Adrian Westaway Co-founder & Director of Technology and Magic at Special Projects Adrian is an inventor, engineer and experience designer on a mission to make the human-technology interaction meaningful and delightful. As co-founder of Special Projects he harnesses technology, inclusive research and magic thinking to devise design propositions that feel familiar yet wondrous. A self-taught magician since the age of 11 and full member of the Magic Circle, he relentlessly pursues his conviction that “designers should use magic thinking and try to introduce surprise, delight and fuzzy feeling in the things they create.” After becoming the first ever James Dyson Fellow in 2007, and a Fellow of the Royal Commission of 1851, in 2010, for his work on interactive lighting systems, Adrian built a playground in Peru, had whisky with Derren Brown as a student in Bristol, and tried to make his teachers disappear. His contagious passion for magic and engineering made him a beloved tutor and lecturer in Design & Innovation at Queen Mary University and the Royal College of Art, in London and a visiting faculty member at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. There he teaches ‘Magic and Design’, a nomadic workshop where students are introduced to methods of using design and technology to create enchanted products and experiences.

Graphic designer / Book seller. From Scotland. Living & working in London.

Amanda Eliasson is a Swedish animation director based in London. Her work place primary interest in hand generated processes. She recently graduated with an MA in animation from the Royal College of Art, London. Now she’s a freelance animation director in the UK. “Since I started animating I’ve developed an interest in making flat images transport the viewer into a three dimensional space. I would say my style is playful and naive in contrast to the difficult social subjects I often address in my films”.

Documentary Filmmaker

Photographer - Film Maker - Creative Researcher - DJ