How To Get Paid

Want to get on top of your cash flow? Fancy sharpening your negotiation tactics? Wish to adopt a more confident mindset towards money? This is the workshop for you. Hosted by Nicola Brown, Amy Combrinck and Richard Lane, experts in their fields, this active session will teach you skills to bring more power to your earning, whatever role you’re in.

Migration x Mental health x Creative expression

Through personal stories and shared experiences, this fireside chat will uncover the challenges migrant artists face—cultural displacement, systemic barriers, and balancing survival with self-expression. Expect an open, supportive conversation that highlights diverse voices and offers practical steps for building lasting creative networks.

Futures You Can Feel: A Sensory Signal Workshop

This is a playful, hands-on workshop that rethinks trend-spotting through the six senses (yes, six, there is a wild card). Forget spreadsheets, it will start with people, feelings, and everyday rituals. From tasting AI Slop to touching loneliness, this creative reset shows that the future isn’t just analysed—it’s experienced and felt.

The Coven in the Corner Office

From tarot cards to astrology apps, practices once seen as fringe are becoming tools for wellbeing, empowerment, and decision-making among today’s leaders. The talk will unpack the cultural forces driving this shift, its ties to gender equity and workplace wellbeing, and what businesses need to know. Expect fresh insights, practical takeaways—and maybe even a ritual or two.

Who Makes The Map?

Frustrated by the ‘sea of sameness’ in strategy? This is an active dinner party style discussion, unpicking the development of modern strategy talent. Led by concepts and ideas from Rosie Collins, Natasha Szczerb and Jonny Almario, we will seek routes to embracing multi-culture and better reflecting society at large through strategic work

How To Get Paid

Want to get on top of your cash flow? Fancy sharpening your negotiation tactics? Wish to adopt a more confident mindset towards money? This is the workshop for you. Hosted by Nicola Brown, Amy Combrinck and Richard Lane, experts in their fields, this active session will teach you skills to bring more power to your earning, whatever role you’re in.

Stranger than Fiction

Blending game show and talk, this playful session explores shifting realities—AI companions, psychedelics, traditionalism, and more. Through surrealism, zeitgeist, and sci-fi, it asks: what’s real, what’s fiction, and what future do we want? Equal parts fun, hopeful, and thought-provoking, it challenges creators to design for a world of delusion.

What does AI really look like?

Artist Anna Rose and data expert Jono explore the aesthetics of AI, contrasting its sleek, futuristic imagery with the industrial realities of servers, surveillance, and labour. They reveal how these visual myths influence behaviour and perception, inviting audiences to reflect on AI’s true nature and their relationship with it.

Communication problems in advertising

The advertising industry struggles to communicate its value—especially to young people. This presentation calls for a rebrand of creativity, reframing it as a vital skill for any profession and a tool to future-proof careers. By unpacking issues around talent, access, and opportunity, it explores new ways to champion creative problem-solving.

The Freak Shall inherit the Earth

In a new world where originality is an endangered species, Darren Smith and Sachini Imbuldeniya make the bold (and hilarious) case that being odd isn’t just cool — it’s the one competitive advantage we have over the coming tech-pocalypse. We’ll see how algorithms have flattened culture and why the next wave of innovation, creativity and leadership is going to get weird.

Who Makes The Map?

Frustrated by the ‘sea of sameness’ in strategy? This is an active dinner party style discussion for the room unpicking the development of modern strategy talent. Led by concepts and ideas from Rosie Collins, Natasha Szczerb and Jonny Almario; we will seek routes to embracing multi-culture and better reflecting society at large through strategic work

Religion and Belief: The Last Frontier of Inclusion?

Despite shaping the lives of over 84% of people worldwide, faith remains absent from most DEI strategies, leaving many employees unseen. Drawing on award-winning programmes across global agencies, this discussion format will explore why belief is still considered ‘too sensitive’ and how organisations can embed faith inclusion through dialogue, policy, and practice—creating workplaces where everyone feels respected and safe.

How To Get Paid

Want to get on top of your cash flow? Fancy sharpening your negotiation tactics? Wish to adopt a more confident mindset towards money? This is the workshop for you. Hosted by Nicola Brown, Amy Combrinck and Richard Lane, experts in their fields, this active session will teach you skills to bring more power to your earning, whatever role you’re in.

Who Makes The Map?

Frustrated by the ‘sea of sameness’ in strategy? This is an active dinner party style discussion for the room unpicking the development of modern strategy talent. Led by concepts and ideas from Rosie Collins, Natasha Szczerb and Jonny Almario; we will seek routes to embracing multi-culture and better reflecting society at large through strategic work

The Freak Shall inherit the Earth

In a new world where originality is an endangered species, Darren Smith and Sachini Imbuldeniya make the bold (and hilarious) case that being odd isn’t just cool — it’s the one competitive advantage we have over the coming tech-pocalypse. We’ll see how algorithms have flattened culture and why the next wave of innovation, creativity and leadership is going to get weird.

Hire A Damn Mum

Juggling school runs, chaos, and crises teaches mums to prioritise fast, lead with empathy, and cut through nonsense. They bring real human insight and handle last-minute pressure like pitch rewrites with ease. Motherhood isn’t a slowdown—it’s intense training that produces sharper, more grounded creatives and leaders who know how to get things done while keeping people at the heart of the work.

The Talent Pact, a roundtable for industry change

The Talent Pact is a call to action for the advertising and media industry to keep people at the centre of change. Bringing together community leaders, trade bodies, and responsible employers, this roundtable will address talent loss, DE&I setbacks, and the impact of AI—working collaboratively to create fairer, more human practices that drive long-term success.

Making the Workplace Work for Parents

In this roundtable, Victoria Gates-Fleming will explore why balancing career and caregiving remains so challenging—especially in creative industries. She will examine cultural myths, structural barriers, and the invisible load parents carry, while reframing care as shared infrastructure.

Greenwashing, a binary debate

Today’s greenwashing debate is binary. It’s either perfect or an outrage - a banned ad, media pile on and an unmitigated organisational nightmare. This talk holds up a mirror to the advertising community and asks ‘if we are having the wrong arguments around sustainability, what are the right ones’?

An Intergenerational CEO Fireside

A conversation between an established agency leader (Claire) and a newer founder (Tumi), who will look at the traditional agency model and see if it still works in today’s society. How does a legacy offering stack up vs a new supplier? How does a trusted brand rank against a challenger and are they even in competition? Indeed, with innovation coming to the established names, does the industry actually need more new agencies?

A Caregiver Charter

A powerful roundtable tackling how we can better support caregivers and new parents in demanding industries. Expect honest conversation about burnout, overlooked talent, and why we can’t afford to lose these voices. With leaders sharing lived experience and fresh research, the session aims to spark actionable ideas for a more sustainable, inclusive future—where supporting caregivers means strengthening everyone.