Creative Industries Festival 2025

10 - 13 February 2025

Reflections across disciplines, realities and opportunities

Attention often focuses on the creative industries for their contributions to the economy. We are bringing together 26 researchers and creative practitioners across 10 events over 4 days, considering the realities of these industries and the challenges they face to examine not only their economic contributions, but also their roles in shaping cultural landscapes and society more broadly.

From rapid advancements of digital technologies enabling disruption, to intensified competition for roles both within and without the gig economy, the reality of working in and around the creative industries highlights both their value and their precarity.

Hosted by the Creative Industries Research and Innovation Network at Oxford Brookes University, the festival invites artists, educators, entrepreneurs, researchers, policy-makers/advocates and everyone with a passion for creativity to reflect on the complex nature of what the opportunities the creative industries entails and how different segments are rising to current challenges.

Join us in exploring the realities of the creative industries and celebrating our creative communities in interactive workshops, panel discussions, showcases, screenings and more!

For more details and to get involved, please email creativeindustries@brookes.ac.uk.

Day 1: Online programme

The art of immersion: Composing for theme parks and thriving in the creative industries

Date: 10 February 2025
Time: 10:00am -11:30am
Location: Online

In this Q&A session, composer Olivia Zorab discusses the artistry behind music for theme parks. Explore the creative process, the practical challenges of the entertainment industry, and the balance between innovation and collaboration in crafting immersive experiences to captivate audiences of all ages.

Chair: Dr Matt Lawson, co-founder of The Sound on Screen Research Group, Oxford Brookes University.

Getting the best out of coaching and mentoring in the creative industries

Date: 10 February 2025
Time: 12:00pm -1:15 pm
Location: Online

he UK's creative sector is growing as an employer, but it also continues to face issues around a lack of diversity in the workplace and precarious working practices. Join Katie Thomson Greene, CEO of the Creative Mentor Network to discuss how mentoring can help to shape inclusive leaders, elevate emerging talent, and foster systemic change in the UK creative industries so that they fully reflect the diversity of our society.

Chair: Dr Judie Gannon, Director of Doctoral Programmes in Oxford Brookes Business School and a member of the International Centre for Coaching & Mentoring Studies (ICCaMs).

woman looking at the camera with a plant in the background

Synthetic realities across contemporary sound and image: Artificial intelligence and the digital as collaborative practice

Date: 10 February 2025
Time: 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Location: Online

James Irwin is an artist working with web technologies, AI systems and digital sound and image to investigate the notion of a vital life force inherent within digital media and the affective potential of computational aesthetics. His talk will focus around recent artworks made in collaboration with AI systems, and explore how digital aesthetics make us feel things.

digitalised face staring at digital purple text

The future of digital is not coding: Interactive workshop

Date: 10 February 2025
Time: 3:30pm - 4:30pm
Location: Online

The no-code movement is revolutionising the creative industries by removing technical barriers and democratising access to digital innovation. At this session, you can learn how to build digital experiences, project websites, online learning resources, designs and more, all without code. Absolute beginners welcome.

Person in an art gallery with his laptop, sitting on the floor

Day 2: Festival on campus

Keynote: Levelling Up the Screen Industries - Film and Television

Date: 11 February 2025
Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: Headington Hill Hall

Dr Mark McKenna, Associate Professor in Digital, Tech, Innovation & Business will be joining us from the University of Staffordshire to present findings from his research project: "Levelling Up the Screen Industries - Film and Television Production as Regenerative Strategy in Places Left Behind". He will be sharing case studies from his fieldwork in industry in Southampton, Staffordshire and Sunderland.

Institutions of social contact in an age of networking: A long table discussion

Date: 11 February 2025
Time: 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: Headington Hill Hall

Laura Jagger and Natasha Eves will be hosting a participatory and collaborative discussion, introducing themes of relational practices, access, (crip)time, encounters, and public space within the context of art. Laura and Natasha will create a series of prompts which will facilitate conversation, inviting the public to participate in their iteration of Lois Weaver’s experimental Long Table format, allowing a rotation of people to participate and witness discussions.

colourful entrance to an event on the left and on the right and exhibition piece of canvas peeling off some white tiles

Day 3: Festival on campus

A place for We: Living engagement with the archives of African Caribbean Oxford

Date: 12 February 2025
Time: 1:00pm - 3:00pm
Location: John Henry Brookes Lecture Theatre, John Henry Brookes Building

'A place for We' is a research group which has emerged from collaborative projects with community, creative and academic partners in Oxford. In this workshop, we will give an insight into our explorations of archiving as a living practice through interactions with troubled and violent institutional archives on the one hand, and the rematerialization through storytelling and public performance of the individual and communal stories. After a short presentation, participants can choose between two options for the interactive part:

The journey of a community archive: Participants will be invited to contribute to the making of ‘wearable archives’ to be worn at future events, which are a creative response to our research. The activities will form a backdrop to conversations about the lived experience of African Caribbean Oxford and the journey of a community archive across 4 decades.

Women in the Italian film industry

Date: 12 February 2025
Time: 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Location: John Henry Brookes Lecture Theatre, John Henry Brookes Building

In the last few decades, a growing body of feminist scholarship has countered the tendency to marginalise women from historical accounts by uncovering their contributions to film industries across the globe, while providing alternative historiographical methodologies. Building on existing feminist film history, the AHRC-funded project ‘Women in Italian film production: industrial histories and gendered labour’ aims to investigate the place of women in Italian cinema by looking at a diverse range of professional roles.

Day 4: Student programme

TAP the audience project: Research showcase

Date: 13 February 2025
Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: Gibbs 301, Gibbs Building, Humanities and Social Sciences

Audience research at Oxford Brookes covers a wide range of interests including cinema heritage and memories, fan communities and production, celebrity and digital media practices. The Audience Project (TAP) is a research group at the Centre of Research in the Arts bringing together scholars working in these areas from across the University. In this session, TAP spotlights the exciting work of students and early career researchers in audience research. All participants are invited to join in an exchange between students and researchers across schools and disciplines!

It's yours: Hip-hop and the internet

Date: 13 February 2025
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: JHB 308 (Kennedy room), John Henry Brookes Building

'It's yours: Hip-hop and the internet' chronicles how young artists used the internet to reshape the music industry. Filmed over a decade, it follows pioneers like Wiz Khalifa, Lil B, and Odd Future, who built careers on platforms like Twitter, YouTube and MySpace. The film explores this evolving landscape, including lyrical controversies and the rise of social justice movements.