This June, Journey will join the UK House program at SXSW London for a behind the scenes conversation on the making of David Bowie: You’re Not Alone, the major new immersive experience at Lightroom in collaboration with the David Bowie Estate.
The Making of David Bowie: You’re Not Alone
03 June | 9:30 AM | Sir Devonshire Square Hotel, London
Hosted by writer Emily Bryce-Perkins, who penned this review of the show for Monocle, the fireside chat will bring together the show’s co directors, Mark Grimmer and Tom Wexler of Journey, to explore how one of the most influential creative figures of the last century was translated into a large scale spatial experience.
Rather than a conventional retrospective, David Bowie: You’re Not Alone invites audiences to step inside Bowie’s performances, ideas and creative spirit. Designed by Journey and produced by and presented at Lightroom, the show draws on thousands of hours of material from the David Bowie Archive, including landmark performances, rare footage, photography, drawings, handwritten lyrics, personal notes and audio recordings.
At SXSW London, Mark and Tom will unpack how that archive became atmosphere. The conversation will look at the process of transforming intimate personal material into a public experience, and how image, sound, light and space can work together to create emotional proximity at scale.
The session will also explore the specific design challenges of immersive storytelling. How do you create a show that feels cinematic, but not passive? How do you handle archive material with care while still giving it new life? How do you build a room that feels expansive enough for an artist of Bowie’s scale, but intimate enough for audiences to feel personally connected?
For Journey, these questions sit at the centre of multidimensional design. David Bowie: You’re Not Alone brings together narrative, media, sound, space and technology to create a shared, memorable experience.
The conversation at SXSW London will offer a rare look at the creative decisions behind the experience, from shaping the narrative structure to working with the archive, designing for Lightroom’s vast projection environment and finding moments of stillness within the spectacle. Register for free here.
