Sarah Ellis - Director of Digital Development, RSC / Royal Shakespeare Company (UK)

Sarah Ellis is an award winning producer currently working as Head of Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company to explore new artistic initiatives and partnerships.

In 2016 she was awarded The Hospital Club and Creatives Industries award for cross industry collaboration for her work on The Tempest in collaboration with Intel and in association with The Imaginarium Studios. In 2013 she was listed in the top 100 most influential people working in Gaming and Technology by The Hospital Club and Guardian Culture Professionals.

In partnership with Google’s Creative Lab, she recently produced Midsummer Night’s Dreaming which won two Lovie Awards for Innovation and Experimentation. In 2012, she produced myShakespeare an online artistic commissioning platform for the World Shakespeare Festival. In 2011, she was the producer of the RSC’s new work Adelaide Road, which mixed live performance with an app and website map.

As a theatre and spoken word producer, she has worked with the Old Vic Tunnels, Battersea Arts Centre, Birmingham REP, Contact, Freeword, Improbable, Southbank Centre, Soho Theatre, and Shunt.

She has been Head of Creative Programmes at the Albany Theatre and Programme Manager for Apples & Snakes, England’s leading performance poetry organisation. She is a regular speaker and commentator on digital arts practice.

Deborah Shaw - Head of Creative Programming, Historic Royal Palaces (inc. Tower of London, Kensington Palace & Hampton Court Palace) (UK)

Deborah is changing the way we tell and experience stories. She is the Head of Creative Programming at Historic Royal Palaces (inc. Tower of London, Kew Palace, Hampton Court Palace and Kensington Palace), where she is responsible for artistic interventions, performances and new forms of creative interpretation at the historic, iconic royal palaces of London.  

In this latter role, Deborah has been responsible for bringing together the team to execute ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’, from a concept from ceramicist Paul Cummins seen by an estimated 5 million people.  His idea was to ‘plant’ the moat at the Tower of London with ceramic poppies, one poppy for each of the 888,246 British soldiers lost during the 1914-18 war. The Poppies installation won over a dozen national awards, including the Sky South Bank Award for Visual Art. She was named one of the UK’s top ten most influential creatives in art and design in the Hospital Club’s h.Club 100 Awards 

She is a theatre director, festival director, producer and writer by background who was an Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Director of the acclaimed World Shakespeare Festival 2012 for London2012 and is Executive Producer and founder member of the Iraqi Theatre Company.    

HRP are pushing the boundaries around using technology to create new forms of story-telling such as the award winning 'Lost Palace' experience an interactive exploration of Whitehall Palace’s spaces and stories…300 years after they burnt to the ground. The project uses haptic technology and 3D binaural sound to lead visitors on a augmented journey through British history.    

https://creators.vice.com/en_au/article/nz4g9m/londons-lost-palace-art-experience

Historic Royal Palaces looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace and Hillsborough Castle. Their aim is to help everyone explore the story of how monarchs and people have shaped society, in some of the greatest palaces ever built. 

Each of the six royal palaces in their care has survived for hundreds of years. They have witnessed peace and prosperity and splendid periods of building and expansion, but they also share stories of more turbulent times, of war and domestic strife, politics and revolution. www.hrp.org.uk 

Marc Fennell - Creator, 'Stuff the British Stole' & Walkley-winning journalist

Marc Fennell is a Walkley-winning journalist and documentary maker.

A 5-time medallist at the New York Festivals TV and Radio Awards, Marc has been nominated twice for Europe’s prestigious Rose d’Or. He is a recipient of America’s coveted James Beard Foundation Award, an Asian Creative Academy National Award, and Webby Award Honors. The Times (UK) has called Marc the “cheerful Aussie version of Louis Theroux”.

Marc is the creator of the popular, award-winning television series & podcast Stuff the British Stole for ABC Australia and CBC Canada. He is also seen each weeknight as the quizmaster of SBS TV’s iconic game show Mastermind.

Marc has fronted groundbreaking docs like the Logie & AACTA nominated School That Tried to End Racism (ABC 2021), The Kindom (SBS 2023) The Mission (SBS 2023) Rose d’Or shortlisted art-heist docu-series Framed (SBS 2021) as well as the hit Audible Original Podcasts It Burns (2019) Nut Jobs (2020) and House of Skulls (2023)

Marc anchored SBS TV’s national current affairs program The Feed for 9 years (2013-2022). He has reported around the globe from the 2019 Hong Kong protests to food crime in California to survivors of ISIS torture. Marc’s one-on-one interviews with the likes of Al Gore, Tom Cruise, Julian Assange, and Jennifer Lawrence have generated over 30 million online views.

A well-known voice on ABC Radio, Fennell has presented the technology program Download this Show since 2012 and was triple j’s Movie Guy from 2006-2017.

Marc has written 2 books and has also appeared on ABC’s The Drum, Network Ten’s The Project, SBS’s Dateline and Insight, and heard on top-rating ABC Radio Sydney.

Marc is the dad of 2 kids and lives in Sydney, Australia. He also helped found the not-for-profit advocacy group Media Diversity Australia.

Marc had an unusual path into journalism. He won an AFI Outstanding Young Film Critics Award back in high school. His broadcasting career began as the film critic for Sydney community radio station FBi 94.5. At 19 years old, Marc was recruited to SBS's rebooted version of The Movie Show (2004). He then jumped to the ABC's national youth broadcaster triple j to present film content across its radio, television and print arms. For 11 years, Marc was Australia's most listened-to film critic - better known to over 3.1 million triple j listeners as ‘That Movie Guy’. He also hosted the largest short film festival in the world Tropfest 2014-2016

Marc was a presenter and producer for all 3 seasons of ABC TV's ground-breaking journalism experiment Hungry Beast (2009-2011) under Executive Producer Andrew Denton.

Away from the camera, Marc has been an art director, web developer, magazine and newspaper writer and oh-so-briefly a hand model. Ask him about it sometime.

Beatie Wolfe - Musician & Technologist (UK) - 'Ground-breaking' (BBC News), 'Ingenious' (Fast Company) and 'Extraordinary' (Forbes)

Named by WIRED Magazine as one of 12 folk changing the world in 2017 singer songwriter Beatie Wolfe is at the forefront of pioneering new formats for music, which reunite tangibility, storytelling & ceremony to the album in this digital age. In this vein, Wolfe has created a series of world’s-first designs that bridge the tangible and digital, which include: a 3D vinyl for the iPhone; an intelligent album deck of cards; a Musical Jacket - designed by the tailor who dressed Bowie, Jagger and Hendrix and cut from fabric woven with Wolfe’s music - and most recently the world's first live 360 ̊ AR album stream, broadcast from the quietest room on earth.

Beatie Wolfe is the definition of a 21st century artist and perhaps the only musician to have her album's art exhibited in London's V&A Museum, address the VPs of Apple on innovation and have the American Alzheimer's Association adopt the findings from her Power of Music & Dementia study. Forbes calls Wolfe an Artist with a capital A for mixing music with art, technology, science and taking it to entirely new dimensions.

Rosie Dennis - Artistic Director/CEO, Urban Theatre Projects

Rosie Dennis creates work renowned for distinct beauty, universality and currency. Prior to joining UTP Rosie’s work was presented at more than 25 festivals across Central Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. She has received a number of new work commissions including: Carriageworks, Channel 4 (UK), ABC TV Arnolfini (UK) and Mousonturn Kunstlerhaus (GER). Most recently she has directed two documentaries, Bre & Back and One Day For Peace.