Creativity, Collectivity, Climate Crisis Panel discussion with Dustin Harvey and Andy Smith, co-chaired by Symoné and Kate Craddock - St Mary's Heritage Centre

Join the individual artists behind Awake And Still Drowning (Dustin Harvey) and A Citizens’ Assembly (Andy Smith) for an urgent conversation about these two distinctive performance works. While both performances address the pressing issue of the climate crisis, they take on very different creative formats, but are united in the invitations they each make to their audience to collectively step inside the creative worlds they conjure.

Co-chaired by GIFT’s Festival Director Kate Craddock and visiting artist Symoné, you can expect this conversation to cover wide ranging topics including the climate emergency, audience participation, spectatorship, and immersive technologies.

Andy Smith is a theatre-maker based in the North-West of England. His most recent works include the Plays For The People project, The Preston Bill and Summit.

Dustin Harvey creates participatory performances and immersive works that blend theatre, storytelling, and emerging technologies, inviting audiences to become co-creators rather than passive spectators.

Symoné is a Guinness World Record-holding queer interdisciplinary performer, director, and alternative game designer working across circus, cabaret, performance art, and game technologies. Blending pole dance, rollerskating, hula hoop, and immersive design, her work thematically explores power, spectatorship, and the unconscious through form-driven performance. She has performed internationally, including with La Soireé, Jon Hopkins, and Peaches, and created various personal productions; A Place Between Mass & Echoes, Nullspace Motel, UTOPIAN (t&cs apply) and Euphorica. Symoné studied a BA in Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies and studied game development with Code Coven Academy. Her work has been commissioned by leading UK institutions and is a previous artist-in-residence at Live Art Development Agency (2025), where she also founded the Live Art and Gaming Network.