Inspiring and Innovating for the Arts: Performance, Practice and Production Dr Alison Balsom, Tess Ellison, Professor Damian Murphy - chaired by Sam Jackson

This event has now finished.
  • Date and time: Thursday 22 June 2023, 6pm to 8pm
  • Location: In-person only
    Ron Cooke Hub, Campus East, University of York (Map)
  • Admission: Free admission, booking required

Event details

School of Arts and Creative Technologies Launch Event 

Join us for a special showcase evening comprising a panel discussion by leaders in the creative sector, a performance showcase demonstrating the breadth of activity and talent across the School, and a celebration reception with drinks and canapés. Expect the unexpected!

The new School of Arts and Creative Technologies is a collaboration harnessing the University’s considerable strength and expertise in Music and Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media, bringing together these contemporary, dynamic and creative disciplines to develop new areas in teaching and learning, research and practice, and to enhance and expand our strategic collaborations with a range of external partners. The School aims to be a leader in creativity, combining academic scholarship with creative practice and industry relevance.

The launch event will include a panel discussion, and we are truly honoured to be welcoming such distinguished leaders in the different fields reflected in our School’s make-up. Speakers include an honorary graduate of the University: world-class classical trumpeter, Dr Alison Balsom; Tess Ellison , Executive Producer at Nottingham Playhouse, and the Principal Investigator of XR Stories, Professor Damian Murphy.

The panel will be chaired by York alumnus, Sam Jackson, who has recently taken on the role of Controller of BBC Radio 3. This extraordinarily powerful line-up of speakers will be reflecting on their own experiences and offering insights on the needs of the creative and arts sector and how the School can respond to those opportunities.

  • 6pm - Drinks and performances
  • c.6.40pm - Panel discussion
  • 7.30pm - Drinks reception and canapés

About the speakers

Tess Ellison is currently the Executive Producer at Nottingham Playhouse, where she leads on the planning and delivery of the theatre’s year round programme of new plays, adaptations, revivals and the traditional Christmas pantomime. Prior to Nottingham she worked at Theatre by the Lake in Keswick and then as Producer at Curve Theatre, Leicester, where she line produced musicals including West Side Story, The Color Purple, A Chorus Line and White Christmas. Tess has a BA in English Language and Literature from St John’s College, Oxford and an MA in Theatre: Writing, Directing and Performance from the University of York.

Damian Murphy is Professor in Sound and Music Computing in the AudioLab where his research focuses on the development and creative application of immersive audio and virtual acoustic modelling, including room acoustic measurement and simulation, soundscape, auralistion and machine learning as used to understand our sound environment. He has been principal investigator on a number of AHRC and EPSRC projects related to these areas, securing more than £20m in funding, and published over 200 journal articles, conference papers and books in the area. He is the Director of the XR Stories Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Creative Industries R&D Partnership exploring the next generation of interactive and immersive storytelling for the UK’s creative screen industries.
 
He is a member of the Audio Engineering Society, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a visiting lecturer to the Department of Speech, Music and Hearing at KTH, Stockholm, where he specialises in spatial audio and acoustics. He has also held visiting researcher status at MgGill University, Canada and Aalto University, Finland.
 
Professor Murphy is an active sound artist and in 2004 was appointed as one of the UK's first AHRC/ACE Arts and Science Research Fellows, investigating the compositional and aesthetic aspects of sound spatialisation, acoustic modelling techniques and the acoustics of heritage spaces. His work has been presented in galleries nationally and at festivals and venues internationally and included varied collaborations with writers, photographers, interactive digital artists.

Sam Jackson is the Controller of BBC Radio 3, driving creative and managerial responsibility for the running of the station and the delivery of the BBC Proms: the world’s biggest classical music festival.

Having started his career as a runner for the BBC Proms, Sam’s career has spanned broadcasting and the recorded music industry, including three years as Executive Vice-President of Global Classics & Jazz for Universal Music Group. Prior to that, Sam worked for Global, where he latterly ran three national radio brands: Classic FM, Smooth and Gold.

Named by The Hospital Club as “one of the 100 most influential and innovative people working across arts, culture and the creative industries”, Sam is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and a member of the Council of the Royal Philharmonic Society. He is also a Board Member of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance and a trustee of two charities: Help Musicians and the Young Classical Artists Trust.

Sam is the author or co-author of various books about classical music. Away from work, his blog ‘Diary of a Desperate Dad’ was named as one of the Evening Standard’s 20 best blogs, and was the inspiration behind his book of the same name, published by Elliott & Thompson.