PlayAway

Dominic Campbell is an Artistic Director, Producer and Creative, and is the co-founder and director of Creative Aging International.

As Bealtaine Festival’s Director he steered the festivals growth and expansion over eight years. Formerly an Artistic Director of Ireland’s national celebration, St Patrick’s Festival, he transformed its three shows into ninety within four years growing production and managerial teams alongside the financial support required. Within two years the festival generated €80 million for Dublin City’s economy in audience spend on consumables while using cultural tourism to support social cohesion.

Dominic went on to design and produce national celebrations marking the expansion of European Union in 2004 and the Centenary celebrations for James Joyce. For “The Day Of Welcomes” which marked EU expansion, he devised and produced 12 simultaneous festivals pairing EU expansion countries with Irish towns and cities engaging 2500 artists from 32 countries.
It was delivered from conception in six months.

He joined Bealtaine in 2005 recognizing that the festival was a “sleeping giant” and led Bealtaine’s success. From 2007 
he tripled the scale of the festival while deepening its engagement and achievement. He has maintained local ownership and goodwill while overseeing its international engagements.

He mentored festivals in Wales (Gwanwynn), Scotland (Luminate), and has developed projects with partners in Australia and The Netherlands. In 2012 he established the first global conference on Creativity In Older Age opened by Irish President Michael D Higgins.

In 2016 he became an inaugural Atlantic Fellow for Equity and Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute a project between Trinity College Dublin and University College Southern California an ambitious worldwide program seeking social and public health solutions to reduce the scale and adverse impact of dementia.

Recognized by The Irish Times as one of the top ten key cultural influencers in Ireland he is seeking strategic and business partners to establish Bealtaine festival type programs in the US.

Linked In: Dominic Campbell

Website: www.creativeageinginternational.com

Scottish band The Jellyman’s Daughter lands squarely in the middle of a crossroads between bluegrass, post-rock, folk and soul, managing at the same time to sound not a whole lot like any of those genres. Emily and Graham write their songs together with a focus on doing something new, mixing their intimate vocal harmonies with wild and visceral cello, driving guitar and sweet mandolin, complimented brilliantly by banjo (Jamie Francis) and double bass (Herbie Loening).

In 2018 The Jellyman’s Daughter released their new album, ‘Dead Reckoning’. It represents a marked step forward in maturity, depth and scope for the duo, achieving 5 stars in multiple publications and inclusion in Popmatters’ ‘The 20 Best Folk Albums of 2018’.

The past couple of years have seen the band tour extensively around the globe, playing prestigious festivals from Scotland’s own Celtic Connections to Australia’s Port Fairy Folk Festival.

Website:  www.thejellymansdaughter.com
Instagram: @jellymansdaughter
Facebook: @jmdmusic
Youtube: @jellymansdaughter

John Hamilton Smith V (aka, Slide20XX) is a composer who decided to write music for video games at the age of 13 and hasn’t stopped since. His work has appeared in Against Gravity’s VR title “Rec Room,” a Princeton affiliated massively multiplayer neuroscience game named “EyeWire,” and crowd-controlled music-based video games designed and shown at the Red Bull Music Academy in Madrid, Spain and MIT’s festival of arts and technology, Hacking Arts. His most recent work has included the soundtrack for Calico, a game about magical girls running a cat cafe, and music for a pair of anti-racism PSAs created by Cartoon Network series, Steven Universe. He also works as composer, sound designer, and creative director for his game company, Games Without Words.

Website: http://slide20xx.com

Twitter: @slide20xx

Instagram: @slide20xx

Paul O’ Neill is an artist and researcher based in Dublin, Ireland.

His practice and research is concerned with the implications of our collective dependency on networked technologies and infrastructures. This discourse is reflected in his academic background, he holds an MSc Multimedia from Dublin City University and an MA in Digital Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.  

Paul is currently completing a PhD which focuses on media art practices that critique and subvert techno-solutionist narratives and histories.

Website: www.aswemaysink.com

Beverley is the Learning and Events Producer at BAFTA Scotland and is responsible for programming, producing and delivering both industry and career starter events for Scotland’s film, game and television industry.   Beverley manages BAFTA’s Learning and New Talent programme in Scotland and has developed new talent initiatives such as Career Close-Up and leads on the Guru Live Glasgow festival for new entrants.  

Website: Bafta.org/Scotland

Twitter: @baftascotland

Facebook: @baftascotland

Instagram: @baftascotland

Natalie is a writer and game designer based in Los Angeles, CA. Having studied both dramaturgy and game design at Carnegie Mellon University, Natalie specializes in narrative design and script development for multi-media storytelling. She’s designed small-scale TTRPGs, and her previous narrative work for Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute explored human-AI decision-making via branching interactive stories.

She is particularly passionate about meaningful representation of BIPOC within the TTRPG space, as well as accessibility of design within interactive entertainment. Natalie is currently working freelance, as well as on several personal projects.

Websites:
natalie-schmidt.wixsite.com/portfolio
medium.com/@s.natalie25

I am an MPhil Research student at the University of Glasgow, following my interest in the field of video game studies that I gained during my undergraduate degree in film and television studies. My masters project on fandom and games preservation came about from years of interest in video game modding, repairing older consoles and game emulation. My love for retro-games and computers themselves probably started as a kid when my dad and I kept having to repair our Windows 95 PC to play 3D Realms games! The enthusiasm in gaming fandoms for preserving even the rarest games of the 1990s and 2000s era has been a great drive for me in my research as I strongly believe even the most niche communities of the internet have great insights into contemporary online culture. Being able to research a subject I have loved for so many years, as well as one that needs so much critical attention and research, is a privilege that I hope to continue working on for many years to come.

Twitter: @polarframe

Dr David Farrell is (at least for the next week) a lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University where he teaches game design and researches the design of Applied Games.  He’s interested in just about every aspect of game design practice.  David currently leads the a small game dev team at GCU who are making LifeLab+, a gamey / app that has a mixture of playful challenges, self experiments, and games aimed at helping teenagers take charge of their health (trailer here: http://bit.ly/2019LLPT ).

Twitter: @unthank
LinkedIn: davidfarrell
Portfolio:  gameologist.com

Robin is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Game Design and Production at Abertay University, who left the games industry in 2007 to pursue a PhD in game character animation and joined Abertay as a Lecturer in 2011.