The Cultural Cascade

Come and learn about a framework, developed at Craft Media, to better understand how ideas travel through mainstream culture, identities and tribes. In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to find your brand’s credible place in culture and create communications that people want to carry forward.

The session is led by Mimi Okorie, Comms Planning Director at Craft Media and Campaign Media Rising Star, who specialises in audience and culture-first media strategies.

Basic b*tch thinking is killing brands. Time to think Queerer.

As AI floods the market with average content and linear marketing fails culturally attuned audiences, brands need a bold shift. The answer is queer thinking: a creative methodology forged in nuance, complexity and contradiction. In a non-linear world drowning in automated sameness, thinking queerer offers the most human, potent and authentically resonant strategy available to modern brands.

Who Gets Through the Door? Breaking Into Media Then, Now & Next

What does it take to break into media today and have the barriers actually changed? MAMA Youth Project founder Bob Clarke, alumna Rio Gayle and a third MYP alumnus (tbc) bridge two generations of experience to challenge myths, expose gatekeeping and redefine real industry access. Expect honest stories, generational perspectives and practical strategies you can use immediately.

The 77 Fun: Creative Burnout and the Fight to Feel Alive Again

What if recovering from burnout isn’t just about rest, but expanding your life to rediscover who you are? In this interactive workshop, Emilia introduces The 77 Fun: a 77-day framework for rebuilding self-trust through following curiosity. Participants will explore forgotten interests and leave with the foundations for creating their own 77-day practice.

Black professionals remain severely underrepresented across creative sectors. Though Black UK journalists grew from 0.2% in 2018 to 1.3% in 2026, progress remains too slow. Moving beyond mere discussion to actionable solutions, "Name the Elephant" offers an interactive session at UN//SCENE. Drawing on seven years of leading We Are Black Journos, the talk addresses key systemic barriers, including hiring gatekeeping, a lack of mentorship pipelines, and tokenism.

Matrescence: the missing piece in return to work

Organisations lose experienced women, assuming mothers have less to give. Matrescence is an identity transformation greater than adolescence. Nobody expects a fourteen-year-old to be their nine-year-old self. Yet we expect women to return unchanged. Unable to explain the change, we label her defective, 'baby brain’. Neuroscience shows no decline.

This isn’t a wellness talk. It’s a commercial retention strategy and downloadable pack.

Like many marketers, I felt frustrated that my job wasn't making a real difference. So I turned my skills toward a cause close to my heart: the exorbitant cost of UK citizenship and the absurdity of the "Life in the UK" test. Join me to hear how I grew a 200-follower Instagram account into a campaign that earned national media coverage and raised £2,000+ for a Glasgow refugee charity, hopefully you'll leave inspired to be a force for change.

Would you like to network without being pigeon-holed by your job title?

Turn on the whimsy.

For 40 minutes, you could be the Bubble Architect at Slightly Damp Clouds meeting a Sigher at the Ministry of Unnecessary Noises.

You'll be busy giggling, forgetting the awkwardness and getting armed with tools for the future. Our "three Ps" will shift your mindset on networking, helping you enjoy every encounter more.

What running taught me about ambition, identity and staying power

What if the sharpest lessons in sustaining a creative career don't come from the industry at all? Fifty races and seven marathons in, Matilda swapped freelance life for her first corporate creative role the same year she ran her first marathon. This session draws on two decades of running to explore what an unlikely lens can teach us about going the distance in today's industry landscape.

Would you like to network without being pigeon-holed by your job title?

Turn on the whimsy.

For 40 minutes, you could be the Bubble Architect at Slightly Damp Clouds meeting a Sigher at the Ministry of Unnecessary Noises.

You'll be busy giggling, forgetting the awkwardness and getting armed with tools for the future. Our "three Ps" will shift your mindset on networking, helping you enjoy every encounter more.

Your AI can’t build authentic human connections, but you can.

AI can draft the message, schedule the meeting and suggest the follow-up but it can’t build authentic relationships. Amos, Kian and Mercurius met through real-world communities, turning their own connections into careers and businesses. This interactive session is about how to build authentic spaces people return to, create meaningful connections and unlock the power of communities you may not even know already exist.

Sustainability. The S-word. Whisper it in some boardrooms and watch the collective eye-roll.

In others, it's overused, abused and applied like corporate fairy dust, until the label becomes more controversial than the work itself. As sustainability and ESG come under increasing scrutiny, how do you keep driving change without becoming cynical? This interactive session explores why long-term value keeps losing to short-term pressures and how to start changing the odds.

Community Alchemy – The messy art, science and mysticism of making people belong.

Are you building a community or just a fan club? We open with shared confessions: failures, joys, sleepless nights and near-burnout. Then, we’ll collectively build the bones of your community, real or imagined, and refine it together. You'll leave knowing why your community needs to exist and whether to create, collaborate, connect, or cheerlead.

From the therapy couch to the boardroom, what people ask for first rarely reveals the real problem. Pleas for more sex between married couples or panicked demands for an AI fix are usually symptoms of deeper organisational anxiety. By applying psychosexual therapy to strategy, this session uncovers our hidden drivers, giving you a human-centered approach to diagnose your next project.

Toxic leadership is everyone’s business

What if toxic leadership isn’t only about the obvious bullies? Jo Howes explores the different levels of toxic leadership - from intimidation and blame to the quieter, often well-intentioned behaviours of fixing, micromanaging and avoiding difficult conversations. This session asks what we must change collectively, rather than simply blaming one leader, and why creating healthier cultures will require more courage from all of us.

We’re doomed. No doubt about it.

What if instead of burning ourselves out and crying in the bath, we gave up instead?

Through 45-minutes of stories, poetry and audience interaction, we'll explore the tale of a queer neurodivergent woman and ex-activist, who can no longer fight a losing battle. Inspiring everyone to give up too, because, ironically, it’s maybe the fastest way to change the world forever.

Ageism is a system, not a sentiment

Ageism towards employees in ad/comms agencies is often framed as a matter of individual attitudes, but it is also systemic and significantly damaging careers at both ends of the age spectrum. Drawing on his experience in the industry and his recent academic research, Nick looks at ageism in agencies through a systems thinking lens. This will be a discussion of the systemic forces driving ageism and what a systemic response looks like.

Who Gets Through the Door? Breaking Into Media Then, Now & Next

What does it take to break into media today and have the barriers actually changed? MAMA Youth Project founder Bob Clarke, alumna Rio Gayle and a third MYP alumnus (tbc) bridge two generations of experience to challenge myths, expose gatekeeping and redefine real industry access. Expect honest stories, generational perspectives and practical strategies you can use immediately.

Curiosity Infrastructure: Designing for Lifelong Exploration

We design infrastructure for transport, communication and education - but what about lifelong curiosity? In chaotic times, we retreat into the familiar. Yet the unknown is a playground, where new ideas, empathy and hope come alive. Drawing on ten years of creative quests, Sam Furness explores curiosity infrastructure: the structures, spaces and rituals we can create to help communities expand their perception, practice curiosity together and choose wonder over withdrawal.

*There will also be a 30-minute Questing, an exploration around Conway Hall. Spaces limited.

Community Alchemy – The messy art, science and mysticism of making people belong.

Are you building a community or just a fan club? We open with shared confessions: failures, joys, sleepless nights and near-burnout. Then, we’ll collectively build the bones of your community, real or imagined, and refine it together. You'll leave knowing why your community needs to exist and whether to create, collaborate, connect, or cheerlead.

How Trust Actually Works (And Why Most People Get It Wrong)

Trust is built in drops and lost in buckets. Let’s talk about where trust is lost in work relationships and where a select few have it figured out.

Learn the Trust Equation and why the most powerful trust-building tool is the one most professionals never think about. Plus the specific behaviours you can change immediately to become the person your clients refer, protect and trust with their most important work.

Your AI can’t build authentic human connections, but you can.

AI can draft the message, schedule the meeting and suggest the follow-up but it can’t build authentic relationships. Amos, Kian and Mercurius met through real-world communities, turning their own connections into careers and businesses. This interactive session is about how to build authentic spaces people return to, create meaningful connections and unlock the power of communities you may not even know already exist.

No details. Would you still come?

This session asks what happens when we stop explaining everything, and start leaving room for curiosity, anticipation and wonder. Laura Sawyer draws on her work creating experiences for brands including The Savoy, Glenfiddich and Swarovski, and asks you to arrive curious and let the rest unfold.

Spaces are limited. The question is, will you be one of the curious?

Your AI can’t build authentic human connections, but you can.

AI can draft the message, schedule the meeting and suggest the follow-up but it can’t build authentic relationships. Amos, Kian and Mercurius met through real-world communities, turning their own connections into careers and businesses. This interactive session is about how to build authentic spaces people return to, create meaningful connections and unlock the power of communities you may not even know already exist.

Basic b*tch thinking is killing brands. Time to think Queerer.

As AI floods the market with average content and linear marketing fails culturally attuned audiences, brands need a bold shift. The answer is queer thinking: a creative methodology forged in nuance, complexity and contradiction. In a non-linear world drowning in automated sameness, thinking queerer offers the most human, potent and authentically resonant strategy available to modern brands.

Too much thinking is vanilla. Too many ideas are boring. Too many workshops aimed at addressing this are just regular meetings.

We want to help change that by giving people permission to play. Based on the principles of the kink & fetish community, Kinky Thinking makes the world a little less straight.

Join us –wearing one thing that makes you feel daring– and learn how to host your own session.

Build a Bigger Brain

When did you last have space to think without interruption?

AI delivers answers instantly, but speed and convenience can come at a cost: less time for curiosity, reflection and original thought.
Part brain gym, part live experiment, this workshop will challenge familiar thinking patterns, sharpen your focus and help new ideas emerge.

Join us to create space to think more deeply, creatively and independently.

A reflective and energising session weaving together lessons learned from conversations with leaders, founders and creatives, moments of personal reflection, and practical tips people can take into their own lives. Through storytelling, discussion and guided prompts, participants will explore confidence, resilience, reinvention and the power of their own experiences. The session is wrapped in a lyrical flow of spoken word and poetry, bringing the ideas together with purpose, emotion and a memorable call to action.

Build a Bigger Brain

When did you last have space to think without interruption?

AI delivers answers instantly, but speed and convenience can come at a cost: less time for curiosity, reflection and original thought.
Part brain gym, part live experiment, this workshop will challenge familiar thinking patterns, sharpen your focus and help new ideas emerge.

Join us to create space to think more deeply, creatively and independently.

Discernment Deep Dive: How to Choose What Matters

Nearly half the creative industry is neurodivergent. We're great at doing the work, but it burns us out. After years of adapting and being 'corrected' away from our true needs and preferences, many of us start making choices for others, rather than for ourselves. In this session, we'll practice a technique to access what we want and why we want it. So we can learn to trust our knowing again.

What does legacy and succession have to do with marketing? Everything.

A culture can be the most borrowed, profitable or imitated, yet have nothing to pass down. Meanwhile, the market claims to crave authenticity. The world grows hungrier to experience these narratives, yet those best placed to tell them go unheard.

Two questions remains: who pulls the strings and what flows back to the source?

Community Alchemy – The messy art, science and mysticism of making people belong.

Are you building a community or just a fan club? We open with shared confessions: failures, joys, sleepless nights and near-burnout. Then, we’ll collectively build the bones of your community, real or imagined, and refine it together. You'll leave knowing why your community needs to exist and whether to create, collaborate, connect, or cheerlead.

If you come … we will build it!

Get hands on with your own understanding of some of the words we hear and use everyday at work as Esme, aka The Business Poet, guides you through how to use LEGO and Poetry to deepen human insight and communicate more effectively.

My mission is to perform magic and make people smile. Living with dyspraxia gives me a unique perspective on how to create wonder, notice details others miss and adapt the way I learn. Join me to explore how embracing different ways of moving and thinking brings better problem solving, deeper human connections and fresh creativity to the events industry.

Akash explores degrowth as an economic proposition and a way to rethink our relationship with time. Growth-centred logics of acceleration and constant optimisation erode care, community, meaning, and ecological wellbeing, acting as a barrier to imagination. You’re invited to explore degrowth as a temporal repair mechanism: a blueprint to shift inner and outer cycles from extractive time (speed, scarcity, efficiency-first logics) toward regenerative time (care, maintenance, sufficiency, and intergenerational continuity).

Every year, millions of people apply for jobs or are interviewed and then silence. Hearing why their application isn't progressing should not be a lottery. This session confronts recruitment ghosting and starts to name these bad actions. Using live audience participation, real rejection evidence and a framework that works for both sides of the table. Everyone will leave knowing what rejecting with respect looks like. Because rejections can be respectful.

We spend years climbing, networking and getting very good at explaining what we do. But what happens when the job disappears, or you stop to ask whether you wanted the success you were chasing in the first place?

Drawing on her own experience and the career contradictions we rarely say out loud, Claire Petzal explores the relationship between work, identity and ambition, and the chance to redefine all three.

Alaina Crystal is a creative strategist, accredited coach, writer and podcaster, as well as an inaugural UN//SCENE speaker at last year's conference.

Her Substack and podcast, The Coven in the Corner Office, were inspired by her own journey as a corporate leader and a baby witch.

She regularly weaves tarot into her coaching practice, and will join us at UN//SCENE to provide mystical guidance for your most practical work problems.

Adele is the founder of Talent in Residence® and helps leadership teams drive their business forwards.

She will be in session with Nick Fletcher on ‘Ageism is a system, not a sentiment’. Together, they will talk on the systemic forces driving ageism and what a systemic response looks like.