About
This Gathering is an opportunity to meet, share and showcase the data-driven innovation and creative technology that is being developed in Scotland, and how it is being used across the wide range of disciplines in the creative industries to deliver amazing work.
The day provides an opportunity to meet each other, see incredible innovations and creativetech uses from our demonstrators, hear from leading players in the creativetech community and hopefully be inspired. We hope you find the day we have put together to be informative, fun, and good for the soul!
Caroline Parkinson is Sector Engagement Manager - Creative Industries and Director of Creative for the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI). She works with the Scottish creative and cultural industries to stimulate innovation collaborations with academic expertise within The University of Edinburgh. Prior to this she was a freelance practitioner in photography, and consultant in creative innovation and business skills. From 2010-2014 she was Director of Film, TV, Music, Creative Industries, Skills & Innovation for Creative Scotland, and from 2005-2010 she was Director, Scotland & Northern Ireland for the new sector skills association, Creative & Cultural Skills. She serves on the Board of Architecture & Design Scotland, and for seven years has served in a voluntary capacity as Strategic Director and Presenter of the MOVE Summit, Scotland's Animation and VFX Gathering.
Aja joined the Scottish Music Industry Association (SMIA) in 2024 as General Manager. Their role involves the day-to-day management of the SMIA's business operations, including overseeing the successful delivery of our annual programme of services, projects and events; supporting the work of the wider executive team. They also work with our partners across SMIA projects and programmes, building effective relationships to support the SMIA's strategic objectives. They have previously held roles at Youth Music & the PRS Foundation.
Beverley Hood is an artist and Reader in Technological Embodiment and Creative Practice, at the University of Edinburgh. Since the mid-1990s, she has interrogated the impact of technology and science on the body, relationships, and human experience through the creation of digital media, performance art projects, and writing. Her work is interdisciplinary and research-led, undertaken in collaboration with a range of practitioners, including medical researchers, scientists, writers, technologists, dancers, actors, and composers. Her work has been performed, screened, and exhibited at international galleries, museums, conferences, and festivals. She is currently a Co-Investigator, on the UKRI BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) programme funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), led by the University of Edinburgh in partnership with the Ada Lovelace Institute and the BBC.
Brian is a writer, designer, founder and CEO who started his career in games as the writer for Grand Theft Auto. Brian became Rockstar Games first Global PR Manager in NYC, before moving into the nascent mobile games industry with Scottish pioneer Digital Bridges. In 2002 Brian founded Indoctrimat, which worked with over 150 organisations around the world. Brian also lectures at Edinburgh Napier University, on the transformative power of interactive media. Brian founded the Scottish Games Network in 2004, the industry body for Scotland's games industry. In 2022 Brian created Scottish Games Week, the first large-scale games event in the country and is now building a new ecosystem-wide cluster with the aim of making Scotland one of the world's leading hubs for games. He's a regular contributor to the media, tech ecosystem and government, whenever they need to know more about this 'games thing'.
Graduating from the University of Glasgow with an MA Hons in Music, Christopher has worked in arts programming, marketing and communications, fundraising and strategic development for the past 15 years. He joined Perth Theatre and Concert Hall in 2021 having previously held various positions at Cryptic, the Scottish Music Centre and Cheltenham Festivals. He currently serves on the boards of Drake Music Scotland & PLUS Perth and was Vice Chair of the European Music Council Youth Committee.
Evan is a research software engineer in the Institute for Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, where he supports researchers in designing and developing software tools and prototypes. He has over 15 years' experience in multidisciplinary technical, research, and development work; spanning both industry and academia. Evan has a particular interest in the application of creative technologies in live performance and interactive contexts. He completed his PhD in Media and Arts Technology at Queen Mary University of London in 2016, where he investigated the use of sensor technologies (e.g. motion, physiology, eye-tracking) for understanding and enhancing non-verbal interactions between collaborating musicians. More recently, Evan has worked on projects involving the application of AI for health and wellbeing and the use of blockchain technologies for creative media tokenisation.
Dr. Inge Panneels, artist and Lecturer in Digital Media at Edinburgh Napier University is looking at how data and technology is deployed, or missing, to help the creative industries embrace the quadruple bottom line (people, planet, profit and purpose), and the role creativity can play to implement a culture shift towards a circular economy which operates within social and ecological boundaries. She is a current Trustee of Edinburgh Tool Library, was Senior Lecturer at the Artist Designer Maker course, University of Sunderland; Crafts Advocate for Creative Arts Business Network (CABN) and Specialist Advisor for Creative Scotland and Scottish Arts Council.
Nicola Osborne (they/them/she/her) is Manager of the Institute for Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, EDI and Industry Partnerships Lead for the new UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training for Responsible and Trustworthy in-the-world NLP, and a co-investigator of the AHRC-funded CoSTAR Real-Time Lab. Nicola has also been the manager of Creative Informatics (2018-2024), supporting creative people to do innovative things with data. They also work on the EU-funded EKIP: Cultural and Creative Industries Policy Engine project, looking at how policy interventions can support creative innovation across Europe. They are also co-editor of the Creative Informatics book: Data Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries (Routledge, April 2024). Nicola sits on the board of The Space, a UK digital arts CIC, is a member of the Turing Institute Humanities & Data Science Interest Group, and the Journal of Open Research Software's Editorial Advisory Board.
Led by Edinburgh Futures Institute, the third CreativeTech Scotland Gathering brings together creative tech and data-driven innovation practitioners from across the creative industries to share, network, showcase their work and explore innovation within creative technology.
This event is supported by Edinburgh Futures Institute.
