Pete Woodbridge · Creative technologist & innovation leader · Liverpool
I Build things & Back people.
Hello
I build things with technology, and the spaces, programmes and funding that let other people build theirs.
I'm Pete Woodbridge, a creative technologist, engineer and innovation leader based in Liverpool.
I have 20+ years of experience across digital and technology roles, R&D and innovation, and building programmes that help the next generation of innovators and technical talent.
Working on projects for major brands, artists, labs, studios, skills providers and other partners — the BBC, ITV, Aardman, Google, Sony, Epic Games, the NHS and the United Nations among them.
Right now I am the Digital & Technology Cluster Lead for the Liverpool City Region, growing the region's digital and technology sector with its businesses, universities, investors and talent. I also direct Dreamlab, an R&D lab and collective of 40+ experts, and write Dream Machine, a living book about AI and the next creative economy.
Until recently I was R&D and Innovation Lead on MusicFutures, a £7.2m programme I helped the region win, and Innovation Director at the MediaCity Innovation Hub, where we backed 35+ collaborative projects on a £3.2m accelerator, leading to major acquisitions, impact and investment.
Before that, I've worked in studios, start-ups and universities, and for brands. Hands-on R&D, development and production across software, AI and computer vision, interactive and sensor-based media, projection mapping and live event technology, games engines, VR/XR and mixed reality, motion and volumetric capture, virtual production and in-camera VFX — inventing in Python, Unreal Engine, Unity, the web, JavaScript and more.
And now creative AI and agentic workflows, creative technology and software engineering.
One eye always on what's next — technically and strategically, for the customer, the people and the opportunity.
Keep experimenting
Why
The technology was never the point.
Every tool I have built — LED stages, projection systems, games engines, now agents — only ever mattered for what someone else could do once it existed. Technology for its own sake has never held me for long. What holds me is the person on the other side of it, who will make something extraordinary the moment the thing in front of them stops getting in the way.
Which is why the two halves of my work are really one. Hands-on, I build agents and tools that make people faster, stranger and better at their thing, never redundant. On the other side, I build the programmes, funding and labs that put all of that within reach of people who would otherwise never get near it.
Selected work
Labs, stages, programmes & playable things
Ten places where the work happened, and some of the names involved, plus the freelance work running underneath all of it.
MusicFutures
2025 – 2026Building a £7.2 million programme so that artists, researchers and companies across the Liverpool City Region could get on and innovate.
Dreamlab
2024 – presentA lab and collective of 40+ experts, built so that independent innovators have somewhere to develop future media, AI and realtime work.
MediaCity Innovation Hub
2023 – 2025Backing other people's innovation: 35+ funded R&D collaborations and over £2.7m into regional companies, within a year.
Crucial FX
2023Playable, projection-mapped and interactive experiences for the world's biggest brands.
Pathway Studios
2022Realtime content, in-camera VFX and innovation on a 6,000 sq ft LED volume in Manchester.
Draw & Code
2021 – 2022Mocap, volumetric capture, virtual production and hardware R&D with Liverpool's immersive specialists.
TMRW Foundation
2020 – 2021Product Director on a state-of-the-art web-based realtime games engine, and the 3D experience platform built on top of it. No goggles necessary.
XLab & MA Immersive Arts
2018 – 2020Co-designing the future at the intersection of art, games, media, performance and technology, and launching the world's first MA in Immersive Arts.
SODA Manchester
2015 – 2019Shaping the curriculum for a £35 million school built for the digital storytellers of the future.
Centre for Disruptive Media
2010 - 2015Pioneering digital learning: the UK's first university iTunes site, an early YouTube Edu partnership, and a photography course that lived inside an app.
Freelance & consultancy
2003 – presentIndependent work for brands, studios, universities and companies, running underneath every role on this page.
with me
Start something
Commissions, consultancy, R&D collaborations, talks and teaching.
What I do
Four things, done properly.
Innovation leadership
Turning a region's talent and ideas into real projects, products and companies. Programmes, clusters, labs and investment are the means; creating the conditions is the point.
AI & realtime
Making people faster, stranger and better at their thing, never redundant. AI-augmented workflows, agentic software development and tool-building.
Immersive & live experiences
Giving thousands of people something to feel in the same room at the same time. Projection mapping, tracking, sensors and games engines, for rooms, stages, stadiums and streets.
Virtual production
Putting film-scale production within reach of teams who could never go near a backlot. LED volumes, in-camera VFX, motion capture and volumetric pipelines, from a garage set-up to a 6,000 sq ft stage.
Things I am asked for
- Innovation strategy
- Innovation leadership
- Cluster development
- R&D programmes
- Creative AI
- AI agents & agentic workflows
- Software prototyping
- AI-augmented production workflows
- Digital twins
- Geospatial & realtime data
- Data visualisation
- Creative technology
- Virtual production
- In-camera VFX (ICVFX)
- Realtime production
- Immersive experiences
- Projection mapping
- Interactive installations
- Unreal Engine
- Games engines
- Motion capture
- Volumetric capture
- Mixed reality
- Augmented reality
- Experiential technology
- Research and development
- Creative industries policy
Now
Digital & Technology Cluster Lead, Liverpool City Region.
My newest role, and the clearest version of what I do: working with the region's businesses, universities, investors and talent to grow one of the UK's fastest-moving digital and technology economies. Less about what I build myself, more about what becomes possible for everyone else. It follows the MusicFutures programme and the Immersive Liverpool network I founded in 2018.
I also direct Dreamlab and publish Dream Machine, a newsletter, podcast and book tracking what AI is doing to film, music, games and media. It has been picked up by The Economist and Fast Company.
Tell me what you're building.
Commissions, consultancy, R&D collaborations, talks, or just an idea you want to test on someone who has probably tried it once already.
Get in touch ↗