The Experience Designers

What happens when leadership training stops being something you sit through and becomes something you step inside?In this episode, theatre director and experience designer Donnacadh O’Briain shares the story of a bold leadership programme that replaced slides, frameworks, and role-play with a fully immersive live theatre experience. Set inside a 1930s dockyard, leaders became participants in an unfolding story forced to navigate complex conversations, power dynamics, trust, and decision-making in real time.Together, Steve and Donnacadh explore why theatre creates deeper learning, how immersion accelerates behavioural change, and what organisations can learn from rehearsal rooms about leadership, presence, and human connection.Chapters00:00 – From Theatre to Leadership Learning07:10 – Why Traditional Leadership Training Falls Short14:30 – Inside the Live Theatre Leadership Experiment24:40 – Freezing Time: Learning Through Real Decisions34:50 – The Impact on Leaders and Organisational Culture44:10 – What Theatre Teaches Us About Leading Humans51:00 – The Future of Experiential Leadership DevelopmentBio:Donnacadh is an Olivier and Offie Award-winning Director, Experience Designer and Story Architect specialising in live theatre, immersive experiences and experiential learning. He is a cross-industry expert in story and narrative. His wide-ranging career has seen him working on everything from musicals, Shakespeare, West End comedies, and large-scale immersive LBE's, to consulting on story and branding and creating innovative learning projects for major companies in the US and Europe.Recent clients have ranged from entertainment IP giants to Fortune 500 finance and tech companies and Hollywood production houses. He is a TEDx speaker, has given lectures and mentored at institutions such as Cambridge University & RADA, and spent a year as an Associate Fellow of Creativity at Warwick University.Connect with Donnacadhhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/donnacadh-o-briain-35788837/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) is an experiential artist collective that believes in the power of storytelling to spark the senses and shift perception. Their work guides audiences through multisensory journeys where imagination and information collide.Bringing together coders, poets, chemists, ventriloquists, brands and institutions, MLF collaborates across disciplines to explore new cultural forms, question our relationship with the world, and leave a characteristically playful trail as they move through the cosmos.They create stories that untangle, entangle and flavour reality, blurring the boundaries between art, immersive experiences, XR and film.Their work lives in public spaces, galleries, museums, parks, nature reserves and the metaverse. Everything they produce is grounded in research and designed to carve out space for people to expose, explore and expand their relationship with the living world.MLF has exhibited internationally at institutions including ACMI, Aviva Studios, the Barbican Centre, DDB Seoul, Fundación Telefónica, Museum of the Future, Phi Centre, Royal Botanical Gardens Kew, Sundance Film Festival and SXSW.Their work has been featured in publications such as The Guardian, New Scientist, Wired, The Independent, Creative Review, The Times and more.Website: https://marshmallowlaserfeast.comBarnaby Steel bioBarnaby Steel is an artist and creative director of London-based experiential art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast. His practice centres on the senses; enticing audiences into states of expanded perception, a space where the boundaries between bodies blur. His work is deeply rooted in scientific observation as a window to look through and beyond our own experience.Connect with Barney: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barneysteel/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

In this conversation, Ben Robinson takes us on a journey from skateboarding in Liverpool and the golden age of UK clubbing, all the way into the cutting edge of immersive experience design and climate communication.Ben shares how those early subcultures. DIY, community-led, rebellious, and embodied shaped his worldview and eventually his career, leading experiential work for global brands. But the real energy of this episode lies in his current mission: "Using experience design to shift behaviour, mindset, and, ultimately, our relationship with the planet"We explore how immersive experiences can move people beyond information and into transformation, not just thinking differently, but being different. Ben breaks down concepts like aesthetic vs. extractive attention, embodied cognition, ritual, liminality, and how the “before and after” of an experience is often more important than the moment itself.Most importantly, he argues that experiential design might be one of the most powerful tools we have to communicate climate realities in a way people can actually absorb, feel, and act on.If you care about the future of human connection, creativity, or the planet, this conversation will light you up.Chapters00:00 – Meeting Ben Robinson & Setting the Scene - Why his world begins in subculture, community, and embodied experiences.02:00 – Liverpool, Skateboarding & The Roots of Flow - How Ben’s early life shaped his philosophy of movement, cadence and design.06:45 – Clubbing, Communitas & Designing Collective Energy - The lessons nightlife teaches about pacing, emotion and immersion.10:50 – From Serendipity to a Career in Experience Design - Ben’s path from DIY culture into global experiential work.14:25 – When Experiences Create Real-World Impact - The Deutsche Telekom example and why “proving value in the real world” matters.15:55 – The Experiential Boom & The Battle for Attention - Why experiential is exploding and why attention has become the new currency.23:10 – Can Experiences Change Our Relationship With the Planet? - The potential for experiential to shift mindsets, behaviour and being.29:25 – Climate Communication, Immersion & Ontological Change - Why climate facts fail and how immersive experiences reach deeper parts of us.37:50 – Ritual, Memory & Designing for Transformation - What makes an experience meaningful, not just memorable.50:15 – The Future of Experiential: From Entertainment to Evolution - Ben’s research, liminality, and the role designers play in shaping future mindsets.Ben Robinson bioAward-winning Agency Founder, Experience Designer and Academic Researcher. Growing up in Liverpool during the late 80’s and early 90’s Ben’s life was shaped by two things: skateboarding and clubbing. Experiences that shaped not just what he did, but how he saw the world, and who he was, proving that consciousness is not just embedded (a function of what we think), but embodied (shaped by how we feel), enacted (what we are doing) and extended (and the environment we are in).Whilst finishing a Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship, Ben started working at KLP Entertainment in London. Alongside seminal agencies like Cake, Slice and Exposure, KLP created what we now know as Experiential marketing and was where the likes of V-Festival,T in the Park and Creamfields were born. From KLP Ben moved onto TBWA where he co-created GT Academy and Nissan Sports Adventure. After a number of years as Creative Director at PR agency Freuds, Ben went on to found Proud Robinson and Partners (PRP) an award winning Culture led Creative Practice and Experiential Agency working for the likes Oracle Redbull Racing, General Motors, Diageo, EY, Deutsche Telekom and Samsung. 2 years ago Ben started a PhD in Design and Informatics at the University of Sussex in an effort to better understand exactly how Immersive experiences might be used to promote more positive pluralistic [email protected]://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-robinson-630b2326/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

We’re live at FRAMELESS, London’s #1 immersive art experience, for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how art, technology, and emotion converge. Host Steve Usher sits down with Rosie O’Connor, the art historian and curator behind this groundbreaking space, to uncover how timeless masterpieces are transformed into living, sensory worlds.Located in Marble Arch, FRAMELESS is redefining the immersive art experience as the largest permanent multi-sensory venue in the UK. Across four galleries, visitors step inside reimagined works of some of the world’s greatest artists—where art breaks free from the frame and connects directly to our senses.From accessibility and sensory design to the choreography of sound, light, and movement, this episode explores how immersive storytelling turns art into an experience that moves both heart and mind.Websitewww.frameless.comConnect with Rosiewww.linkedin.com/in/rosie-oconnor/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What if the future of experience design starts not on a screen but on your tongue?In this episode, food anthropologist Caroline Hobkinson invites us into her London kitchen to explore the connection between taste, sound, and human emotion. Through a live sensory experiment, she reveals how our brains respond to flavor, sound, and ritual and why modern life has numbed our ability to truly feel. From seaweed that “sings,” to the psychology of coffee rituals and the intimacy of blindfolded dining, this conversation reawakens our senses and reframes how we connect with food, with others, and with ourselves.00:00 – Welcome to Caroline’s Kitchen02:00 – What Is a Food Anthropologist?06:00 – The Ritual of Coffee: Modern Communion09:30 – Why Taste Is the Most Intimate Sense12:00 – The Seaweed Experiment: Eating With Sound18:00 – The Science Behind It: What the Brain Does24:00 – Blindfolded Bananas & the Art of Surrender33:00 – Designing for the Senses: Lessons for Brands and Experience Creators41:00 – The Smell of Memory44:00 – Bringing Mindfulness to Everyday Eating46:00 – Closing Reflections: Reawakening the SensesCaroline's bioImmersive Experience Director - MultiSensory FoodArtist – Food Anthropologist investigating behaviour, ritual and interrelationships of sensory modalities Born in Cologne in 1979, trained at Central Saint Martin’s where she gained a degree in Fine Art and SOAS where she earned a master’s degree in Anthropology, she has been creating events and food installations, in galleries, museums and public spaces worldwide.She has published and co-authored numerous research and academic papers on the neuroscientific workings of eating behaviour and conducted anthropological qualitative research into food and drink habits and rituals. She is a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute.Operating within the intersections of technology, food and the senses, Caroline has been giving numerous interactive talks and lectures that reimagine people‘s food rituals. Her work and research has appeared in numerous publications and she has collaborated on events for Unilever, Disney, Barilla, Magnum, Selfridges, Bang & Olufsen, Kensington Palace and Pink Lady Apples.Contactwww.carolinehobkinson.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-hobkinson-creative-director/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★