The Edinburgh Futures Institute’s fifth event season, “Making Waves,” ended its run with over 3,800 tickets sold.
Our “Making Waves” season ran from 14 March to 2 May, featuring more than 10 events including panel discussions, performances, and workshops.
The season explored the theme of creativity, crossing areas such as the arts, technology, science and the environment.
Like our previous event seasons, majority of this season’s free events were offered in hybrid format. Attendees from 32 countries tuned in to our livestream events.
Season highlights
The season featured powerful explorations of human and machine creativity — from the opening dance piece In the Shadow of Tomorrow charting humanity’s techno-evolution, to dynamic AI-infused performances like a live collaborative performance blending spoken word, painting and music with Kathleen Jamie and Painting Music, and A&I (Beta), an international premiere performance by US-based dance, design and film company, Orange Grove Dance.
Inspiring conversations included a packed event with comedian Fern Brady and Michael Pedersen on identity and resilience, David Farrier on Nature’s Genius, and the authors of Culture is Bad For You discussing exclusion in the creative industries.
Other events featured artists and their creative practice: A special event celebrating the Edinburgh Seven Tapestry, and this season’s Utopia Lab session which explored drawing, writing, body and place.
This season’s AI and creativity were key themes, with this season’s Techonomoral Conversations exploring AI and creative labour, The New Real launching its global initiative Doing AI Differently, and a series of workshops on future-proofing creative skills for responsible AI use.
The season closed with a fascinating conversation with mathematician Marcus du Sautoy on how mathematics shapes art and creativity.
Feedback
“This is helping to make the open to all EFI spaces known to me, and I value the invitations very much, to participate in listening to high quality panel speakers on diverse content, which is opening up my knowledge and my thinking without being part of the academic world. Thank you.”
“The evening was excellent! I really enjoyed hearing the story about the Edinburgh Seven, about the commissioning and then making of the tapestry. It was great to have a variety of speakers as this kept the evening lively and fluid.”
“Loved this talk, I was interested to see how the painting and music combined – especially with the poetry of Kathleen Jamie…This season’s programming is well up to your high standard. Thank you.”
“It was a really amazing evening. It was particularly impressive that this was free and open to the public. It was incredible to be inside the newly restored Institute and access the very best the University has to offer! Wonderful programming and content, relevant and high-quality topics and speakers, an extraordinary resource and contribution to the local community. Well done.”
