Neurodiversity - 9am Benefits of a Neurodiverse Workforce

Emma Walker | auticon

Emma will provide a brief overview of auticon before talking about the cognitive profile and strengths of neurodivergent individuals and the benefits of having a neurodiverse workforce

Neurodiversity - Neuro Diversity in the VFX industry with Industrial Light and Magic

Amy Backwell | ILM
Mandy Mok | ILM
Fleur Willis | ILM

An Informal discussion about ILM’s approach to celebrating Neuro Diversity. ILM's Amy Backwell, Mandy Mok and Fleur Willis talk with Teesside’s Penny Holton about their Enabled support group and reflect on their personal experiences.

Neurodiversity - Why you should Employ Autism

Jade Fuller | Ambitious About Autism
Peter Wynch | Ambitious About Autism

Understand about the benefits of recruiting and retaining autistic talent in your organisation and the talents and skill sets that they offer. Hear more about our national Employ Autism programme, where we are supporting employers to offer paid internships to autistic people as well as some practical changes you can make now to access this untapped talent pool.

Culture & Ethnicity - Launching an international game jam in a pandemic

Laura Martin | Digital Schoolhouse Programme at Ukie
Bukola Akingbade | Kucheza Gaming

Laura Martin (Digital Schoolhouse) and Bukola Akingbade (Kucheza Gaming) talk about the lessons they learnt launching the inaugural Mobo Game Jam, an international game-making challenge designed to facilitate a rich cultural exchange between students in the UK and Nigeria. Learn about how they managed to receive over 1000 public votes it’s first ever final, plus the challenges they encountered along the way.

Culture and Ethnicity - My Personal Insights into the Video Games Industry

Zakia Abdullah | Play Well for Life & BAME in Games

With several years of experience as a Character artist for companies such as Rare, Mediatonic and Natural motion, Zakia shares her journey and some honest truths about what it means to be both an artist and a person.

Sexual Identity (LGBTQ+) - Why LGBTQ+ inclusion matters at work

Carla Tully | Stonewall
Sarah Campbell | Stonewall

An inclusive workplace is one where everyone can achieve their potential. However, for many LGBTQ+ people being unable to bring their full selves to work creates barriers to staying and progressing in some organisations. In this session we’ll introduce Stonewall and our work, talk a little more about how to create a more inclusive workplace and provide you with some practical things you can implement right away.

Sexual Identity (LGBTQ+) - LGBT+ Inclusion in the Workplace - Building a more inclusive environment at work

Jack Williams |

Inclusion specialist Jack Williams shares his experiences of inclusion in the workplace and, through a mixture of best practice and action-focused tips, shares how you can make a difference in your workplace to develop a more welcoming and open environment for everyone.

Mental Health and Wellbeing - On Mental Health in the Games Business, and Technical Roles

Steven Bailey |

The games landscape is restless and still emerging, and often irresistibly absorbing with it, but it’s also relentless and exhausting in ways that can test our mental health. This talk will look at topics like anxiety and impostor syndrome, from the perspective of technical and business-related roles in games, with the hopeful aim of better equipping you to face such challenges in your own lives.

Mental Health and Wellbeing - Burnout: Too exhausted to carry on

Dr Chun Chiang Sin Fai Lam | Gaming The Mind

Burnout is characterised by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal achievement within the workplace. It affects a significant proportion of people in the community secondary to work related stress. This talk would look at how it presents and what needs to be done to address it.

Mental Health and Wellbeing - Mental health and the games industry

Rosie Taylor | Safe In Our World
Sarah Sorrell | Safe In Our World

Safe in our world is a mental health charity focusing on the games industry and utilise a passion for playing games as a platform to talk about mental health and to destigmatise it. Although a relatively new charity Safe in our world has already had an impressive impact starting a moderated safer together discord server, an industry wide pledge programme working with some of the best-known publishers and developers to creative more supportive workplaces focusing on wellbeing; a website of useful resources and specific job role training focusing on mental health for customer facing roles.

Gender Inclusivity - Diversity on the creative team; unheard stories and animation

Lesley-Anne Rose | Stop Motion Animation

Lesley-Anne talks about through her journey of working as a stop motion animator in the North East, from getting her first commission through to working on her current BFI project 'Type' and the experiences that influenced her decision to work with an all-female lead creative team.

Gender Inclusivity - Busting myths and misconceptions

Emma Smith | Creative Assembly

Emma will be sharing her experience of setting up Motion Capture Experience sessions with students as a way to bust the myths and misconceptions held about the Games Industry. By taking a practical and experience-led approach, the sessions challenged the students’ career choices and gave their educators a more well-rounded view of our often misunderstood profession (plus they had a whole load of fun along the way!)

Gender Inclusivity - Building a Game Studio and Advocacy Organisation from Scratch

Sally Blake | Silent Games

Sally Blake, CEO of Silent Games, discusses how she built the foundations of her career which led to the creation of her own studio Silent Games, and advocacy organisation, Women Making Games. Sally runs through each of the key decision points in her 10 year games industry career and talks about her experiences in AAA game development at Ubisoft, and independent studio experiences at Dimension and No More Robots.

Gender Inclusivity - The Grimoire of Gender - Code Coven's quest to dispel inequality

Tara Mustapha | Code Coven

Karla Reyes - Code Coven -

Code Coven is the first global games industry accelerator for underrepresented talent. This talk will highlight the need for diversity in the games industry especially in regards to gender and race, as well as featuring the work that Code Coven is doing to dispel inequality.

Social Mobility - Making That Social Mobility Leap

Carmen Antiqueira | Making The Leap
Eugene Blavo | Making The Leap

What Making The Leap does and how we contribute to creating a more inclusive and fairer society for all, Why social mobility should be a key part of every organisation’s strategy, How the Games, Animation and VFX sector can start or expand their social mobility activity by partnering with us and being directly involved in our project activity and the SOMOs.

Disability & Accessibility - A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Bringing animation alive with Audio Description

Dr Amy Kavanagh |

Dr Amy Kavanagh is a blind cinema fan, but she is often excluded by tv shows or films which don't include Audio Description tracks. This talk will explore what Audio Description brings to your work, the audiences that rely on it and the artistry of describing the moving image.

Disability & Accessibility - Digital diversity as a bonus

Simon McKeown | MIMA School of Art and Design

Digital artist Simon McKeown and former Head of 3D and Animation at Reflections Interactive (makers of the Driver Series) in Newcastle discusses his background in computer games, digital art, disability, diversity and deafness.

McKeown showcases how he has embedded diversity as a central creative resource in his work (including games, exhibitions, projection mapping events), empowering storytelling, gameplay and artistic endeavour to create new creative projects and audiences.