The Shift Salon
Dive into the key insights from two days of discussion on digital innovation and cultural strategy in times of change
By Barbican Centre
London | October 20–21, 2025
Barbican Centre by Dion BarrettBarbican Centre
What was the Shift Salon?
The event was a private gathering for cultural leaders from across the globe to develop and share insights on audience trust, the use of digital tools, and sustainable ways to grow immersive arts.
Five Key Topics
The Salon focused on audience needs, and institutional change, technology-driven programming, creative R&D, and commissioning immersive art and XR experiences.
Participants & Speakers
The inaugural edition brought together 50 experts in digital arts from 13 countries and 44 organisations.
Guests represented a range of disciplines including curation, consumer trends, strategic leadership, and academia.
Supporting Partner: Agog
The Salon was generously supported by Agog: The Immersive Media Institute.
Agog’s mission is to help creators and nonprofit leaders harness the power of extended reality (XR) to imagine a better future for all.
'Agog is committed to being a partner across the whole immersive ecosystem, so that stories capable of building a more connected and just world can be made and reach a wide set of people.'
— Chip Giller
Co-Founder and Executive Director, Agog
Barbican Centre by Dion BarrettBarbican Centre
Key Takeaways from the Shift Salon
Lessons for organisational transformation, cross-functional collaboration, and ethically grounded, sustainable approaches that support artists, communities, and creative ecosystems.
Audience Engagement
To boost audience engagement, consult early with educators and staff to tap into diverse motivations and prior knowledge.
By unifying exhibitions, programs, public spaces, narrative-rich storytelling, and digital tools, we create truly meaningful, and accessible experiences.
Understanding Your Audiences
Start audience research and community consultation before programmes or exhibitions open to shape relevance early.
Use visitation and interaction metrics alongside curator and frontline staff insight to capture patterns and meaning.
Tailor programmes for different audiences.
'In an age where 77% of people say they “just want to feel something, to feel alive,” this represents a major opportunity. The invitation is to “emotioneer” across the full spectrum of emotion.'
— Marie Stafford, VML
Future 100: 2025
Institutional Change
Trust, radical access, and cultivating long-term impact are key to keeping artists, and communities central to institutional activities.
Experts stressed that change depends on listening, experimentation, cross-department, and cross-institutional collaboration.
Driving Meaningful Transformation
Recognise that first-time or experimental projects will face resistance from stakeholders.
Trust in teams, and long-term impact are central to sustaining relevance.
Integrate inclusive programming, hospitality, and social experiences in your programming strategy.
'The complexity, struggle, and messiness of our moment are part of this evolutionary process. They invite us to step into forms of practice that are more honest, and more connected to our environments and to the futures we are already, collectively, shaping.'
— Fatos Üstek
Technology-Driven Innovation
To sustain art & technology programmes, balance agility with strategic planning and collaborative networks.
Success lies in long-term learning and audience impact, evolving curatorial practices through social, financial, and technological uncertainty.
Winning Strategies
Innovation is not solely technological.
Hybrid digital-analogue engagement, festival-like approaches, and public-space integration are key for broadening participation.
Clear communications using accessible language are essential for matching audience expectations.
'From an audience perspective, this artistic heritage of presentation technologies like headsets and projection mapping are a means to an end. Audiences care about the impact - the affect of these strategies, not the means of production.'
— Patrick Moran
Research and Development in Creative Arts
Creative R&D is a messy, adaptive, relational practice. It is intended to inspire critical thinking around technology, not deliver finished products.
It helps reshape institutions and build self-sustaining ecosystems of engaged artists and vital professional networks.
Why Embrace Creative R&D?
It is central to sustaining institutional vitality, critical thinking on technology, and cultivating new partnerships and opportunities.
Creative R&D gives teams space to fail leading to rapid learning and deeper knowledge acquisition.
'This is what strategic R&D looks like.
Not a one-off project, but a durable infrastructure that outlasts its founding team and continues to evolve and adapt.'
— Julia Kaganskiy
Immersive Art and XR Experiences
Immersive attracts new, diverse audiences, but does not resolve institutional barriers.
It reshapes commissioning, audience care, communication, and decision-making.
Success depends on alignment of artistic ambition, operations, audience expectations, and long-term support.
Key Considerations for Immersive Programming
Institutions must balance tensions between market appeal and artistic ambition. There will be tradeoffs.
Immersive and VR attract new visitors, but institutional identity remains a barrier.
Embedding immersive within broader exhibition ecologies expands engagement.
'I believe that immersive is a methodology, not a medium. It’s an approach, a creative framework applicable across disciplines. The shared dream is to take the best of this methodology and apply it across different cultural practices.'
— Ana Brzezinska, The Shift Salon Programmer
Crowd at the Shift Salon (20/10/25 - 21/10/25) by SNAPSIBarbican Centre
Conclusions
Future-proofing cultural institutions depends on placing artists and art at the center, working towards inclusion, and building lasting trust with diverse communities.
By combining insight, participation, and long-term impact measurement, institutions can remain relevant, create cultural value, and cultivate relationships with viewers that endure beyond a single visit.
Reach Out to Learn More
To find out more about the full report, contact Barbican Immersive at immersive.partnerships@barbican.org.uk
The Shift Salon programming team and all our partners are incredibly grateful for the generosity and openness of all who attended, helping to make this Salon format a success, and this report valuable to our peers. We also wish to thank our supporters: Agog: The Immersive Media Institute, L-Acoustics for event programming, and Gazzelli Art House for celebrating 10 years of Gazzelli.io.
Photography: SNAPSI
Graphic design: David Duff
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