The imagination gap: unlocking change through creative disruption

Dr Innocent (he/they) is an urban play scholar, artist gamemaker and Director of the future play lab at RMIT University in Narrm Melbourne. The lab develops socially engaged and site responsive urban play connecting experimental game design, public space, posthuman methods, and creative technologies. Working with the city as a material, their approach to reworlding develops posthuman methods that reimagine, reconfigure and reconnect with the world. This involves transdisciplinary practices across design, sculpture, animation, sound, light and installation using methods of multiplatform storytelling that connect objects with their environment to build speculative worlds that playfully defamiliarise and disrupt urban life.

Mitch Jones is an award-winning performer, director, and cultural leader working at the intersection of experimental circus, physical theatre, and punk culture. He has toured and performed with major companies, including Snuff Puppets, La Fura Dels Baus (Spain), Circus Oz and Slava’s Snowshow (France/Russia), as well as enjoying a thrilling entertainment career as cartoonish daredevil Captain Ruin. In 2018 he founded alt-circus company Oozing Future to create innovative performances that use a hybrid physical vocabulary to deliver compelling experiences aimed at general audiences. Collaborating with a network of artists and designers, their shows AutoCannibal, Strange Chaos and Apocrypha have now been seen on major stages in Australia and internationally.

Phoebe Watson is a proud Gunditjmara woman from South-West Victoria. Moving to Wurundjeri Country to study at RMIT University, Phoebe completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Design (Games) and has been working in the digital games industry both locally and internationally since 2020. Phoebe is Associate Producer at ILBIJERRI Theatre Company, bringing her knowledge from producing digital games to theatre. She is dedicated to bringing together the ideas of creatives, and working closely with Community and Elders to bring stories to life. Her passion and interest for the arts spans across multi-disciplines, always looking at new technology and acknowledging what came before.