Indivisible: the 360 Igloo as prism/portal/potential – DocFest, 13 June 2026

Sheffield Creative Industries Institute at Docfest Alternate Realities Programme 

 

Indivisible explores the unfolding opportunities afforded by the technology, physical experience, and connectedness of the Sheffield Hallam University Igloo 360 immersive space – extending participation beyond static exhibition site and into  creative, embodied and critical, multi-sensory encounters.

Each selected piece explores the potential for immersive place-inspired storytelling: centering research, innovation, and knowledge exchange to tell stories about climate, nature, resilience, and to document hidden histories of the city. 

Indivisible is a showcase for inspiration, dialogue and provocation. We look forward to welcoming you to the space. 

Curator & Producer: Amy Carter Gordon: Associate Director: Innovation (Culture & Curation) 

Specialist technical expertise: Tanni Moyana, Digital Skills Academic Lead for SY Institute of Technology

 

Venue: South Yorkshire Institute of Technology

Strines Building, Sheffield Hallam University – City Campus, S1 2LX

Opening times: 10:00 – 18:00

Free, no booking required

Important information:

Due to limited capacity in the Igloo, each piece will be screened multiple times during the day. If you arrive part-way through a showing, we kindly ask that you wait for the next one. Wait times will be minimal as the projections are short in duration.

Artist talks: 

Throughout the day, the artist-researchers will give informal talks about their work. 

 

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Programme

 

Title: Germinate and Reclaim Industrial Terrain (GRIT) 

By: Jane Prophet: Professor of Art and Design

Duration: 00:07 minutes

Weeds thrive in rubble and ruins, embodying regeneration and unruly vitality. Germinate and Reclaim Industrial Terrain (GRIT) immerses participants in towering poppies and dandelions that resist human control and quantification. Using documentary and stock footage to train AI, alongside post-processed video, the 360 video celebrates resilient flowering weeds and challenges the human quantification of plants. Chosen for their ability to colonise post-industrial and disturbed spaces, poppies and dandelions push through rubble and compacted soil. Poppies famously flourished on the disturbed, nitrogen-rich ground of WWI battlefields, while dandelions’ deep taproots and prolific seed dispersal allow rapid occupation of hostile environments. Together, these plants symbolise persistence, adaptation, and nature’s capacity to reclaim damaged landscapes.

 

Credits: 

Video: Jane Prophet | Edited: Jane Prophet & Bill Jackson | Sound: Jane Prophet & Bill Jackson | Music: ‘In Ambience’ by Addictive TV

 

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Title: Storm-Cloud 360: Fragments in Connection

By: Jake Goodall: Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design, Course Leader for BA (Hons) Creative Digital Design 

Duration: 00:16 minutes

An immersive retelling of the distance between old foreshadowings and the current contexts of climate activism.

In 1884, John Ruskin foretold of ominous changes to weather phenomena in his prophetic lecture ‘Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’, attributing unsteady cloud patterns and subsequent environmental damage to the effects of industrialisation. This emotional warning to the world about human effects on nature rings true 140 years later as we’re now living in the epicentre of a climate crisis, shouting about the same effects Ruskin observed and hoping for change. This immersive visual experience places participants at the centre of this perpetual conversation; unearthing archives, highlighting connections and celebrating those (past and present) fighting for a stable future.

Credits:

Jake Goodall’s Fragments in Connection for Docfest 2026 breaks apart and remakes Thrown into Form, condensing Tom Payne’s recorded performance, his own motion design expanded with new visual material, and David John Brady’s score, into an immersive environment without live performer. With archival research by Ashley Gallant, drawings by Billy Hughes, and photographs by Becky Payne, the installation layers fragments of past versions into a new form.

 

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Title: Good Storytelling Is…

By: Jake Goodall: Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design, Course Leader for BA(Hons) Creative Digital Design

Duration: 10:00 mins

Good Storytelling Is… an interactive tool and experience, designed to challenge ideas of what ‘good’ storytelling is through abstract data visualisation. It serves to prompt participants to consider creating their own tools, and opens dialogue around the cost of software and skills in the current economical and educational climate. The piece consists of a short immersive documentary, followed by a chance to experiment for yourself.

 

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Title: City of Echoes: Point Clouds and Memory Paths 

By: Anne Doncaster, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Production

Duration: 04:00 minutes

City of Echoes: Point Clouds and Memory Paths is a digital installation exploring memory, urban transformation, and the fragility of the built environment. The project reconstructs demolished historical structures across Sheffield using 3D point cloud models derived from scans, photographs, and archival sources. Rather than presenting complete reconstructions, the buildings appear as fragmented constellations of data—ghost-like forms that hover between presence and absence.

As visitors follow a series of ‘memory paths’, they encounter dispersed traces of the city’s lost architecture. This work revisits the story of the Tinsley Cooling Towers, once a defining landmark of Sheffield’s skyline, re-emerging as ephemeral digital fragments.

Combining archival research with digital visualisation, the installation presents the city as a shifting archive where past structures persist as echoes within Sheffield’s evolving urban landscape.

 

 

Special thanks: Dr Zelda Hannay freelance producer & Rachel Scarfe, Innovation Services.