Pete Woodbridge · Creative technologist & innovation leader · Liverpool
Making the future
Hello
I build things where creativity and technology collide, and I build the conditions for other people to do the same.
I'm Pete Woodbridge, a creative technologist and innovation leader. Most of my hands-on work now is creative AI, agentic workflows and software prototyping: building agents and tools that do real work inside production, on top of twenty years of realtime, immersive and virtual production craft. I spend just as much time on the other side of it, designing the programmes, funding and labs that get other innovators the backing they need.
Right now that means leading the Digital & Technology Cluster for the Liverpool City Region, directing the Dreamlab R&D collective, and writing Dream Machine, a living book about AI and the next creative economy.
Before that: R&D lead on a £7.2m music innovation programme, innovation director at MediaCity backing 35+ collaborations, and hands-on technologist on LED stages, projection-mapped stadiums and mixed-reality games. Both halves of the job, in other words.
Selected work
Labs, stages, programmes & playable things
Ten places where the work happened, and some of the names involved. Each one links out to the projects and partners.
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.
What I do
Four things, done properly.
Innovation leadership
Developing programmes, clusters, labs and investment that turn a region's talent and ideas into real projects, products and companies. Creating the conditions, not just the work.
AI & realtime
AI augmented digital workflows, agentic software development and tool-building. Not replacing people; making them faster, stranger and better at their thing.
Immersive & live experiences
Projection mapping, tracking, sensors and games engines for rooms, stages, stadiums and streets. Shared experiences at scale.
Virtual production
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.
Let's make something.
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 ↗