Cellar Door a full service bespoke events agency. Whilst initialing becoming a founder, at the same time Farouk began his career at Barclays corporate banking, working with brands including Jimmy Choo, Versace and Zara, before moving onto investment banking / portfolio management for Deutsche Bank.

Mark is co-founder of NEXUS, an incubator for creative and digital SMEs. Additional business interests include Cellar Door, a creative events agency, Coffee Shotter, an independent plant based coffee shop and Bollywood Fever, the largest Bollywood film festival in the U.K. Mark is Chair of the Croydon Creative Enterprise Zone Steering Group and Trustee of Savvy Theatre Company.

Mairi Nolan is an award-winning puzzle game designer who works in escape rooms, tabletop games, and video games. In her spare time, she writes about the UK’s escape room industry and puzzle games more broadly in the Escape Industry Newsletter, The Escape Roomer and more.

Both Les Enfants Terribles & SWAMP have a long legacy of delivering award-winning, innovative Immersive Entertainment experiences, leading to their signature styles and expertise being sought out by brands for experiential campaigns. 

 Join them to learn more about their journey from entertainment providers to established brand collaborators as they share how they made a meaningful transition, what they wish they had known in the early days and the benefits, opportunities and challenges of the brand engagement and immersive entertainment worlds coming together.

Les Enfants Terribles is dedicated to creating original and engaging theatre that puts the audience at the centre of the story. Known for their striking visual aesthetic and innovative use of props, puppetry and live music, they explore unique ways of telling stories and immersing audiences in new, weird and wonderful worlds.

lesenfantsterribles.co.uk

As we continue to establish the immersive sector in the minds of audiences we have to ensure that we don’t disable those audiences in the all to familiar ways they have been disabled by other forms of art and entertainment. 

This panel will be a discussion between various immersive creators to talk about the broader topic of accessibility and how to make sure that you, as a creator or producer, can ensure accessibility is being incorporated into your events and experiences in a creative and effective way.

DaDa is an award winning and pioneering disability arts organisation based in Liverpool. Founded in 1984, we were one of the first disability-led arts organisations in the UK and an integral part of the campaign for greater equality and accessibility across the arts sector.

dadafest.co.uk

CULTVR Lab has emerged as Europe’s first immersive cross-disciplinary space, focusing on digital arts, XR live performance, and fulldome cinema. 

This session explores the complexities of producing and touring Shared Reality content that blends virtual and physical environments, through learnings from the show “Arka Kinari: Artivism at Sea,” showcasing how immersive arts can forge new pathways for human connection, spotlight global issues, and inspire tangible action.

cultvrlab.com

In this presentation, Jessie will highlight what Fever have learned about how new technologies are empowering immersive experience creators. She will share topline data on key components and considerations that have driven a show’s successes from conception to execution, and discuss how integrating commercial and technical strategies can reduce risks.

Jessie will also unpack how strategic use of data and demand generation can better meet audience expectations and improve commercial performance. Additionally, she will provide insights into how some of their experiences have scaled globally. This session is designed to equip creative leaders with the tools to blend artistic vision with business acumen, using technology as the connecting force.

Jessie is the Senior Manager of Strategy and Partnerships at Fever, a tech unicorn that empowers the live entertainment space. Prior to joining Fever, Jessie accumulated four years of experience in startup operations within the digital fashion space and four years in strategy consulting.

feverup.com

Katie Day is an award-winning artist and Artistic Director of The Other Way Works, who create new immersive experiences with the aim of provoking positive action to create change. Katie is an artist and director developing work where theatre meets new technologies with the aim of creating magical, immersive experiences.

Our current project is A Rainbow for Amala: an interactive storybook for primary-aged kids exploring climate impacts through storytelling, animations, and puzzles.

theotherwayworks.co.uk

Toby Young is a composer and sound-designer who has written soundtracks to a variety of TV and stage works including BAFTA-nominated productions for HBO and Sky Arts.

He was previously the Music Supervisor of Punchdrunk and a creative lead for the Philharmonia Orchestra’s ‘Audience of the Future’ project, creating orchestral and operatic experiences in 360º video and site-specific audio.

Bringing your ideas to life

With over two decades of industry experience, Deterministic offers a range of services at the interface of SaaS and immersive technology.

From show control and software development to installation and commissioning, we’re well-versed in helping craft innovative, immersive worlds where every prop and pixel pulses with life. In fact, our revolutionary show control software Wintermute was built for that very purpose.

deterministic.ltd/

A specialist in Immersive and Hospitality PR Meri is the founder of Mance Communications – a proactive and high-profile results-driven company who have worked with some of the biggest names in the industry and were one of the very first in the sector to recognize the potential growth of the experience lifestyle market.

Past and present clients have included; Swingers – The Crazy Golf Club, Gravity Wandsworth, Batman Unmasked, Disney100: The Exhibition, Jurassic World: The Exhibition, Peaky Blinders: The Rise, CBeebies Rainbow Adventure, Sherlock: The Game is Now, The Crystal Maze Live Experience, Chaos Karts, Phantom Peak, Patty&Bun, The Waterman’s Arms, Urban Pubs & Bars Group, 67 Pall Mall, Wright Brothers, Perrier Jouet & Mumm Champagnes, Courvoisier Cognac, Vestal Vodka, Moet & Chandon, Dom Perignon, Ardbeg and Glenmorangie Whisky, Freixenet, Silent Pool Gin, Hotel Du Cap, Muse St Tropez, Bingham Richmond, Palazzo Terranova Perugia, Bella Luce Guernsey

mancecommunications.com

After captivating 40,000 people with “The Golden Key” in autumn 2023, legendary theatre company Coney embarked on a unique challenge: crafting an intimate experience for just two people.

Join Coney’s Tassos Stevens and the commissioner, Matthew Hawn, as they discuss “Evergreen,” a sprawling three-month adventure inspired by Matthew’s wife Molly’s love of children’s literature and the couple’s 20th wedding anniversary.

Launched with a sprig of spruce and a mysterious text at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Coney used dramaturgy and technology to send the couple on a seemingly serendipitous race against an ominous antagonist to recover four magical keys hidden around the UK.

Come discover how Coney used the couple’s shared love of stories, some existing travel plans, and secretly tapped Molly’s personal network to shape this unforgettable experience, blurring the lines between reality and fairytale.

Tassos Stevens @tassosstevens is director and a sometime maker for Coney @agencyofconey, a charity making all kinds of play to spark change, responding to the causes which matter to people.

In late 2022, Coney presented The Golden Key, a one-day immersive takeover of the Square Mile commissioned by the City of London Corporation, engaging over 35,000 people. But it’s what he did next with Coney which we’ll be talking about here – Evergreen, an adventure commissioned as a gift by Matthew Hawn to his wife Molly, on occasion of their 20th wedding anniversary – an intimate project, delivered over the course of several months with the help of friends, family, and serendipity.

Dan Tucker is one of the UK’s leading immersive executive producers. He has produced VR experiences for the BBC and BFI and curated exhibitions of immersive and interactive media for Sheffield Doc/Fest and the Barbican.

Darren Emerson is a Multi-award winning immersive artist, writer and director.

eastcityfilms.com

Have you ever had a project that was doomed to fail from the start? Do you struggle with monitoring your targets? Do you want to increase your chances of success? Join certified bookkeeper and business advisor, Chi Yun Wai MICB, to learn his proven framework “THEME” to better manage your projects for improved success.

immersif.co