Arts centre reveals nominees for new global award

Wales Millenium Centre announced the nominees for the first-ever Annwn Prize Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Wales Millenium Centre announced the first nominees for its new global arts prize yesterday, October 1.

The Annwn Prize is the first global award that celebrates excellence in immersive storytelling and was launched earlier this year with Crossover Labs.

Now the centre, which is based in Cardiff Bay, has announced 25 nominated works for its inaugural edition.

This includes some of the world’s most “innovative and creatively ambitious artists and studios”, according to the centre.

The nominees include artists from 14 different countries including the UK, USA, Germany and Australia.

• The full list of nominees

  • AI & Me: The Confessional and AI Ego – Germany, mots
    An installation that provokes reflection on self-image and the impact of artificial judgement, challenging perceptions of how we see ourselves through the lens of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

  • Ancestors – Netherlands, Smartphone Orchestra
    An interactive and immersive group experience that will make the viewers profoundly connect with the fellow players and with future generations: taking a selfie they become the great-great grandparent of a human 200 years in the future.   

  • Collateral Echoes – UK, Baff Akoto
    An XR memorial honouring the lives of Black and Immigrant Britons lost to state violence through testimony, archive, and performance, giving voice to the communities who survive them. 

  • Colored / Noire – France, Novaya
    An immersive AI-powered experience through 1950s Alabama, reliving Claudette Colvin’s courageous stand and pioneering role during the civil rights era. 

  • Consensus Gentium – UK, Karen Palmer
    A branching film app using facial recognition to explore surveillance, bias algorithms, and agency in both dystopian and utopian future realities. 

  • Constantinopoliad – UK/Greece, Sister Sylvester
    An expanded cinema work inspired by Cavafy’s legacy, exploring lost queer archives and poetic memory through collective reading and ghostly imaginations. 

  • Dream Machine – USA, Nona Hendryx
    An immersive, mixed reality Afrofuturist journey blending music, AR, VR, and AI to foster community engagement and the envisioning of new possibilities.

  • Fragile Home – Czechia, Ondřej Moravec and Victoria Lopukhina (Brainz Immersive)    
    An immersive mixed reality experience that enables users to experience the gradual transformation of familiar surroundings into the dwelling of a Ukrainian family, spanning from a peaceful past to the tumultuous present.  

  • Heartbreak and Magic – UK, Libby Heaney
    A heartfelt VR experience touching on grief, quantum physics, and the wider multiverse as a lens to explore the meaning of existence and unexpected loss. 

  • Huk, the Jaguaress – Bolivia/Australia, Violeta Ayala, Dr. Yasmeen Hitti and Dan Fallshaw
    A sentient digital being co-created with Indigenous artists to protect the Amazon and challenge colonial AI legacies through ecological knowledge interwoven with dance and rhythm.

  • In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats – UK, Darren Emerson
    An award-winning euphoric coming-of-age VR experience set in the heart of the rave scene on 1989, where music becomes a lifeline.

  • In the Eye of a Dream – UK, Kinnari Saraiya
    An immersive world which reclaims the dreams used in colonial racialist training, reanimating these carriers of prophecy as Indigenous technologies of survival.

  • Lili – USA/UK, iNK Stories
    An immersive neo-noir adaption of Macbeth where users step into the role of dark web hackers to navigate a world of AI, surveillance and digital warfare.  

  • NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) – USA, Andrew Schneider
    An immersive journey through light and sound where participants explore the cosmos – and their inner self - guided by stars, memory, and every decision that led to that moment.

  • Oto's Planet – Luxembourg, Gwenael François
    An intriguingly interactive story, told through VR, about two unlikely roommates on a tiny, peaceful planet as they explore communication and cohabitation between one another after a fruit-related mishap.

  • Reflections of Little Red Dot – Germany, Chloé Lee
    A mixed reality open documentary, co-created by viewers with a custom projector to explore Singapore’s evolving landscape through personal stories.

  • Spirit Systems of Soft Knowing ༊*·˚ – UK/Germany, Keiken
    An interactive installation by Keiken using haptic wearable wombs to explore empathy, perception, and interconnection beyond human experience.

  • The Founders Pillars and The Power Loom – South Africa, Dr Meghna Singh, Simon Wood and Lesiba Mabitsela    
    A site-responsive Augmented Reality (AR) memorial transforming colonial architecture with a multimedia installation of African textiles and ancestral storytelling.

  • The Manikins: a work in progress – UK, Deadweight Theatre
    An interactive show that casts a single audience member as a patient in the office of Dr. Ligotti, where they navigate the hidden agendas and supernatural techniques of the enigmatic psychiatrist and his secretary, Beatrix.

  • Transmission – Into The Dark – Australia, One step at a time like this
    An award-winning, radio-based live performance guiding audiences through mysterious installations and nocturnal streets into the soul of the night.

  • Traversing the Mist – Taiwan, CHOU Tung-Yen
    A surreal multi-user XR experience exploring desire, excitement and fear, set within the dissolving dreamscape of a Taiwanese sauna. 

  • Turbulence: Jamais Vu – Australia, Ben Joseph Andrews and Emma Roberts
    A mixed reality docu-essay exploring perception and jamais vu, through intimate storytelling and spatial interaction.

  • Wilfred Buck’s Star Stories – Canada, Lisa Jackson, Wilfred Buck and The Macronauts
    This immersive XR work for domes and planetariums brings to life four stories, gathered and told by renowned Ininew (Cree) astronomer and star knowledge expert and author Wilfred Buck.  

  • ./MYTH.YOU (Itʼs like it have found a myth in you.) – Japan, Michibumi ITO    
    A Virtual Reality (VR) that transforms your neural state shifts into a mythic, real-time essay-film of the self, through changing architectural sights reflective of your body’s experience.

  • [EOL]. End of Life – Germany, DARUM.
    An immersive VR ruinscape exploring digital legacy, memory, and who determines what virtual traces are preserved or erased. 

The stories and themes explored are varied and include the intimate experience of grief to speculative visions of surveillance, the magical possibilities of quantum physics to a multi-sensory journey into the 1989 acid house rave scene or surreal explorations of desire in a Taiwanese gay sauna.

Graeme Farrow, chief creative and content officer at Wales Millennium Centre, said: "These works represent the very best of the bold and extraordinary voices shaping the future of immersive storytelling across the globe.

“These artists and studios are pushing boundaries, blending technology and creativity to craft unforgettable experiences. This moment is not just a celebration of their talent, but a testament to the growing significance of this artform."

Samantha King, nominator and representative of the shortlist selection committee, said: "The Annwn Prize establishes Wales Millennium Centre as a leader in recognising and nurturing this rapidly evolving art form, providing a platform for artists in this space and an unprecedented opportunity for audiences to experience these works."

A shortlist of four finalists chosen by a selection committee will be announced this November and these works will then be showcased to the public in a major exhibition at the centre in May next year.

A jury of industry experts and those from the arts and entertainment industry will select and announce the winner on 14 June 2026.

Supported by Peter and Janet Swinburn, the winning artist or studio will be awarded £20,000 along with a bespoke residency to support the development of new work.