Labs & Festivals
Before forming Free Ice Cream Sam and Simon ran, respectively, a creative tech event series called Artful Spark and a street games festival called Igfest. Those years inform our practice now, and we look back at them wistfully sometimes. Could you imagine a city-scale games festival in 2025?
Artful Spark was an event series run by Sam and Ben Templeton for the Creative Tech community between 2015 and 2019.
The events ran every quarter at the Barbican and then at Rich Mix.
Packed with tech demos, discussion and talks, each event brought together artists, inventors, writers, directors, coders, content producers and commissioners to talk practical details, share inspiration and unpick their process.
Were you there? Take a trip down memory lane.
Igfest: An annual festival of Street, Social and Pervasive Games in Bristol UK run by Simon Johnson and Simon Evans between 2008 and 2011.
Igfest was the first festival in the South West to invite people to rediscover their city through playing games on the street.
From finding a moose on the run, to snakes and ladders in a multi- storey car park, to a city scale treasure hunt; from lo-fi games to those enabled by entirely new tech, Igfest had something for everyone. Most importantly, it provided a space for games designers to try out new mechanics and concepts, and for publics to take over the city with playfulness.
