Ars Electronica Creative Producers Program
A program that critically examined creative producer/-ing/-ion, culminating in the Manifesto for Creative Producing.
As interdisciplinary collaboration emerges as a vital linchpin in an increasingly interconnected world, the role of Creative Producer is coming to the fore. For many, having self-defined as a Creative Producer, or developed a Creative Producing practice independently, we are now looking for community and collective identity.
The Ars Electronica Creative Producers Program was an experimental professional development initiative co‑created and delivered by me and Nicholas Medvescek that brought together an international cohort of emerging and established creative producers from diverse disciplines, cultures and sectors.
The program ran as an online program in the lead‑up to the Ars Electronica Festival 2021: A New Digital Deal. It was conceived as both an intellectual and practical inquiry into what creative producing is — not simply as a job title but as an evolving, value‑driven skillset that bridges disciplines, supports collaboration, and builds adaptive frameworks for creative work. Over six weeks, 22 diverse practitioners from around the world came together to critically reflect on shared approaches, unpack common challenges, and articulate a collective vocabulary for their practice.
Throughout the program, Nicholas Medvescek and I drew on design and participatory methods to undertake practice-based research that critically reflected on our role(s) and practices. The outcome of this collaboration was A Manifesto for Creative Producing, a living document co‑authored by the cohort that names the values, methodologies and impacts of creative producing as a practice. It was featured in the Ars Electronica Festival program in 2021 as part of the (EN)Compass series presented by Science Gallery, giving the work public visibility and extending its reach into the wider festival community.
https://creativeproducing.online/
The Creative Producers Program and its manifesto have had a lasting impact both within and beyond the Ars Electronica community. For many participants, including Justin Berry (Yale Univesity), the program provided language and confidence to articulate their practice in ways that transformed how they work:
“I found that my participation in the program was genuinely transformative. There are tools and approaches that I have used to solve problems in the past, but they were always ill‑defined and I was uncertain of their true efficacy. Meeting and learning from so many creative producers taught me that the tools and strategies I was using were not unique to me, and that they were effective in many contexts that I had never explored. The program gave shape and language for what was previously an instinctive approach and provided additional tools to not only work better and more efficiently, but to BE better as a collaborator, a producer, and as a citizen of the world.”
The work also shaped my own research trajectory — informing and providing foundational concepts for my PhD thesis on creative production, and contributing to broader academic and critical conversations about the practice of creative producers. The Manifesto and the community that formed around it continue to shape thought leadership in creative producing, including in a chapter co-written for The Nomadic Image: Explorations at the intersections of art, science, and culture.
In 2023, the manifesto was revisited at the Ars Electronica Festival Who Owns the Truth? through a series of public sessions under the title Expanding Models of Creative Production. During these interactive workshops, past cohort members and new participants were invited into dialogue to revisit, critique and extend the manifesto. This iteration demonstrated the manifesto’s capacity to act as a living, generative text within ongoing discourse about creative practice and its societal impacts.
Through this, and on-going activities to sustain a community of practice, the Creative Producers Program remains a touchstone for ongoing community building, professional development and research into creative producing. It has seeded further workshops, dialogues and reflective practices that continue to bring producers together across disciplines and geographies, and it stands as an early model for how international cohorts can define and mobilise shared professional identities in hybrid, relational, and critical creative contexts.
Having pitched and gained support from the Ars Electronica festival team, I led the design, facilitation and delivery of the program alongside Nicholas Medvescek - shaping the structure, sessions and collective inquiry processes that formed the heart of the cohort experience. This included designing peer‑to‑peer dialogues, reflective exercises and collaborative workshops that allowed participants to draw on their own practices, surface shared patterns, and articulate new frameworks for creative producing.
Crucially, the programme was intentionally built as a community‑of‑practice. I have continued to facilitate critical discussion across cultural and disciplinary boundaries, and nurturing a cohort identity that could continue to evolve beyond the formal timeline of the program. This sustained community building was foundational to how participants engaged with one another, extended the manifesto into their own work, and continue to connect as peers and collaborators.
Through this combination of strategic program design, facilitation, and community building, I have enabled participants - and me - to gain clarity and confidence in their practice while cultivating a global network of creative producers committed to shared professional standards and values.