Visionary

What happens when a cultural institution refuses to stand still? For more than two decades, Sir Alistair Spalding has made the case that the arts thrive on risk: new artists, new audiences and ideas that might not work until, suddenly, they do. The artistic director of Sadler’s Wells joins Georgina Godwin to discuss the creative gamble behind one of London’s great cultural institutions. Since taking the helm in 2005, Spalding has helped move contemporary dance from the margins towards the mainstream, more than doubling audiences while giving choreographers the freedom to experiment, surprise and occasionally confound. Now the story has a new stage. With Sadler’s Wells East open in Stratford, Spalding is turning his attention to the next generation: the dancers and choreographers who will shape the art form, and the audiences who might be encountering it for the first time. It is also an experiment in what culture can do for a place – not as decoration added after the buildings go up, but as part of what makes a city interesting, imaginative and alive. Spalding and Godwin discuss the pleasures of the unexpected, why artistic institutions must take risks and what live performance can offer in an age increasingly experienced through screens. Visionary returns with a new season of conversations, brought to you by Here East, London’s home of creativity and innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What would the world look like without us? In the Oscar-winning animated film Flow, humanity has disappeared. Cities and homes remain, but nature has begun to reclaim them. A cat, a dog, a capybara and a handful of other animals navigate a flooded landscape in which survival has replaced civilisation — and the absence of human beings hangs over everything. Author and film writer Caspar Salmon examines the unsettling ideas beneath one of the most remarkable animated films of recent years. Is Flow simply a story about animals surviving a climate catastrophe, or a vision of a planet finally released from human control? What happens when humanity is no longer the centre of the story? And as the climate changes, should imagining our own absence force us to think differently about the world we leave behind? Future Vision tells the stories behind great leaps forward in creativity. Brought to you by the team behind Visionary and presented by Here East, London’s home of creativity and innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1989, Dolly Parton joined Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis and a young Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias — a film about friendship, grief and the women who face life’s worst moments with a well-timed wisecrack. Nearly four decades later, it is a Hollywood classic. But when Steel Magnolias arrived in cinemas, plenty of critics were less impressed. Its overwhelmingly female world was dismissed as sentimental, frivolous and lacking a “strong male figure” — criticisms that now say almost as much about Hollywood as they do about the film. In this edition of Future Vision, we look at why Dolly Parton was perfectly cast as Truvy, how Steel Magnolias turned a deeply personal tragedy into one of the era’s most enduring films, and what happened to the Hollywood movies made unapologetically for grown women. Writer and critic Hadley Freeman, author of Life Moves Pretty Fast, explains how the economics of Hollywood changed — and why studios increasingly turned their attention towards the teenage boys they believed could deliver a blockbuster opening weekend. From Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment to Moonstruck and Baby Boom, this is the story of a kind of mainstream cinema that once flourished — and then almost disappeared. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are cult films, and then there are films that seem almost to disappear. For this special edition of Visionary, part of our Future Vision summer series, we unearth a conversation with the late Mike Hodges, the director who gave British cinema Get Carter, to revisit its stranger, more playful follow-up: Pulp. Hodges tells Benjamin Wilson how the 1972 film grew out of his fascination with B-movies, postwar Italy, political extremism and the strange scandals of the paparazzi age, before taking shape with an extraordinary cast led by Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney. But at the heart of the conversation is Lizabeth Scott. One of film noir’s most distinctive stars, Scott had largely retreated from the screen when Hodges persuaded her to return for what would become her final film appearance. He recalls their delicate first meetings, her anxieties about returning to the camera and the moment she decided to take the role – before dismissing some of the rumours that have followed her performance ever since. A rare encounter with a great British filmmaker, looking back at a forgotten Hollywood star and one of the most curious films of his career. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hollywood once had the studios, the money and the tools. Not anymore. AI is making visual effects cheaper, professional kit is increasingly accessible and filmmaking is spreading far beyond Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a new generation of directors is honing its craft on YouTube and Instagram rather than working its way through the studio system. So who gets to make a movie now? Does Hollywood still matter? And could the next great director already be building an audience online? From Backrooms to blockbusters made across London, Glasgow and Sydney, Benjamin Wilson reports on the technology, talent and new production hubs reshaping how films are made — and who gets to make them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does the end of civilisation look like when you strip away the Hollywood spectacle? In this episode of Future Vision, our special series exploring the future of creativity and filmmaking, film journalist Caspar Salmon examines Sirāt — Oliver Laxe’s haunting vision of a world coming apart at the seams, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2025. Set among ravers travelling through the deserts of North Africa as war unfolds somewhere beyond the horizon, Sirāt approaches the apocalypse at an unusually human scale. There are no collapsing skyscrapers or armies of extras. Instead, Laxe draws on non-professional actors, documentary-style filmmaking, an unforgiving landscape and a story deliberately untethered from conventional geopolitics. From its echoes of Mad Max: Fury Road to the remarkable performance of Sergi López, Caspar explores how Sirāt blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality — and how its small-scale, independent approach creates a depiction of societal collapse that feels all the more immediate, elemental and unsettling. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hand-drawn animation changed cinema forever. Long before CGI and artificial intelligence transformed the screen, pioneers like Max Fleischer proved that imagination, craftsmanship and technical invention could create entire worlds from pencil and paper. In this special edition of Visionary's Future Vision series, Jane Fleischer Reid, granddaughter of the legendary animator, reflects on the extraordinary legacy of the Fleischer Studios – the creative force behind Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman and some of the most inventive cartoons ever made. She tells the story of Max Fleischer's restless curiosity, the invention of the rotoscope, the studio's surreal artistic style, and the painstaking restoration of more than 100 classic films from original archive materials. As digital tools make image creation easier than ever, Fleischer's work feels even more relevant. In an era of AI-generated content, audiences are rediscovering the value of artistry you can feel in every frame. The imperfections, ingenuity and unmistakably human touch of handcrafted animation are becoming a premium once again – reminding us that the future of entertainment may depend as much on preserving creative craft as inventing new technology. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gattaca imagined a world where every aspect of human potential could be measured, optimised and ranked. Nearly 30 years later, that future feels uncomfortably familiar. In this narrated exploration, writer Caspar Salmon revisits Andrew Niccol's 1997 science-fiction classic to ask whether Gattaca was really about genetics — or whether it foresaw today's culture of relentless self-improvement, biohacking, productivity and optimisation. As AI, genetic testing and performance-enhancing technologies become part of everyday life, the film's central question feels more relevant than ever: what happens when the pursuit of perfection becomes society's defining value? Future Vision is Visionary's special summer series focussing on the future of cinema and what it tells us about the direction of our real world. Brought to you by Here East, London's home of innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're pausing our usual format over the summer to bring you Future Vision — a special series exploring the changing film and television industry. Over the coming weeks, we'll examine everything from visual effects and production design to the rise of the creator economy. We begin with Supergirl. Not the version currently in cinemas, but the original 1984 film that first brought Superman's cousin to the big screen. Helen Slater was just eighteen when she landed the title role, fresh out of drama school. She was flown to Pinewood Studios to train in trampolining, sword fighting and horse riding before joining a cast that included Faye Dunaway, Peter O'Toole and Peter Cook. Recorded before the release of the 2026 reboot, Slater reflects on a film that has since become a cult classic. She recalls the technical challenge of its ambitious flying sequences, the script rewrites that reshaped the production and the experience of carrying a major studio franchise at such a young age. She also offers a candid assessment of why Supergirl failed to match the success of its Superman predecessors, and what that says about Hollywood's long struggle to build enduring female-led superhero franchises. With the new Supergirl also filmed in the UK, the conversation offers a timely perspective on how blockbuster filmmaking has evolved — and on the pressures that still accompany launching a superhero franchise. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For centuries, buildings were designed with a single purpose in mind. Theatres staged plays, factories manufactured goods and railway stations moved passengers. Many have since found new lives through adaptation, but today's most successful spaces are increasingly conceived to do far more from the outset. Georgina Godwin speaks with Alex Wills, co-founder of Interval, about why flexibility has become one of architecture's most valuable assets. Drawing on a career spanning live events, immersive technology and spatial design, Wills argues that the next generation of buildings will succeed not because they can be repurposed decades later, but because they are designed from day one to accommodate changing audiences, technologies and uses. From the engineering behind the Las Vegas Sphere to the evolving campuses of Canary Wharf, 180 Strand and Here East, the conversation explores how developers are rethinking the relationship between space and experience. For Wills, the most important question is no longer what a building looks like, but how it will be used – not just on opening night, but for years to come. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Britain has three of the world's top ten universities and the third largest tech sector outside America and China. So why does it often feel like we're stuck? Jeremy Hunt left office after bringing inflation down and steering the economy out of recession. Now, with a new book and a new Prime Minister about to enter Downing Street, he has some blunt things to say about what it will take to finally unlock the country's potential — and what happens if the moment is wasted. In this episode, presented in partnership with CapX the Centre for Policy Studies, Marc Sidwell speaks with the former Chancellor about his book Can We Be Rich Again?, which sets out both a diagnosis of Britain's economic inertia and a prescription for breaking it. Hunt is direct about the central challenge facing Andy Burnham: welfare reform is the defining test, and ducking it — as Keir Starmer discovered — doesn't make the problem go away, it simply hands a veto to the backbenches. He argues that political capital drains away like an egg timer, and that the only leaders who leave office proud are those who act boldly in their first weeks, not their last. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One in two women will experience violence over their lifetime. In the time it takes to listen to this episode, around 200 incidents will be reported to police. And that is a fraction of what actually happens. In this special live event, presented by Here East and Plexal, we ask a pressing question: can technology — the same technology that has amplified and enabled so much of this harm — become the most powerful weapon against it? Host Lou-Davina Stouffs, Director of Advisory Services at Plexal, chairs a conversation with Laura Suggitt, founder of The Meritocracy and architect of the UK's end-to-end rape review; Eleanor Kaye, Chief of Staff at Augur, whose AI behaviour-detection technology is making CCTV on transport networks genuinely intelligent for the first time; and Jamie Hodsdon of Waymo, whose driverless ride-hailing service is arriving in London this year with safety by design at its core. Together they explore what it means to build technology that prevents harm rather than just responding to it, why data governance is inseparable from survivor safety, and why the £6 billion flowing into UK AI investment each year contains within it a profound, largely untapped opportunity — if the builders are willing to ask the right questions before they ship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Twenty years ago, making a feature film cost millions of dollars a day. Today, the two biggest films at the box office – Obsession and Backrooms – were made by YouTube creators. Could AI be making the process of creativity more accessible? Recorded live at Here East during SXSW London, this special edition of Visionary asks whether the tools now reshaping film, music, design and motion capture are genuinely opening the creative world to more people — or simply generating an overwhelming amount of noise. London sits at the centre of this transformation, home to 78% of the UK's AI and data-driven creative technology companies. But having the tools and knowing what to do with them are very different things. Georgina Godwin chairs a conversation with Justin Diener, co-founder of Synapse Virtual Production, whose LED wall studios are rewriting the economics of film and immersive media; Usha Raghavachari, Lab Director for Ford's Human Centred Design team, who still uses cardboard, clay and ethnographic observation alongside oceans of connected vehicle data; and Allan Rankin, co-founder of Target 3D, whose motion capture technology is being transformed by AI tools that can animate multiple characters in hours rather than weeks. Together they make a compelling case that the creative breakthrough AI enables is real, but that domain expertise, human taste and the mysterious alchemy of lightbulb moments in the shower still matter more than any prompt. The deeper worry, they agree, isn't the tools themselves. It's who owns the platforms those tools run on, and what happens when access becomes something only some people can afford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How does creativity shape urban design and placemaking? Not just the look and feel of a neighbourhood, but the kind of energy that draws major institutions to a place. Recorded live at Here East, this week's special edition of Visionary features Georgina Godwin in conversation with three people at the forefront of that question: Gus Casely-Hayford, Director of V&A East, fresh from the museum's triumphant opening in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; Tamsin Ace, Director of East Bank, the organisation coordinating one of Europe's most ambitious cultural districts; and Richard Broom of Jason Bruges Studio, whose immersive public installations — from Wembley underpasses to international stages — turn data and code into experiences that stop people in their tracks. Over the next few weeks, Visionary will be sharing conversations from Here East's It All Starts Here event. Subscribe to the podcast now and discover the stories of business leaders, investors, and experts who are building our future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It took four days for a forged letter to bring down a government in 1924. Today, the same thing could happen before breakfast. The Zinoviev Letter — a fabricated document purportedly inciting British communists to revolution — was fake. But by the time that became clear, the election was over and the damage was done. A century later, the mechanics of political manipulation have changed beyond recognition. Anyone with a laptop and freely available AI tools can now put any words into any politician's mouth, with their face, their voice and their mannerisms, and have it in front of millions of people within minutes. The question is whether the law — much of which dates to the nineteenth century — has any hope of keeping up. Georgina Godwin speaks with writer and policy thinker Frances Lasok, whose recent report on AI deepfakes and elections is one of the clearest-eyed assessments of this rapidly evolving threat. Lasok sets out the four categories of deepfake misuse now emerging — intimate image abuse, fraud, election misinformation and the monetisation of someone's face or voice without consent — and explains why existing legislation, however well-intentioned in its principles, was simply never written for this world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

NABA – the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti – has been shaping Italy's creative talent since 1980, first in Milan, then Rome. Now it has arrived at Here East in London, and the choice of location is anything but accidental. For Diego Mattiolo, Head of Education at NABA, London's density of cultures, institutions and creative energy made it the only logical first step for the school's international expansion. Georgina Godwin speaks with Diego about what the great creative cities of the world actually have in common – and what they risk losing. He reflects on growing up in Milan surrounded by design weeks and fashion shows, taking it all for granted until distance gave him perspective, and on what NABA's particular philosophy – that combination of rigorous thinking and hands-on making – produces in students that more conventional institutions do not. The goal, he explains, is not to teach students what to think, but to help them find their voice. The conversation ranges from the deep cultural roots of Italian style to the question of whether cities like Milan and London are in danger of becoming victims of their own polish – and why Diego thinks the next genuinely surprising creative hub is more likely to be found in Tokyo, Singapore or India. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Shanta Thake became Chief Artistic Officer at New York's Lincoln Center — home to the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and the New York City Ballet — she inherited one of the most storied platforms in global culture. But she also inherited its assumptions: about which art forms deserve the grandest stages, which audiences are welcome and where the boundaries of a great institution should end. Georgina Godwin speaks with Shanta about the art and politics of curation at scale — and why the most urgent question facing the Lincoln Center right now isn't what to programme, but how to ensure that the work stays genuinely ahead of the world rather than just responsive to it. Shanta argues that artists are always ten steps ahead of the rest of us, and that a curator's job is less to follow the news than to trust the artists who are already living in tomorrow. The conversation ranges from the collision of salsa and symphony to the Lincoln Center's Collider programme — a remarkable cohort of artists working at the frontier of technology and performance, from 4D sound compositions to art that generates new forms when two people hold hands and complete a human circuit. And it ends with a question we're all asking: in an age of AI and humanoid machines, what is it that makes art uniquely human — and how do we hold onto it? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The country that accidentally incubated Google DeepMind, that draws one in five of Palantir's global workforce to its shores, that saw AI startups raise nearly eight billion pounds in a single quarter of 2026. Britain is already a major player in the AI race, but can we counter the familiar narrative of decline? In this special edition of Visionary, recorded live at the Margaret Thatcher Conference in London, Charlotte Crosswell chairs a sharp conversation with Tom Westgarth, Head of Growth at British AI chip designer Fractile, and Louis Moseley, Head of Palantir Technologies UK. Together they make the case that Britain sits at a rare and potentially fleeting intersection: world-class machine learning talent, a legal and cultural framework that global companies trust, and a geography compact enough to allow the kind of creative collision – technologist meets creative director, chip designer meets software engineer – that Silicon Valley has to take transcontinental flights to replicate. Visionary is brought to you by Here East, London's home of innovation and creativity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's an uncomfortable truth settling across the media industry. AI is already inside the production pipeline – generating imagery, animating characters, building virtual worlds, and doing it faster and cheaper than any human team. For some, that's the promise. For others, it's an existential threat. But the more interesting question lives somewhere between those two positions. Because the history of entertainment has always been, at its core, a history of technology forcing change. From the Fleischer brothers to Disney to Pixar, every era has had its disruption – and every era has found that the human appetite for story, for wonder, for experiences that make us genuinely feel something, has survived it. Michael Stein was on the frontline of cinematic innovation during Pixar's early years. He's now the Chief Technology Officer at Journey, one of the world's most ambitious experience design agencies. And he's spent his career adapting – reading where technology is heading and figuring out what it means for the people making things. AI, he tells Georgina Godwin, isn't the end of creativity. It might just be the beginning of something we haven't had the imagination to picture yet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The most important decision you'll make about your business might not be what you're building – it's where you build it. Gavin Poole has spent fourteen years proving that point. And what he's built at Here East is, at its core, an argument: that proximity to ambition is itself a competitive advantage. Georgina Godwin sits down with the CEO of Here East to explore what it really means to engineer a place for success. Gavin talks about the concept of creative collision – those unplanned, unchoreographed moments that happen when the right people share a building, a canteen, a yard – and how Here East has made the deliberate cultivation of those moments the foundation of its model. When an Oxford Economics study found that over ninety percent of Here East tenants had collaborated with another business on campus, and that those collaborations had directly increased revenue and headcount, it confirmed what he'd had long believed: that community isn't a soft benefit. It's a growth strategy. He's candid too about the stubbornness it took to get here – the reports that predicted failure, the holidays cut short, the promotions turned down – and what he'd tell any leader serious about building something that endures. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.