Playable City Sandbox is underway! Last month we announced the six select projects, today we’re delighted to reveal the industry advisory panel joining the projects along their prototyping journey.
We have invited 9 individuals who bring a wealth of experience from across the creative industries. Their work spans creative technology, performance, audience and community engagement, social impact, playful productions, and more. During Sandbox, the advisors will offer the teams guidance and advice during the programme through key moments such as the Sandbox Workshops.
Meet the Advisers
Joseph Wilk
Joseph Wilk is an artist exploring automative forms of expression that utilise new interfaces to work *with* alternative bodies. His experience of disability – living with pain, physical limitations, disillusionment and disconnection – strongly impacts his practice. He deconstructs, misuses and repurposes software and hardware to challenge notions of ownership, narrative and visibility.
George Lovesmith
George Lovesmith is an architect, artist and educator with a practice focussed on social engagement. A creative on the Playable City Recife sprint back in 2013, George has continued to collaborate with Watershed where he is currently co-creating a climate emergency building retrofit strategy. Other recent projects include the co-production of Red Brick Field, a park in Plymouth; & the remodelling of Maindee Library+, Newport. George has represented the UK at the Taiwan Design Expo as an Arts Council International Fellow in Spain.
Hilary O’Shaughnessy
Hilary O’Shaughnessy is an internationally experienced cultural Commissioner and innovative R&D Programme Director.
In 2022 she worked as Director of Commissioning at UNBOXED, a year-long programme of multi-disciplinary commissions that stretched across the four Nations of the UK. As a key strategic lead she inspired and steered multidisciplinary teams to create awe-inspiring world firsts such as reimaging de-commissioned North Sea Oil rigs into visitor experiences and creating the UK’s largest immersive storytelling experience.
Previously Hilary worked as Research Lead and Lead Producer at Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol delivering the Playable City Award and international Network and Being There an innovative ESPRC project on the future impact of robots in Public space.
Imwen Eke
Imwen Eke is an Experience Designer, Social Games practitioner, Creative Technician, Educator, Consultant and TEDX Speaker. She tours the sensorium of technology, participation, game mechanics and play to explore new conversations & narratives for culturally curious audiences.
Her practice was born from the curiosity to examine interactions happening online with the impulse to make something better equipped to expand those conversations in real life. With a focus on Play in Adulthood. Her work is in search of new ways and means, to formulate enlightened, critical, qualified and lived perspectives from new voices that we urgently need to hear, free from any restrictions of creative hierarchy, genre or style.
Imwen creates work through her company New Party Rules Labs, current clients include: Meta, Color In tech, UCL, Coding Black Females. She is a resident of the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol, a tutor at the University of the Underground, a Lecturer at ISCOM, Paris and co-founder of the Livesey Exchange and co founder of Black Excellence Global Network, a global movement rooted in creating economic, ethical, and social advancements to change narratives globally.
Kirk Thompson
Bristol-born b-boy Kirk Thompson is best known as DJ and producer Krust. With an indelible legacy as a key figurehead in the Bristol sound, he has never compromised since emerging in 1989 as a member of Fresh 4 (achieving a Top 10 chart hit on Top of The Pops). A founding member of Full Cycle, the first non-London label to truly mould and manipulate the jungle schematic; and Reprazents, one of the first D&B acts to infiltrate the popular psyche and win critical Mercury Music Prize acclaim.
He is regarded as one of drum & bass and jungle’s founders and pioneers noted for his unique musical style. Krust’s epic experimentalism can be heard in his 1997 single ‘Soul In Motion’, and similarly ground-breaking ‘98 single ‘True Stories’ for Talkin Loud.
An in-demand remixer, Krust has reworked tracks for Bjork, Korn, Moloko, Claude VonStroke, DJ Krush, Adam F, Shy FX, Alex Reece, DJ Ron, DJ Rap and many more.
Rachel Coldicutt
Rachel Coldicutt is an expert on the social impact of new and emerging technologies, and director of research consultancy Careful Industries and its sister social enterprise Promising Trouble.
She was previously founding CEO of responsible technology think tank Doteveryone where she led influential and ground-breaking research into how technology is changing society and developed practical tools for responsible innovation. Prior to that, she spent almost 20 years working at the cutting edge of new technology for companies including the BBC, Microsoft, BT, and Channel 4, and was a pioneer in the digital art world. Rachel is an advisor, board member and trustee for a number of companies and charities and a member of the Ofcom Content Board. In 2019, Rachel was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours for services for the digital society.
Rachael Burton
Rachael Burton is an experienced Project Manager and Producer working across new and emerging technologies and the creative industries. Rachael is a Research Project Manager at Careful Trouble (Careful Industries and Promising Trouble), managing research projects that explore and anticipate the social impacts of technology, technology policies and forecast possible futures.
Previously Rachael was a Producer at Watershed, where she produced large-scale multi-partnership research projects including Playable City and Bristol+Bath Creative R+D.
Rachael is a Trustee for Attitude is Everything, a disability-led charity connecting disabled people to with music and live event industries to improve access together. She is also a freelance producer for M/Others Who Make, supporting a phase of organisational development.
Mathew Rosier
Matthew Rosier is an artist based in London. His work mixes technology with film and sound in the form of immersive installations in the public realm. His practice is collaborative and involves the surrounding community both in the creation process and the finished project. His work often deals with the personal memories and the public histories embedded within specific social, architectural, and ecological contexts.
Matthew’s work has been installed in public spaces in London, Paris, Austin, and Tokyo; commissioned by the councils of Westminster, Southwark, Rotherham, Doncaster, Wakefield, Cheshire East and the City of London; shown at the Design Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; nominated as one of the Design Museum’s Designs of the Year; and awarded the Active Public Space Award, the London Contemporary Art Prize Public Vote Award, and the Museum + Heritage Innovation Award.
Allison Sheard
Allison is the Relationship Manager for the Innovation and Development Team at LV= General Insurance. The Innovation Team are focused on unlocking the potential of digital innovation, in which Allison’s primary focus is looking for new, digital products and services. Alongside this, Allison works as a consultant in the field of Systems Thinking, having had a long career prior in People Management.