International

Curator, executive producer and pioneer of immersive and interactive creative media.

Liz is Curator of Venice Biennale’s International Film Festival's Official Selection and Competition programme Venice Immersive, Executive Producer of immersive content accelerator programme, CreativeXR, led by Arts Council England and Digital Catapult and the CEO & Founder of trail-blazing innovation company Power to the Pixel. She has an extensive network and knowledge of international talent, financiers and distributors across the immersive entertainment and arts space.
Throughout her career, Liz has helped international media businesses and artists to innovate and adapt their practice to evolving platforms, tools and audiences. She has advised countless leading international festivals, media organisations and national and regional funds.
At Venice Film Festival she was instumental in the launch of Venice Immersive in 2017, the first and only official immersive content selection and competition in an A-list festival. Venice Immersive has helped establish XR as a new artistic and entertainment form and has pushed the boundaries of exhibiting immersive works. In 2020 Venice was the first festival to create a globally accessible virtual world exhibition of 44 works with in real life satellite venues in 14 countries.
At CreativeXR Liz helped design and lead this unique accelerator programme as Executive Producer. The programme has so far supported the development and finance of 60 XR projects by leading UK creative teams, many that have gone on to win major awards including; Goliath: Playing With Reality, Madrid Noir, (His)Story of a Painting, Austerity on Trial and Common Ground.
At Power to the Pixel, Liz created the first-ever international programmes for developing, financing and showcasing interactive and immersive works. Incubator, the Pixel Lab helped develop over 100 projects and Power to the Pixel: The Cross-Media Forum, run in association with the BFI London Film Festival over 10 years, brought together leading talent and financiers and created the frst ever project finance market for interactive projects and VR exhibition in London.
Liz began her media career in the film business. She set up and ran the UK office for Next Wave Films a division of the Independent Film Channel in the US from 1998 to 2002. Next Wave was a pioneer in the production, finance and sales of micro-budget features and digital filmmaking. Their award-winning films include Christopher Nolan's Following (Winner: Tiger Award, Rotterdam ’99, Silver Hitchcock, Dinard ’99), Kate Davis' Southern Comfort (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance ’01) and Josh Aronson's Sound and Fury (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance ’00, Academy Award nomination ’01).
She is invited regularly to speak at leading events and institutions around the world including the Cannes International Film Festival, Berlinale, Unity for Humanity Summit, Screen International Conferences, TEDx Transmedia, BAFTA and many more around the world. She has served as a jury member for numerous international festivals and funding programmes.
Liz is a board director of The Space commissioning fund for digital arts projects), a founding board member of Immerse UK (now Innovate UK Immersive Technology Network) whose content subgroup she chairs, and Latin American new media organisation Mediamorfosis. She is a member of BAFTA, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, The Guild of Future Architects and a fellow of the RSA.

Sam is a Director of the Creative Economy Team, a consultancy that specialises in event direction, partnership & engagement and consultancy support for projects including collaborations between the research community and industry.

CET is best known for its partnership & engagement support for the £110m Audience of the Future and Creative Industries Clusters Programmes run by UK Research & Innovation and the world’s leading creative R&D conference, BEYOND.

Prior to CET, Sam founded Chinwag supporting fast-growing technical businesses expand globally, working with over 300 companies and government trade support and innovation agencies.

Sam has led over 20 trade delegations showcasing industry verticals including Immersive Technology, Fintech, AdTech, Creative and Digital Agencies, Robotics to the US, Europe and China, including six large-scale programmes at US tech festival, SXSW.

He led the team that grew Social Media Week London, a collaborative festival to 280 events across London with 15,000 delegates attending as well as launching Chinwag Psych, the world’s first behavioural economics for business conference. In 2014, he launched Pitch NYC a new event to help later-stage tech firms raise US investment to expand internationally.

He is an independent grant assessor for Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation funding agency and a regular mentor at startup programmes including MassChallenge and a judge for the Big Chip Awards and TechNation’s Rising Stars programme.

Richard’s career in trade promotion has encompassed a number of sectors (leisure, education and creative) and markets (Hong Kong, Gulf, USA, Europe) but he describes his current role in promoting UK products and services in the “experience economy” as “the most intriguing, exciting and engaging of them all”.

I manage Innovate UK global programme of innovation missions to connect UK business to the best of innovation the world has to offer. We have an active and well established programme of around 20 innovation missions per year. Currently these are all being carried out virtually and we hope to learn from this experience to bring down the carbon footprint of the programme in the medium to long term.

I am also responsible for managing Innovate UK's partnership with Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands (my country of birth). We are actively seeking to deepen and strengthen our partnerships with innovation players in those countries for the benefit of UK companies.

In February 2020 13 UK AgriTech & Satellite Applications companies visited EvokeAg in Melbourne and toured a number of locations in NSW and Vic. under our leadership.

Specialties: innovation, science, technology, stakeholder management, Netherlands, Australia, grant funding, project management, programme management, exports, R&D, Prince2, APM, contract management, access to finance, strategy, German, Dutch (and English obviously), some French and Italian.

Dr Nee-Joo Teh is Head of KTN Global Alliance, KTN’s flagship international initiative, which he founded in 2020. Working in close partnerships with key UK government departments and international organisations, Nee-Joo leads KTN’s international strategy and a Global Alliance team located in the UK and Africa delivering activities across all sectors. https://ktn-uk.org/people/nee-joo-teh/

Mark is a Creative Industries Development Consultant with a varied portfolio of projects across both public and private sectors. His engagements always have a strong strategic policy or business development focus, and specific strengths in innovation support and international development.
Previously Mark spent 20 years in roles across the creative media sector, always in management and development, building new businesses and commercial revenues - from private SMEs to large media organisations, being a co-founder of an online start up or driving a sector development agency.
Mark’s current clients include Department for International Trade, British Film Commission, University of Bristol, Bath Spa University and Watershed.

Maddalena’s passion is helping creators realise their vision, particularly around XR. She specialises in running immersive and creative innovation programmes with the aim of building resilient ecosystems. Her work has taken her to the UK, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. Over her career, she has commissioned 45 prototypes and 12 completed productions of XR projects ranging from games, interactive entertainment and arts and culture content.
Maddalena is co-leading the Business Cases workstream for XR Access, a consortium led by Cornell Tech and supported by Verizon which focuses on building the industry in an accessible way. She also sits on Innovate UK Immersive Technology Network's International working group and on the board of the AE dance company.

An immersive technology specialist Jessica Driscoll is the Head of Immersive Technology at Digital Catapult. She has an MA in Digital Culture and Technology and experience of working with a variety of technologies from virtual reality, augmented reality and haptics in the creative and industrial sectors. She has implemented immersive training solutions in both educational and commercial institutions in particular NGO’s, Oil & Gas, Aviation, Pharmaceutical, Construction and Automotive industries. Her previous experience at BBC Research and Development gave her understanding and insight into audiences and testing new broadcast technologies at scale. With experience of each part of the immersive value chain from startups to international broadcaster, from business development to content production, this hands-on experience in immersive will help to shape the support offered for startups and scaleups in the immersive economy.

Graham provides strategic management advice on the development of major programmes for cities, cultural organisations, universities and government agencies. He works with clients to manage complex challenges - specialising in relationship building, and high-level facilitation and negotiation.
http://grahamhitchen.com/

He works on creative industries, design and innovation in London and internationally.

He was Design and Innovation Project Director for the London Development Agency, and was the founding Director of Creative London - which, among other things, was responsible for establishing Film London and the London Design Festival. He was also Director of Corporate Policy at Arts Council England from 1996 to 2000.
He is a member of the All Parliamentary Commission on Design.

I am currently responsible for helping overseas owned companies in the Creative & Media, and SportsTech sectors set up and expand in the UK.

I studied Biology at the University of Plymouth, I have since had a variety of roles in a variety of industries, and prior to working with the creative industries worked in science policy and strategy (2008-2016) at BBSRC, RCUK strategy unit, Government Office for Science, UK Trade and Investment (Science and Innovation Unit and Innovation Gateway).

Matt Sansam joined Innovate UK in 2010, where he is currently Head of Delivery for ‘Audience of the Future’, a £39m Industrial Strategy Challenge fund. Matt manages relationships with government departments, business, and academic communities, as well as scoping, planning, developing, and delivering various interventions aimed at organisations of all sizes. Matt has worked with many organisations within music, publishing, games, film, TV, culture, advertising, fashion, education, sport, health care, finance, on everything from small budget hand-held releases to large scale complex projects.

As Head of Delivery for the UKRI 'Audience of the Future' team, he responsible for the smooth and efficient operation of the AotF programme, management of the portfolio of funded projects, scoping and delivery of International activities, and the day-to-day operations of the AotF Challenge team.

Matt has nearly 30 years of experience in the games industry and is an advisory board member of the UK Games Talent and Finance CIC.