Playaway Speakers

Website: hiddendoorblog.org

Ilse is currently at the Umeå Institute of Design working on her graduate thesis. Focusing on creating interventions that explore and challenge the relation we have with our technologies, undermine through design. Before, she spend time at Tellart and LEGO as an interaction designer. As a designer she is trying to take up challenging problems of merging the physical and digital for societal contexts. With a heart for exploring new technologies through prototyping, approaching them from a different angle to bring a little magic to the world.

Website: http://www.ilsepouwels.nl

I am an American composer whose current work focuses on ways of composing experiences within and through background sociomusical activities. This work has thus far involved audiences and performing musicians listening to audio guides that lead them across discreet sonic, choreographic, and emotional terrains in parallel with musical performances and interpersonal interactions in concert settings.

Website: https://michaelbaldwin.online

B. Wijshijer is a research-based artist working within digital media and video installation. Wijshijer utilizes online trends and subcultures to deconstruct mediated intimacies and personas on digital platforms. Informed by acceleration aesthetics, their work plays with excess and artifice to interrogate the ways in which late capitalism affects our digital lives. Wijshijer received their BFA in Printmaking from OCAD University in 2017 and an MFA from the University of Waterloo in 2020.

Website: https://www.shrimpychip.net/

Martin is an artist, researcher and creative technologist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His work interrogates computer vision systems by manifesting their internal contradictions in image, video and sound. Martin was recently artist-in-residence at the National Library of Scotland and his work has exhibited at the V&A Museum (Dundee, Scotland), Summerhall (Edinburgh, Scotland), The Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow, Scotland), Guterhallen Gallery (Soligen, Germany), Sala Aranyo (Barcelona, Spain) and Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Ghent, Belgium).

Website: www.martindisley.co.uk

Twitter: @martin_disley

Now in his 10th year of teaching, Steven continues to enjoy the ever-changing, demanding and satisfying role of the Primary Teacher. In his current role as Principal Teacher in his school he has a variety of responsibilities which includes overseeing the Early Years department, Literacy, Expressive Arts and Digital Learning curriculum in the school. He considers himself privileged to be able to work with children from every class across the school which keeps his life very interesting. In his spare time Steven enjoys spending time with his young family, learning Spanish, piano and attempting to play basketball.

Kate has worked for arts organisations and local authorities across Northern Ireland and Scotland since 1990. Currently Director of North Edinburgh Arts (NEA), the organisation provides opportunities for individual and community development through contact with the professional arts. NEA is active in the local regeneration process, advocating the role of the artist and creativity as positive forces within the dynamic of a community in flux. Alongside this Kate is Chair of Scotland’s Regeneration Forum (SURF), sits on the Board of Tinderbox Orchestra and North Edinburgh Childcare. In August 2019 Kate was appointed as Convener of the first Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland.

North Edinburgh Arts (NEA)

Website: northedinburgharts.co.uk

Shauna is the Co-artistic Director at Edinburgh Youth Theatre.

Shauna has a 20 year career as a multi award winning actor, including a BAFTA Scotland Award 2018 and The Stage Award 2019. She has over 70 credits to date in film, tv, theatre and radio, including Spooks, The Descent, Dangermouse, Filth, Star Wars The Last Jedi. Shauna was starring in MOUTHPIECE, a Traverse Theatre production, when the pandemic hit. She has written and directed numerous plays for and with young people and professional companies. Shauna is artistic director of Edinburgh Youth Theatre.  

Edinburgh Youth Theatre’s key goal is to provide barrier free, youth led, quality participation in the performing arts. EYT has been delivering their drama and filmmaking classes online since April 2020 and has significant capabilities in working online or in-person. EYT also offers local and national performance opportunities including EdFringe and National Theatre Connections and loves nothing better than to work collaboratively on community projects.

www.eytheatre.com

David Rocks has taught Music at Greenwood Academy, North Ayrshire since 2008.

He is a former pupil of Irvine Royal Academy and achieved a BEd Hons from the Royal Conservatoire Scotland (formerly RSAMD) in 2007. David enjoys taking music into the local community, giving pupils the opportunity to perform at various events throughout the year.

Music Teacher Garnock Community Campus

Teacher of Music Ardrossan Academy

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