Schedule

9:00am

Registration, Coffee and Networking

Grab your name badge, get a coffee and catch up with the great and good from the world’s of digital and culture.

9:55am

Welcome

Our host Mike Ellis will welcome delegates to Culture Geek.

10:00

Games at the Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum is constantly looking for new ways to bring its collection closer to the public. We do this with various content formats but also by working with various partners. Together with our Amsterdam partner Guerrilla Games, we brought art to a new global community in the game Horizon Forbidden west. We share these and other learnings in this session.

Nanet Beumer

Rijkmuseum

10:30

You want to do what with the paintings?

The National Gallery has established digital innovation, creative R&D and immersive storytelling into its ways of working, so what have we learnt from working more closely with our audiences to creating meaningful digital experiences? And what happens when you let the kids loose with the stories?

Lawrence Chiles

The National Gallery

11:00

The Gunpowder Plot

The Gunpowder Plot is a feature-length immersive experience at the Tower of London – combining 360° sets, live performance, and virtual reality with a wide range of digital and stage effects. Developed in partnership between Layered Reality and Historic Royal Palaces, it transports audiences deep into Jacobean London – as active participants in the infamous historic conspiracy. In this talk, Creative Director Hannah Price and Consulting Producer Tim Powell will share the challenges of creating an entertainment attraction that champions theatrical quality and historical authenticity. And how immersive formats offer new creative possibilities for cultural organisations.

Tim Powell & Hannah Price

11:30

Making GALWAD

As Creative Director of GALWAD for National Theatre Wales since 2020, Claire Doherty has led the large-scale cross-artform project which brought together live broadcast and live streamed performance with TV drama and transmedia storytelling.

The real-time story unfolded over seven days and was broadcast over 5 hours on Sky Arts on 2nd October. Claire will discuss how the project came about, the collaboration with Alex McDowell to imagine a world in 2052, how the project broke down boundaries between theatre and film and what was learnt about the changes needed to transform the sector through radical inclusion.

Claire Doherty

National Theatre Wales

12:00

Lunch

Lunch will be served in the Library of the Royal Institution. Take the opportunity to meet some of the brightest minds in the cultural sector.

13:00

Co-creating the museum guide

This talk explores Smartify’s collaborative methodology used to develop new forms of interpretation and creative digital experiences; and our approach to redesigning the Smartify mobile guide platform to empower visitors.

Anna Lowe & Dr Peter Knowles

Smartify

13:30

Everything you feel is real

Blending tangible experience and impossible stories to unearth tiny truths. How can we use immersive worlds to reimagine the world and our place in it? In this talk Kirsty Jennings the power of physical experiences in virtual spaces to shape perception. She will present some of Anagram’s experiences which bring together the sensory power of immersive theatre with recently available technology to playfully invite audiences into alternative worlds. From embodied narratives about plant intelligence, to VR works that give us a unique understanding of our own minds. Kirsty will also explore how Anagram have worked with museums and galleries to present such works.

Kirsty Jennings

Anagram

14:00

The new Amsterdam Museum: work in progress

How do you become a museum of the future? The Amsterdam Museum, the official city museum of Dutch capital Amsterdam, is in transition. The almost 100 years old museum with a collection of over 100.000 objects is developing rapidly into a museum of the future. In this talk Maurice Seleky, Head of Communications & Marketing, at the Amsterdam Museum will give an overview of some mayor projects in which the museum is engaged digitally and physically and how all these projects are connected. From the move to a new temporary location for the museum this year, due to the plans for a large scale renovation of the old museum complex, to the rebranding of the museum and the preparations for a completely new digital platform planned to be released in 2023. Join the Amsterdam Museum with this work in progress! 

Maurice Seleky

Amsterdam Museum

14:30

Break

Get re-caffinated and take the opportunity to network with your peers.

15:00

When Social Goes Global

Join me as I talk about how on earth we created a global phenomenon from a Yorkshire bedroom, and the five things it taught us about succeeding in the strange world of museums social.

Millie Carroll

York Museums Trust

15:30

Why are we not using social media to tell stories?

In this session, we will look at the power of social media and the untapped storytelling potential for the arts and culture sector. How can your cultural organisation use content to tell an evolving brand story?

Haydn Corrodus

Warm Street

16:00

Social Media is People Media

Whether we realise it or not, social media content is influencing our consumption behaviours. A friend’s photos from their recent trip to The Met has us planning our next museum visit. Social media platforms are the new norm, and traditional museum marketing is failing in today’s digital, always-on culture. Museums across the world are having to face up to how they remain culturally relevant in the choppy waters of the digital ocean. Chris Cloud’s talk will touch on how to humanise your museum in the age of social media.

Chris Cloud

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

16:30

Event ends

'I like the way that Culture Geek brings together people from across the cultural sector, rather than just attracting people from one art form.'
Simon Parsons

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