AI Social Club – The Symposium

Join the conversation with the BBC GenAI Team, Showrunner (Amazon backed), AI Wales North, MMU AI Cafe, Dreamlab (MediaCity), Royal Holloway University (CoSTAR), Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Manchester, and 200 AI entrepreneurs from the creative industries with a special focus on the business of creative AI in the North of England.

A Symposium is a space to ask the difficult questions — and this one does just that. Thanks to the University of Manchester and its rich history of pioneering radical change, this gathering opens a vital conversation about the future of the creative business sector in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

Across the creative industries, artists, writers, filmmakers, and designers are feeling the impact: work scraped, jobs replaced, and workloads multiplied — all while management chants, “Just use AI!”

Amid the noise, a group of rebel creators have been meeting in person for the past year to reimagine what comes next. They call themselves The AI Social Club — a safe space for open dialogue about the positives and negatives of the AI revolution, free from sponsor influence and PR spin.

Now, for the first time, we’re hosting a full-day symposium — a gathering of 200 Future Artists, innovators, and researchers coming together to share knowledge, debate ideas, and imagine what the business of creative authorship looks like in 2026 and beyond

How this works? How do we do things at the AI Social Club

Normally you come to a conference take your seat, and listen to some talks, break for lunch, check your phone, respond to some e-mails, listen to some talks, maybe a glass of warm red wine at the end… AI Social Club is about YOU… yes we have speakers, but we also have breakout spaces, nice easy ways to get the conversation going with your fellow attendees, we have a community whatsapp group, so your connected before you arrive and when you leave, we also have several free online talks, workshops and events, on the lead up – our event is about fostering a community – but not a PR press release one, an actual one – and yes, we will probably still have warm red wine!

Guest Speakers & Sessions

Part one – Content platforms and those who create

Jon Howard (BBC) How Generative AI is Transforming Public Service Media The BBC’s perspective on creativity, trust, and storytelling in the era of AI.

Lewis Hackett (Showrunner) Building Worlds with the Audience R&D lead at Showrunner — an AI animation platform that lets audiences co-create episodes with their favourite characters. Backed by Amazon.

Dr Anita Greenhill & Sens Sagna (Independent) AI Storytelling and Oral Traditions Join us for a presentation on an innovative AI storytelling pilot that co-produces a digital re-telling of a traditional West African heritage story, created in collaboration with heritage expert Sens Sagna and AI animation artist Stephanie Ronan-Chlond. This work explores how artificial intelligence can support, not replace, oral traditions, while addressing the creative, cultural, and ethical challenges of preserving storytelling heritage in the digital age.

Part two – Doing things differently: Creative innovation with AI

Chris Hogg (Royal Holloway University) Enhance, Cancel, Bring Back, Flip – Protecting Your Imagination in the Age of Industrial Creativity What happens when you apply some forgotten Marshall McLuhan essays to the age of industrial creativity? You get a system for managing AI overwhelm — and maybe a way to protect your creative practice too. Come find out how.

Klaire Tanner (AI Wales North / CreuTech) Founder and Creative Director of CreuTech, an immersive-tech studio blending art, storytelling, and emerging tech. Her talk explores how AI and XR can expand creativity, not replace it — keeping human imagination at the centre.

Samantha Tauber (VNCCII) AI as Creative Catalyst AI Social Club regular and digital performance pioneer, showing how AI can serve — not replace — the human creator.

António Alberto Castro Baía Reis The Human–AI Collaboration Frontier An academic deep-dive into how humans and artificial intelligences co-create across creative, cognitive, and philosophical dimensions — rethinking authorship, learning, and imagination itself.

AI Cafe Take-over –

David Edmundson-Bird (AI Café / MMU AI Lead) and Phil Birchenall (AI Cafe / Founder Diagonal Thinking) AI Cafe session – “Come with Questions. Leave with More.”

Co-founders of the Manchester AI Café, sharing stories and lessons from one of the UK’s most thought-provoking AI community experiments — featuring Tom Stables (UCLan) and his venture Raising the Dead: Building a Business with AI, Memories, and Momentum, and Dr John O’Hare (DreamLab) with Junkie Jarvis – A Vibe-Coded Immersive Intelligence Demonstrating a conversational AI agent capable of extraordinary feats, running multi-user in augmented reality

+More TBA + Timings of the event will be e-mailed to all attendees

Post event social will be hosted in partnership with Venture Cafe

Venture Café Manchester – Venture Café is a global movement built on a simple but powerful belief: isolation is the enemy of innovation. Through regular Thursday Gatherings, weekly from early 2026, founders, researchers, investors and innovators come together to share ideas, explore new technologies and build meaningful connections. Venture Café Manchester creates a central hub for the city’s innovation ecosystem, driving visibility and collaboration.

Who’s it For?

Anyone working where creativity meets technology — including but not limited to:

Artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians

Game developers and designers

Marketing, PR, and digital content creators

Academics, researchers, and students exploring AI, XR, and creativity

Entrepreneurs and producers in the cultural industries

If AI is influencing your practice, your workflow, or your imagination — this symposium is for you.

Why Now?
The creative industries stand in a hurricane – the climate has changed. AI is no longer just a tool — it’s a collaborator, a competitor, and sometimes a critic. While some see threat, others see transformation. The AI Social Club Symposium exists to hold space for both views — to ask who controls authorship, who profits from creativity, and how we reclaim agency in this new ecosystem.