Immersive Storytelling and Climate Realities

As digital art and extended reality (XR) technologies have become ever more accessible and widespread in our everyday lives, immersive experiences have been identified as having huge potential for exposing audiences to the many impacts of climate change. However, there are fundamental tensions around the sustainability claims of immersive technologies themselves, and evolving questions around how best to tell climate stories through these newly immersive mediums. Join an incredible line-up of panellists from across the world of digital art, XR, film, climate storytelling and more, to discuss how they are negotiating these challenges within their own work.

The panel will be chaired by Dr Nina Willment (Research Associate of XR Stories and resident artist at the Virtual & Immersive Production Studio, University of Nottingham) and features the following panellists:

• Rebecca Smith, an artist practicing under the name Urban Projections, has been drawing lines between the natural world, art and technology for over 20 years. Her practice centres around the natural environment and our place within it, aiming to reaffirm our connection to nature and each other. Often through the creation of large-scale immersive experiences, Rebecca has developed innovative methods for cross-genre experimentation.
  
  
• Samantha King is the Head of Programme at VIVE Arts (HTC), a global arts programme supporting artists and cultural organisations to experiment with immersive technology. Previous to VIVE Arts, she was Senior Producer of Audience Labs at the Royal Opera House, an innovation programme bringing together artists and next-generation technology to create boundary-breaking contemporary opera and ballet experiences. She has also held positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. Samantha specialises in producing multilayered, interdisciplinary experiences and exhibitions that explore creative innovation using digital tools.
• Toki Allison (she/her) is the Senior Producer at Megaverse. Toki is a project producer with a specialist focus around access and inclusion for audiences. Toki works across disciplines (film, visual arts, theatre, digital, immersive) to create transformative experiences for audiences and translate complex ideas into practical delivery. She has produced sell-out music festivals, high-profile outdoor theatrical events, and UK-wide cinema programmes, and has developed and delivered inclusion initiatives to expand arts and cinema audiences working with the likes of Heart of Glass, Liverpool Biennale, National Theatre Wales, The New Black Film Collective, and Sundance Film Festival London. She is a trustee of Wyldwood Arts, and led the BFI Film Audience Network initiative, Inclusive Cinema, for five years.