Visionary

Here East
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Meet Visionary—the podcast that goes beyond the headlines to explore the ideas shaping tomorrow. From AI breakthroughs to the future of work, from smarter cities to stronger cyber-security, host Georgina Godwin sits down with bold thinkers and industry leaders to ask: How can innovation create a better world for us all? Big challenges. Clear solutions. Optimism for the future. From London’s home of innovation, Here East. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 3d ago

    Sir Alistair Spalding on the future of Sadler's Wells

    What happens when a cultural institution refuses to stand still? For more than two decades, Sir Alistair Spalding has made the case that the arts thrive on risk: new artists, new audiences and ideas that might not work until, suddenly, they do. The artistic director of Sadler’s Wells joins Georgina Godwin to discuss the creative gamble behind one of London’s great cultural institutions. Since taking the helm in 2005, Spalding has helped move contemporary dance from the margins towards the mainstream, more than doubling audiences while giving choreographers the freedom to experiment, surprise and occasionally confound. Now the story has a new stage. With Sadler’s Wells East open in Stratford, Spalding is turning his attention to the next generation: the dancers and choreographers who will shape the art form, and the audiences who might be encountering it for the first time. It is also an experiment in what culture can do for a place – not as decoration added after the buildings go up, but as part of what makes a city interesting, imaginative and alive. Spalding and Godwin discuss the pleasures of the unexpected, why artistic institutions must take risks and what live performance can offer in an age increasingly experienced through screens. Visionary returns with a new season of conversations, brought to you by Here East, London’s home of creativity and innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Sir Alistair Spalding on the future of Sadler's Wells

  2. Sep 2 ·  Bonus

    Future Vision: Flow's vision of a world without people

    What would the world look like without us? In the Oscar-winning animated film Flow, humanity has disappeared. Cities and homes remain, but nature has begun to reclaim them. A cat, a dog, a capybara and a handful of other animals navigate a flooded landscape in which survival has replaced civilisation — and the absence of human beings hangs over everything. Author and film writer Caspar Salmon examines the unsettling ideas beneath one of the most remarkable animated films of recent years. Is Flow simply a story about animals surviving a climate catastrophe, or a vision of a planet finally released from human control? What happens when humanity is no longer the centre of the story? And as the climate changes, should imagining our own absence force us to think differently about the world we leave behind? Future Vision tells the stories behind great leaps forward in creativity. Brought to you by the team behind Visionary and presented by Here East, London’s home of creativity and innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Future Vision: Flow's vision of a world without people

  3. Aug 27 ·  Bonus

    Future Vision: Dolly Parton and the untold story of Steel Magnolias

    In 1989, Dolly Parton joined Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis and a young Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias — a film about friendship, grief and the women who face life’s worst moments with a well-timed wisecrack. Nearly four decades later, it is a Hollywood classic. But when Steel Magnolias arrived in cinemas, plenty of critics were less impressed. Its overwhelmingly female world was dismissed as sentimental, frivolous and lacking a “strong male figure” — criticisms that now say almost as much about Hollywood as they do about the film. In this edition of Future Vision, we look at why Dolly Parton was perfectly cast as Truvy, how Steel Magnolias turned a deeply personal tragedy into one of the era’s most enduring films, and what happened to the Hollywood movies made unapologetically for grown women. Writer and critic Hadley Freeman, author of Life Moves Pretty Fast, explains how the economics of Hollywood changed — and why studios increasingly turned their attention towards the teenage boys they believed could deliver a blockbuster opening weekend. From Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment to Moonstruck and Baby Boom, this is the story of a kind of mainstream cinema that once flourished — and then almost disappeared. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Future Vision: Dolly Parton and the untold story of Steel Magnolias

  4. Aug 20 ·  Bonus

    Future Vision: Michael Caine's lost cult classic

    There are cult films, and then there are films that seem almost to disappear. For this special edition of Visionary, part of our Future Vision summer series, we unearth a conversation with the late Mike Hodges, the director who gave British cinema Get Carter, to revisit its stranger, more playful follow-up: Pulp. Hodges tells Benjamin Wilson how the 1972 film grew out of his fascination with B-movies, postwar Italy, political extremism and the strange scandals of the paparazzi age, before taking shape with an extraordinary cast led by Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney. But at the heart of the conversation is Lizabeth Scott. One of film noir’s most distinctive stars, Scott had largely retreated from the screen when Hodges persuaded her to return for what would become her final film appearance. He recalls their delicate first meetings, her anxieties about returning to the camera and the moment she decided to take the role – before dismissing some of the rumours that have followed her performance ever since. A rare encounter with a great British filmmaker, looking back at a forgotten Hollywood star and one of the most curious films of his career. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Future Vision: Michael Caine's lost cult classic

  5. Aug 13 ·  Bonus

    Future Vision: Backrooms proves anyone can make movies

    Hollywood once had the studios, the money and the tools. Not anymore. AI is making visual effects cheaper, professional kit is increasingly accessible and filmmaking is spreading far beyond Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a new generation of directors is honing its craft on YouTube and Instagram rather than working its way through the studio system. So who gets to make a movie now? Does Hollywood still matter? And could the next great director already be building an audience online? From Backrooms to blockbusters made across London, Glasgow and Sydney, Benjamin Wilson reports on the technology, talent and new production hubs reshaping how films are made — and who gets to make them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Future Vision: Backrooms proves anyone can make movies

  6. Aug 6 ·  Bonus

    Future Vision: Sirāt and the art of the apocalypse

    What does the end of civilisation look like when you strip away the Hollywood spectacle? In this episode of Future Vision, our special series exploring the future of creativity and filmmaking, film journalist Caspar Salmon examines Sirāt — Oliver Laxe’s haunting vision of a world coming apart at the seams, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2025. Set among ravers travelling through the deserts of North Africa as war unfolds somewhere beyond the horizon, Sirāt approaches the apocalypse at an unusually human scale. There are no collapsing skyscrapers or armies of extras. Instead, Laxe draws on non-professional actors, documentary-style filmmaking, an unforgiving landscape and a story deliberately untethered from conventional geopolitics. From its echoes of Mad Max: Fury Road to the remarkable performance of Sergi López, Caspar explores how Sirāt blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality — and how its small-scale, independent approach creates a depiction of societal collapse that feels all the more immediate, elemental and unsettling. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Future Vision: Sirāt and the art of the apocalypse

  7. Jul 29 ·  Bonus

    Future Vision: Inventing the cartoon

    Hand-drawn animation changed cinema forever. Long before CGI and artificial intelligence transformed the screen, pioneers like Max Fleischer proved that imagination, craftsmanship and technical invention could create entire worlds from pencil and paper. In this special edition of Visionary's Future Vision series, Jane Fleischer Reid, granddaughter of the legendary animator, reflects on the extraordinary legacy of the Fleischer Studios – the creative force behind Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman and some of the most inventive cartoons ever made. She tells the story of Max Fleischer's restless curiosity, the invention of the rotoscope, the studio's surreal artistic style, and the painstaking restoration of more than 100 classic films from original archive materials. As digital tools make image creation easier than ever, Fleischer's work feels even more relevant. In an era of AI-generated content, audiences are rediscovering the value of artistry you can feel in every frame. The imperfections, ingenuity and unmistakably human touch of handcrafted animation are becoming a premium once again – reminding us that the future of entertainment may depend as much on preserving creative craft as inventing new technology. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Future Vision: Inventing the cartoon

  8. Jul 22 ·  Bonus

    Future Vision: Gattaca and the age of optimisation

    Gattaca imagined a world where every aspect of human potential could be measured, optimised and ranked. Nearly 30 years later, that future feels uncomfortably familiar. In this narrated exploration, writer Caspar Salmon revisits Andrew Niccol's 1997 science-fiction classic to ask whether Gattaca was really about genetics — or whether it foresaw today's culture of relentless self-improvement, biohacking, productivity and optimisation. As AI, genetic testing and performance-enhancing technologies become part of everyday life, the film's central question feels more relevant than ever: what happens when the pursuit of perfection becomes society's defining value? Future Vision is Visionary's special summer series focussing on the future of cinema and what it tells us about the direction of our real world. Brought to you by Here East, London's home of innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Future Vision: Gattaca and the age of optimisation
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out of 5
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About

Meet Visionary—the podcast that goes beyond the headlines to explore the ideas shaping tomorrow. From AI breakthroughs to the future of work, from smarter cities to stronger cyber-security, host Georgina Godwin sits down with bold thinkers and industry leaders to ask: How can innovation create a better world for us all? Big challenges. Clear solutions. Optimism for the future. From London’s home of innovation, Here East. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Here East
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    67
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Here East
  • Show Website
    Visionary