Museums Immersive Network: How to Collaborate with Confidence

Chair

Nicola Henderson
XpoNorth Heritage Sector Specialist

Nicola Henderson is a freelance arts and heritage professional. She has worked within Scotland's Cultural Sector for almost 20 years - from Glasgow to Aberdeenshire via Skye and Sutherland. Nicola has worked as director of two of Scotland's leading cultural organisations - Timespan in Helmsdale and The Barn in Banchory. Following the birth of her first child, Nicola has worked freelance on a number of creative projects - from devising and delivering Associate Artist Programmes to managing New Music Scotland and working with the Highland heritage sector on building resilience.

Nicola currently works as the Heritage Specialist for XpoNorth and as the Innovation and Network manager for Museums and Heritage Highland - two roles that overlap in supporting museums to innovate for a sustainable future. She also co-runs the Museums Immersive Network with Cornwall Museums Partnership.

Amy Shakespeare
Project Manager, wAVE Immersive Experiences / Innovation Manager, Cornwall Museums Partnership

Project Manager, wAVE Immersive Experiences / Innovation Manager, Cornwall Museums Partnership
Amy is the Project Manager for wAVE Immersive Experiences as well as Cornwall Museums Partnership's Innovation Manager. Amy recently completed a MA in Heritage and Interpretation, and was awarded the Professor Susan Pearce Prize for her dissertation, ‘What If We Want To Give It Back? The Potential of Democratising the Repatriation Process in Britain’. Amy is now working towards a PhD exploring how museums interpret material culture repatriation for the public and the longevity and ethics of the relationships created by return - provisionally entitled 'Exhibiting Absence: The Anti-Colonial Spaces Left by Repatriation,' during her spare time.

Speakers

Ellie Smith
Cornwall Museums Partnership

Ellie is the Innovation Officer at Cornwall Museums Partnership, originally joining the charity as the wAVE Project Support Apprentice. Ellie graduated from Exeter University with a BA Honours Degree in History. Her studies focussed on social history and gender history; in particular, the role that historical popular culture has played in the binary construction of subordinate femininity and superordinate masculinity. During her apprenticeship at CMP, Ellie adopted a greater understanding of the heritage sector – ultimately focussing on how projects can promote accessibility for, and increase the diversity of, museum visitors.

Tanya Krzywinska
Professor Tanya Krzywinska, Professor of Digital Games, Falmouth University

Tanya started playing computer-based games on Usenet when working at the Digital Equipment Corporation while doing her Masters in film. Several years later, after completing her PhD and teaching film and media, she realised that there was very little academic writing about video games and decided to remedy that. She gave her earliest paper on horror games at one of the first-ever academic conferences on games in 2000 and, soon after, edited with Geoff King the first collection of essays to be devoted to the study of the relationship between games and cinema. Since then, she has focused her attention mainly on games, with a particular interest in developing the use of games technologies and design in heritage contexts. She has also maintained her enthusiasm for the gothic and horror generally across various media.

Joining forces with Steve Jackson, a veteran of the games industry, in 2005, Tanya developed and convened a successful MA focused on videogame design, boasting 60% graduate employability in the games industry. Subsequently, a suite of BAs in Games Design were added to her portfolio of course development, most recently a single honours award in games design. She has joined Falmouth University to bring her expertise and experience to the development of a Digital Games Academy that will offer a suite of Games BA(Hons) and BSc(Hons) courses in Digital Game Art, Animation, Design, Music, Programming and Writing in 2014. She supervises PhD students on the Games Doctoral programme.

Over the course of her career, Tanya has had published many articles and books on screen-based and interactive media fiction. She became president of the Digital Games Research Association in 2006 and has been the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Games and Culture, published by Sage https://journals.sagepub.com/home/gac. The journal has an impact factor of 1.574 and a 5-year impact factor of 1.685. She is also an artist with a studio at Krowji, Redruth.

Anna Lowe
CoFounder and Director of Partnerships, Smartify

Anna is CoFounder and Director of Partnerships at Smartify, a digital platform that makes museums accessible for a global audience through innovative technology and engaging storytelling. Previously, she worked in arts education for the London Borough of Camden and the National Museum of Fine Art, Argentina. In 2019 Anna was appointed a Trustee at the Tate, making her the youngest ever trustee of a UK national museum. She is also a Trustee of Hope in Tottenham a youth charity that provides counselling, mentoring and art programmes for young people in Tottenham, North London.


Phil Hunt
Digital Content Publisher and Analyst, National Galleries of Scotland

A photography and film graduate working at the National Galleries of Scotland for over 10 years. During that time Phil has worked across a range of digital projects from the website to digital recreations of 19th century stereoscopic photographs. A lifelong fan of Ray Harryhausen, Phil is part of the project team for the exhibition Ray Harryhausen | Titan of Cinema and responsible for the digital content for the Smartify app.

Kevin McCrae
CD & Founder, Playdead

Design for motion is in Kevin's blood, whether that be for commercial, entertainment or cultural arts. With over 15 years’ experience, Kevin has covered every sector including broadcast, film, experiential, games, and technology.

His origins began in the fundamentals of graphic design, with typography, layout and composition at the core, which has been intrinsic to every aspect of my career.

Knowing intimately the way the industry works, and understanding its constant evolution was his inspiration for founding Playdead (2020 Grand Prix winner - Scottish Design Awards).

Playdead is a concept driven and thought-provoking studio that delivers creative solutions internationally. Communicating impactful content through VFX, Animation and Motion Graphics across multi-platforms and sectors.




Lauren Livesey
Partnerships Manager, Curatours

Lauren is Partnerships Manager at Curatours, where she works with museum partners to help bring their collection and stories onto the platform. With a decade of experience in collections, front of house, audience development and events, Lauren has worn many hats in her time, but currently manages the events programme at the Brontë Parsonage Museum alongside her work at Curatours.

Emma Cooper
Interactive Producer /Creative Business Leader

Emma is an interactive producer and creative business leader, she’s spent well over 15 years giving audiences agency to explore stories in exciting new ways. She has owned and run a work for hire games business, produced games for marketing, entertainment, learning and social change. Along the way she's worked on a few BAFTA winning projects, been a BAFTA Juror, a member of The Children’s Media Conference Advisory Committee, and was Executive Producer for Alternate Realities at Sheffield Doc/Fest.