ARIA exists to fund the kind of high-risk, high-reward research that could create entirely new industries.

However, ambitious ideas rarely move forward in isolation.

For its first major gathering, ARIA wanted to bring its growing community together in person, creating a space where scientists, technologists, founders, policymakers and pioneering researchers could meet, challenge each other and explore what might be possible.

The Brief

Over three days, ARIA needed to create its first large-scale in-person community experience.

The ambition was bigger than delivering a programme of talks.

This was an emerging ecosystem of people working at the edges of science and technology. The event needed to showcase the potential of ARIA’s opportunity spaces, while creating the conditions for new relationships, unexpected conversations and ideas to develop.

As when you’re trying to accelerate breakthrough thinking, who you bring together matters just as much as what you put on stage.

The Challenge

How do you design an event for people whose job is to challenge convention?

The experience needed enough structure to give the three days purpose, without becoming so programmed that there was no room for curiosity.

Scientists needed to meet founders, researchers needed access to policymakers and people working across different disciplines needed opportunities to discover ideas, perspectives and potential collaborators they might not otherwise encounter.

Connection couldn’t simply be an item on the agenda. It had to be designed into the experience.

Our Thinking

You can’t plan the conversation that sparks the next breakthrough, so rather than thinking only about what people would hear, we thought about what needed to happen between people.

The programme combined talks, panels, collaborative sessions and live demonstrations showcasing the real-world potential of emerging technologies across ARIA’s opportunity spaces.

Around that content, we created space for challenge, curiosity and collaboration, giving conversations somewhere to start and somewhere to continue.

Delivery

From the flow of the programme to the experience across the venue, every element was designed around adaptability, energy and human connection.

Over three days, be-good brought together ARIA’s community for an experience that reflected the pace and ambition of the organisation itself, while creating the space people needed to exchange ideas, build relationships and explore opportunities together.

By bringing the community together in person, ARIA was able to strengthen relationships across its ecosystem, galvanise new thinking and build a shared sense of momentum around the future of UK R&D.