Blue Skies: Our Five Highlights
Candy Crush to help cure depression? Bicycle utopias? Humans replaced by robots? Hear more from the experts on the topics that will make a difference to YOUR future…
In the style of TED talks (short, creative, punchy), and programmed by BBC Radio 4 journalist Stephanie Power, Blue Skies is a free programme of inspirational and future-centric talks taking place at Exhibition Centre Liverpool over the next few weeks. Designed to appeal to a wide range of people interested in all sorts of creative endeavours, philosophical thinking about the future, and alternative ways of working, you can see the any or all of the daily talks – 35 in total – at the waterfront events space from 13 June to 30 June 2016, via free Eventbrite tickets.
Here we’ve picked our five faves:
Go ahead, make my day…
11.40am, Thursday 16 June
With a refocusing on manufacturing across the world – from FabLabs to George Osbourne’s Made In Britain campaign — Asif Moghal, of Academy Award-winning 3D software designers Autodesk, discusses how making can be creative, disruptive, and innovative. But which technologies are going to be the best to focus on in regards to the future of making things?
Rise of the machines…
Man And Woman Vs Machine: Is AI Going To Take Your Job?
3.30pm, Thursday 16 June
Consider a future where cognitive robots will handle your divorce, your gardening, your holidays; they will run factories, stadiums, homes. Will humans be completely replaced? And, if so, what happens to our idea of work? Expect experts from the High Pay Centre, The Human Brain Project, Siemens and more to paint a (very frightening) picture.
Candy Crush fights depression…
Gaming Is Good For Your Health
10.15am, Tuesday 28 June
Heard of eHealth? You should have. Gaming technology – via interactive iOS and Android apps like Disney/Citrus Suite’s Fee-Fi-Fo-Fit, which keeps kids active — is now being used across the globe to fight everything from obesity to depression; helping patients and carers manage their healthcare. Expect Mint Games, vTime (above), Mindwave Ventures, and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital talk innovation and application.
Rise of the machines v 2.0…
2.15pm, Tuesday 28 June
More robot terror as we consider the consequences that virtual and augmented reality will have on audiences. Why attend live theatre, gigs or exhibitions in person, when you can watch from the comfort of your armchair? With the embrace of headsets like Occulus Rift and social media platforms like vTime, ‘virtual’ reality is starting to look better than the ‘real’ thing. Hardly a new conversation, but with growing relevance as the tech starts to match expectation, hear the impassioned views of Draw and Code, The Kazimier/Invisible Wind Factory, BBC Academy, Hope University and more.
Bicycle utopias?
Living Cities With Will Butler-Adams OBE, Brompton Bicycle Company CANCELLED
11.30am, Wednesday 29 June
An engineer described by the BBC as “the bike-maker who disproved the doubters”, Butler-Adams has transformed Brompton’s fortunes from a niche London folding-bike company to the UK’s biggest bike-maker. One for those interested in projects like Friends of the Flyover and RIBA’s City Health Check: how can beautiful, healthy, happy and safer cities can be imagined and grow, using good, old-fashioned people power?
THIS Is The Northern Powerhouse
3.45pm, Wednesday 29 June
A reflection of three weeks of debate on the Blue Skies stage: discussing the way we live now in a post-Brexit society, considering the futures laid bare by the experts in AI, arts, gaming, publishing, jobs, politics and more. Expect Claire Braithwaite (Manchester Growth Economy) and Clive Drinkwater (NW Regional Director, UKTI) plus Peter Hooton, Carl Hunter and Keith Mullin (The Farm) and Stephanie Power (Content Producer, Blue Skies; BBC Radio Four).
Laura Robertson
See Blue Skies at Exhibition Centre Liverpool, 13 June to 30 June 2016 — FREE. Part of the International Festival for Business
Check out the full programme of 35 talks here
This article has been co-published with Kin: Liverpool’s creative and digital network
