Kirsty is a freelance project manager who works with a range of clients including local authorities, community and professional arts organisations, independent artists and festivals.

Specialising in arts education and community arts, Kirsty works with organisations to turn their creative vision into a reality and her services include project management, organisational development, fundraising and evaluation.  Kirsty has several years experience working with young people, including secondary teaching and running/facilitating arts workshops, projects and consultations.

As Co-ordinator for NYMAZ (North Yorkshire Youth Music Action Zone) Kirsty works with delivery partners across the county to create opportunities for children and young people to access high quality music making activities.

She also oversees the community, education and special needs strand of SightSonic, a programme that includes arts education projects, conferences, workshops and events aimed at engaging people with digital arts and creative technology. As part of this programme Kirsty also manages the organisation’s artist development activities, working with emerging artists from across the UK and Europe to develop their creative and business skills.

Mark Hildred is the Creative Director of Apollo Creative based in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. He has been involved with a wide range of arts projects involving interactive technology for the past ten years. Many of these have involved working with groups of young people both able bodied and disabled.

Mark was Chair of the SightSonic Special Needs Group for four years and a core member of the Steering group, helping shape the progression of the festival and establish a strong educational program. This work included three national conferences on Creative Technology and Disability. In 2004 he was selected to be on the York Renaissance Group and over the following two years helped select a number of artistic interventions to invigorate the City.

In 2002 Mark worked with fibre optic artist Sarah Taylor on her submission for the Jerwood Awards. Her piece subsequently toured UK gallery and arts spaces. Other interactive pieces have included Coming to our senses, Sarah Taylor (2001); First, Last, Everything, Helen Storey (2002); Inside Story, British Library (2005-06); A Sense of Place, York Renaissance Project (2006); Interactive Textiles, Jenny Mason (2006).

Dr Damian Murphy has been a lecturer at the University of York, since 2000, and has previously worked at Leeds Metropolitan University, Bretton Hall College in the School of Music, and started his career in the Performing Arts Department at Harrogate College. His interests are in Music Technology and Sound Design, focusing in particular on physical modelling, acoustics and recording studio techniques. His teaching expertise extends to roles as chief moderator and consultant in the Music, Music Technology and Performing Arts sectors, primarily for NCFE and QCA and he is co-author of the Edexcel AS/A2 Music Technology student guide. He is a visiting lecturer to the Department of Speech, Music and Hearing at KTH, Stockholm, specialising in spatial audio and acoustics.

Damian's research work is focused on physical modelling, spatial sound, virtual environment modelling, and applications of the digital waveguide mesh. This work in acoustic modelling and sound spatialisation formed the basis of the Surrounded by Sound project that was selected for inclusion in the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition, July 2001, and which developed and presented new research in music technology to a public audience. He was also co-author of SoundFX - Making Music with Technology the 2004 IEE touring Faraday Lecture, which toured to 15,000 UK secondary school children and broadcast to an estimated audience of 3 million worldwide. He has been principal investigator (PI) on a number of EPSRC funded projects in physical modelling and room acoustics, and leads the RoomWeaver room modelling project.

He is also PI on the EPSRC funded Spatial Audio Creative Engineering Network (SpACE-Net) in collaboration with the Institute of Sound Recording at the University of Surrey. SpACE-Net aims to bring together researchers, practitioners and industry partners in the field of spatial audio and surround-sound to help direct UK based research in this area.  He has also been exploring sites of architectural and archaeological interest around the UK and capturing their acoustic characteristics, building up a valuable database of audio material and acoustic data valuable to sound designers and researchers alike. Most recently Damian has been participating in research collaborations and exchanges with the Department of Speech, Music and Hearing, KTH, Stockholm, The Department of Media, Helsinki University of Technology, The Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast, the School of the Built Environment, University of Nottingham, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) at McGill University, Canada.

Dr Murphy is also an active sound artist, working in the fields of electroacoustic and contemporary computer music, and audio/video installation art, where sound spatialisation forms a critical aspect of his musical works. In 2004 he was appointed as one of the UK 's first AHRC/ACE Arts and Science Research Fellows, investigating the compositional and aesthetic aspects of sound spatialisation and acoustic modelling techniques. His work has been presented in galleries nationally and at international festivals and venues such as Sightsonic (UK), Bourges Festival (France), and ICMC-2005 (Spain), CCRMA (USA). His soundworks have also resulted in many varied collaborations including visual artists, photographers, poets, archaeologists as well as digital artists working with interactive digital media. He has also been involved in other community and outreach related arts/science education or sound-art projects. These have included workshops for the Sightsonic festival, working respectively with young people and gallery visitors/workshop participants. The collaborative DVD installation 'Reconfigured' worked with pupils at Minster School, York, and Fulford School, York, in the realisation and development of the finished audio/video artwork.

Dr Murphy is a member of the Audio Engineering Society.