UNBOXED partners Beyond conference

Date and time: 19 October 2022
Location: Cardiff

BEYOND is a unique, annual gathering of current and future innovators focused on Research and Development across the Creative Industries, bringing together world-leading researchers, makers, investors, business leaders, and thinkers.

The theme of this year’s conference in Cardiff is ‘Where Creativity Meets R&D’. You may not know that before UNBOXED’s events, broadcast and digital activities were launched this year each of the ten commission teams took part of a year-long programme of R&D (research and development). Here they had the time and space to develop their ideas, collaborate and innovate in new and different ways of thinking and creating which brought together Arts and Culture with Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

On Wednesday 19 October UNBOXED will be taking over the main stage of the Beyond conference for a day of talks and panels about the creative process from inception to delivery. Details are below

09:30 – 09:35

Welcome to UNBOXED at BEYOND

Katie Popperwell, Senior International Producer, UNBOXED

09:35 – 10:00

UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK – A year of collaboration

UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK is a year-long programme of 10 major, multi-site and digital creative projects delivered across the four nations of the UK. The 10 commissions presented as part of UNBOXED in 2022 have been forged through new collaborations across science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics, using processes and methods drawn from across those sectors.

Commissions have come to life indoors and outdoors, in city centres, coastal towns and deep into the landscape, in person, through broadcast and online, all in the context of pandemic recovery. Accessibility has been at the forefront, with projects designed to encourage people of all ages to engage with a range of topics from sustainability, biodiversity, and neuroscience, to diversity and community. As the live phase begins to draw to a close, we ask what can be learned from a year of projects built on collaboration between governments, sectors, and extraordinary individuals and organisations.

Dame Vikki Heywood DBE, Chair, UNBOXED

10:05 – 10:20

Imagine and Design: the R&D journey to 10 experiments in collaborative creativity

UNBOXED is the product of an innovative approach to the commissioning of ambitious, new, creative work. This session will talk about the ideas underpinning that process and what the process was designed to achieve.

Sam Hunt, Programme Director, UNBOXED

10:20 – 11:10

Facilitating a free-for-all: Inside The Creative Studio

The Creative Studio was a unique R&D programme centred on bringing together a diverse range of talent from across science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics with the broad challenge to create a project that was open, original and optimistic. Teams took part in a six-week semi-structured, virtually delivered series of seminars, workshops, lectures, open sessions and consultations.

Join broadcaster Elle-Osili Wood, one of the original creative ambassadors for the R&D, with creatives from Dreamachine and About Us, to discuss insights and lessons from this unprecedented model of funding, collaboration, ideation and production.

Elle Osili-Wood, Television and radio presenter

11:15 – 11:35

Do You See What I See? Dreamachine and the Perception Census

Dreamachine is an immersive art experience combining light and music to create a colourful world behind your closed eyes – created by your own brain and completely unique to you. Produced by Collective Act, together with Turner Prize-winning artists Assemble, Grammy and Mercury nominated composer Jon Hopkins, and a team of leading technologists, scientists and philosophers, it is inspired by a pioneering 1959 invention by artist Brion Gysin, designed to be ‘the first artwork to be experienced with your eyes closed.’ 60 years later, Gysin’s concept has been radically reimagined into a new collective experience that has travelled the four nations of the UK, commissioned by UNBOXED.

Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, University of Sussex

Jennifer Crook, Director, Collective Act

12:25 – 12:45

SEE MONSTER: A world first in creative reuse

A retired rig from the North Sea, transformed into one of the UK’s largest public art installations to ignite global conversations about reuse, renewables and the great British weather. Patrick O’Mahony and Antonia Gammans discuss how the project came about and the importance of exploring the regeneration of inherited structures, what we do with them and the actions they inspire.

12:50 – 13:05

The RSA Collective Futures Research Enquiry

Shirin Maani, Head of Global Innovation, The Royal Society of Arts

UNBOXED: Collective Futures is a research enquiry led by the RSA that examines of the value of taking an inclusive, collaborative approach to shaping better futures for people and planet

13:05 – 13:55

How to Change the World: Creative initiatives for people and planet

Creatives from three UNBOXED commissions – Our Place in Space, an epic scale model of the solar system and AR that uses the concept of the overview effect as experienced by astronauts to engender new perspectives and new connections in post-conflict communities; PoliNations, a city centre forest garden and app that uses biodiversity to explore migratory histories, and Dandelion, which aims to seed a sustainable mass movement of community growing and environmental regeneration – explore their core missions and participatory methods for creatively engaging communities in a journey toward a more sustainable future.

Jenny Niven, Executive Producer, Dandelion

John Peto, Lead Producer, the Nerve Centre

Shirin Maani, Head of Global Innovation, The Royal Society of Arts

Tamsin Hanke, Director, THISS Studio

15:25 – 16:10

Citizens of Imagination: Creative technology and the civic role of storytelling

With the rapid emergence of the 3D internet and a virtual world increasingly riven with social discord, how might we put creative technology into the hands of communities to tell their own stories in new ways? Join creatives from UNBOXED commissions GALWAD and PoliNations to explore the challenges and rewards of running digitally inclusive projects and the role of technology in deepening our relationship to people and to place.

Lora Markova, Researcher, Creative Research and Innovation Centre (CRAIC), Loughborough University London

Rachel Wakelin, Brand Strategist, Peter & Paul

16:15 – 17:00

What comes next? The new generation shaping creative futures

A panel of young emerging creatives reflect on their experience of working on collaborative projects in the creative industries and how they might shape that experience differently in the future.

John Akinde, Learning & Engagement / Programming, Tour De Moon

Shama Rahman, CEO and Founder, Neurocreate

Rha Hira Arayal, UNBOXED Ambassador

17:00 – 17:05

Wrap Up & Thank you