Brazen adds Dawn Childs, Potter & Scheps to Bristol

Brazen has added Dame Dawn Childs, Richard Potter and Andrew Scheps to the speaker line-up for its Bristol festival, expanding the Summit programme.

The latest additions also include a live podcast appearance by Bristol musician Roni Size, as organisers set out more of the festival's Community, Showcase and Live strands.

Brazen is the new name for an event previously known as Bristol Technology Festival and later BTF+. Over six years, it has broadened from a regional technology gathering into a festival that brings together founders, creatives, investors, policymakers and community groups.

The new speakers span engineering, big tech and music production. Dame Dawn Childs is Chief Executive Officer of data centre company nLighten and previously held senior roles at Gatwick Airport, Merlin Entertainments and National Grid, after starting her career as an RAF engineering officer.

Potter is Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft UK, advising senior business leaders on digital transformation and emerging technologies. Scheps is a three-time Grammy-winning audio engineer, mixer and producer whose credits include Adele, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ziggy Marley.

They join a broader line-up already announced by the festival, including Google Cloud's Caelum Rosenkranz, Riverford founder Guy Singh-Watson, artist and composer Beatie Wolfe, comedian Jayde Adams, author and entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan, Open Bionics ambassador Tilly Lockey, and activist and author Satish Kumar.

Four tracks

The programme is structured around four tracks: Summit, Community, Showcase and Live. It is designed to combine large-stage talks with smaller workshops, public demonstrations and immersive performances across venues in Bristol.

The Community strand will include events from organisations including the RWA, Bristol Creative Industries and the Met Office. Topics will cover misinformation, entry-level AI talent, creative practice, business funding and the future of Bristol Harbour.

A bus tour is also planned to take visitors behind the scenes at several Bristol engineering labs, including Open Bionics, Smartbox and WASE. That part of the programme reflects one of the festival's central themes: connecting the city's technology sector with its wider cultural and civic life.

In the Showcase strand, organisers have outlined a series of interactive exhibits. Virtual Speech is due to present AI-based virtual reality roleplay scenarios focused on workplace conversations, sales, public speaking and pitching.

Rocketmakers will bring its "Crack the Safe" challenge, in which participants try to persuade an interactive 3D character to open a physical safe. BodyCharge is set to demonstrate whole-body electrical muscle stimulation, body-composition scanning and AI-based movement analysis.

Another Showcase project is Loupe, described as a mobile nature adventure aimed at encouraging young people and families to spend time outdoors while learning about wildlife and lost species in Britain.

Live experiences

The Live strand will centre on large-format experiences staged in venues across the city. Among the projects announced is Bristol: Built by Dreamers, an immersive production created with Bristol-based Holotronica and Stuart Warren-Hill inside St Mary Redcliffe Church.

The production will use giant holograms and music to tell stories about the people, ideas and inventions that have shaped Bristol. Holotronica's technology has previously been used in productions for Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and London's New Year's Eve celebrations.

The Crypt at St Nicholas Church will host Haptic Yoga from Beat Blocks. The experience combines the group's Haptic Floor system, which turns music into vibrations felt through the body, with yoga and somatic movement.

The festival is being produced by techSPARK in partnership with Bristol BID, Bristol Creative Industries and MyWorld. The line-up announcement follows an earlier marketing campaign in which pink plaques appeared across Bristol to mark places linked to the city's innovation and cultural history, including trip hop and the natural history series Life on Earth.

Ben Shorrock, Chief Executive Officer of techSPARK, said: "Since revealing our first speakers in September, the scale and variety of the Brazen programme has continued to grow. The latest additions bring world-class expertise in technology, engineering and music to our Summit stage, while the new experiences announced across Community, Showcase and Live demonstrate the breadth of what Brazen will offer. Whether hearing from leading thinkers, exploring Bristol's engineering labs, interacting with emerging technologies or experiencing the city's creativity in completely new ways, we want people to discover new ideas and perspectives throughout the five days."

Vicky Lee, Director of Place at Bristol BID, said: "Brazen is a brilliant opportunity to showcase Bristol at its most ambitious, creative and curious. We're proud to be working with techSPARK and our partners to bring an exciting programme of ideas, experiences and innovation into the heart of the city. From world-class speakers and pioneering technology to immersive experiences in some of Bristol's most distinctive spaces, Brazen will encourage people to explore the city, discover something new and experience the city centre in a different way. It's a fantastic example of what can happen when businesses, creatives, communities and organisations come together to put Bristol firmly on the national and international stage."

James Hirst, Managing Director of Bristol Creative Industries, said: "We're delighted to see Beat Blocks and Holotronica become part of Brazen. These experiences showcase the powerful blend of creativity, technology and innovation that exists across our region and highlights the exceptional talent and strength of our creative industries."

Mark Leaver, Head of Business Partnerships and Inward Investment at MyWorld, said: "Both Beat Blocks and Holotronica are incredible examples of the combination of creativity, technology and experience design. The scale and ambition of the creativity coming out of the region is incredibly exciting and what better platform to bring the people behind it to the spotlight than Brazen festival"