New fellows explore the big questions facing the creative and cultural sector

From AI to the role of the artists in social change - nine fellows are leading an international research programme to explore the future of creative and cultural practice.

As part of the programme launched by the RSC and supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), each fellow will focus on a research theme that responds to the biggest challenges faced by the creative industries and wider society today.

In collaboration with seven global organisations, their research will explore some of the biggest questions facing the creative and cultural sector today, and the changes needed for its development, future economic growth and survival, including:

Trust and reality in the age of AI
Change-making within creative institutions
Integrating traditional and innovative workflows
Places where ‘liveness’ happens - from stage to site-specific to the metaverse
Immersive exhibitions and best-practice for co-creation with audiences
Approaches to storytelling in an immersive landscape, and
The role of the artist as an agent of social change in the archive.

Following their research period, the fellows will come back together in Stratford-upon-Avon in summer 2025 for a Festival of Ideas, supported by a grant from the Rothschild Foundation, where they will share their research findings and potential opportunities for the sector. You can follow the progress of their research on the Interdisciplinary Fellowship website.

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RSC Co-Artistic Directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey, said:
"The RSC has a rich research history. As the only UK performing arts organisation with Independent Research Organisation status, our focus is on artist-led research and the positive impact that can make to the cultural industry and wider society."

The Fellowships form part of AHRC’s PORTIA (Participatory and Open Research Through Technology in Action) programme, which seeks to create the spaces, places and platforms that enable creativity-led research and development to thrive.

The programme forms part of our status as an Independent Research Organisation (IRO), dedicated to developing new forms of practice-led research.

It has been developed in collaboration with seven global organisations: Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Music Center, Watershed, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Open Documentary Lab and Co-Creation Studio, Stanford Arts, and TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities, Humanities Division, University of Oxford. Each organisation will host fellows throughout the year to support their research and development.

Professor Christopher Smith, AHRC Executive Chair
"By investing in more creative, collaborative ways of working, AHRC is empowering the RSC to develop new networks for artists to take risks, and share knowledge and best practice, while attracting a diverse pool of talent to ensure we maintain and strengthen a vitally important sector for our world today and for our future growth.”

MEET THE FELLOWS

Stephen Bailey

Hosted by: TORCH - The Oxford Research Center for the Humanities, Humanities Division, University of Oxford

Stephen (he/they) is an award-winning director and theatremaker and current Artistic Lead of NPO Vital Xposure, who make innovative and political disabled-led work.

They won the 2022 Royal Theatrical Support Trust Sir Peter Hall Directors Award, and have previously worked with the National Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Royal Opera House, Graeae, Young Vic, Royal Court and European Theatre Convention. Stephen has trained with LAMDA, the Young Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Jemma Desai

Hosted by: The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)

Jemma (she/her) is a cultural worker across film, visual arts and performance and a somatic facilitator working with individuals and groups.

As an independent curator and festival producer, she has collaborated with London Indian Film Festival, Birds Eye View Film Festival, London Short Film Festival, BFI Flare and Edinburgh International Film Festival. She has a Masters in Cultural Heritage Studies and has previously worked as Film Programme Manager (Shorts and Global Exhibition) for the British Film Council and at the Black Cultural Archives. Jemma is currently an Artist in Residence at Somerset House, London.

Janice Duncan

Hosted by: The Music Center

Janice (she/they) is an Academy Award-nominated creative producer, filmmaker, and interdisciplinary artist from Detroit.

Janice was a 2018 Sundance New Frontier Programs fellow, a 2019 MacDowell interdisciplinary fellow, and a 2019 UC Davis Feminist Research Institute Visiting Scholar Program fellow. , she received a 2021 Academy Award nomination. As the producer of the experimental documentary short A Love Song For Latasha, she received a 2021 Academy Award nomination. As a Black queer woman, Duncan’s creative practice centres on Black women’s interiority and their bodies as vessels of sacred creative vitality.

Tabitha Jackson

Hosted by: The Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology’s Open Documentary Lab and Co-Creation Studio

Tabitha (she/her) is a freelance Film Executive, Emmy Award-winning maker, commissioning executive and funder with almost 30 years’ experience in the field. Her previous posts include Director of the Documentary Film Program at Sundance Institute, Head of Arts and Performance at Channel 4 Television in London, and executive producer on theatrical nonfiction projects at Film4, including 20,000 Days on Earth and The Arbor. Tabitha was appointed Director of the Sundance Film Festival in February 2020.

Scarlett Kim

Hosted by: Stanford Arts

Scarlett (she/her) is a creative producer and director whose work explores the intersection of live performance and immersive technology.

Scarlett is the co-founder and Executive Creative Producer of Center for Unclassifiable Technologies & Experiences (CUTE) and recently joined Culture House Immersive as Head of Innovation, having previously served as Director of Innovation & Strategy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival. As a queer, diasporic multihyphenate artist, she is passionate about serving intersectional communities and hosting spaces for pluralistic perspectives.

Akhila Krishnan

Hosted by: The Royal Shakespeare Company

Akhila Krishnan (she/her) is a creative director and designer. She has more than 15 years of experience working internationally in live performance and events, theatre, opera, projection mapping, installation, exhibition, virtual reality, augmented reality, television, live broadcast, short film, illustration, and graphic narrative.

Akhila is interested in the possibilities that technology offers to take narrative and storytelling beyond the screen; bringing it into lived spaces via shared experiences. Her practice moves between the material and immaterial, between the digital and tactile, seeking new connections and resonances between them.

Amy Rose

Hosted by: Watershed

Amy (she/her) is a highly acclaimed director and maker, known for creating sensory stories that experiment with new technologies.

Co-founder of the celebrated immersive studio Anagram, she is now Lead Curator of Undershed, a new immersive gallery at Watershed in Bristol. Originally a documentary filmmaker with an MFA in directing from Edinburgh College of Art, she also runs wild camps for children and is on the core team of an annual music festival in Wales, running since 2010.

Amahra Spence

Hosted by: TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities, Humanities Division, University of Oxford

Amahra (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and spatial practitioner.

As Founding Director of MAIA (2013) and Organiser of The Black Land & Spatial Justice Project (2020), she leads teams engaging culture, land and the politics of space to build real-time strategies for Black liberation. This includes Land Black, a research and design studio prototyping anti-carceral architectural and land-based strategies. Amahra also pioneered YARD (2020), turning a residential townhouse into a neighbourhood site of imagination, artist residency space and community hub.

Nami Weatherby

Hosted by: The Music Center

Nami is a multimedia artist and researcher. Her multimedia sound installation they never told us these things has been exhibited in New York, Seoul, and Kyoto.

As a creative researcher and producing fellow in Digital Innovation at The Music Center, Nami collaborated with Kamal Sinclair to develop the Black Bar Social, a monthly immersive experience and speakeasy-style social gathering designed to spark public imagination and catalyse conversations about the future of culture in LA.

Visit the IF website