Workshop series on human–AI improvisation and intelligent staging with opera communities worldwide
This international workshop series brings together key actors in the opera ecosystem (leading opera houses and companies, innovators, independent artists and producers) as well as those new to opera, to explore how immersive tech and trustworthy AI can foster creativity-led innovation in the live arts.
We adopt an interdisciplinary, practice-based methodology combining design-thinking and co-creation workshops, iterative prototyping, and ethnographic & arts-based action research. We aim to critically engage questions of agency, authorship, algorithmic governance and equitable value distribution in AI-mediated live cultural production.
Our wokrshops will advance new ideas and legal, ethical, and business model frameworks for civic participation. Together, we will foster a reciprocal exchange in which artistic processes inform AI engineering and sustainable business design, while technological affordances expand creative and participatory possibilities.
First Workshop: English National Opera’s Tuning into Opera initiative
19 May 2026
ENO’s ‘Tuning into Opera’: https://www.eno.org/engage/tuning-into-opera/
This workshop, part of Tuning into Opera, a research and engagement initiative from English National Opera and The University of Manchester, and the OperAI: Future of Opera series, invites you to experience live opera reimagined through ethical human–AI collaboration.
Led by Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina, Bicentenary Fellow at the University of Manchester and director of Operactive Arts, and Dr Kamila Rymajdo, Research Fellow at English National Opera, the event showcases scenes from a newly-created immersive sci-fi opera series both about and driven by AI. Witness performers collaborate in real time with adaptive AI systems, responding to live audience data, then take part yourself. As playful Yōkai, the mischievous spirits of Japanese folklore, you will get the chance to play in a gamified orchestra via smartphone, directly shaping the performance. We’ll see how AI complement other interactive technologies in making opera more accessible, participatory, and relatable for 21st-century audiences.
This first workshop is generously supported by Creative Manchester at The University of Manchester.
Speakers
Performers
Agenda
4.00pm: Welcome from Creative Manchester
4.15pm: Tech demo (emotion engine)
4.25pm: Performance demonstration with Operactive Arts
5.25pm: Break and audience survey
5.45pm: Panel discussion with Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina, Bob Holland, Dr Jennifer Cearns, Cliona Cassidy, and Lauren Monaghan-Pisano (Chair)
6.15pm: Drinks reception
Gallery
Coming next: Second workshop with Malmö Opera
7-8 October, 2026
Co-creation workshop grounded in the empirical context of Malmö Opera’s innovative new production, The Shining (2026). Centred on the co-design of a human–AI interface, the workshop will surface key tensions and opportunities in human–AI creative collaboration from the perspectives of creators, technologists, academics and industry experts.
This workshop is as part of the new pilot project, ‘Co-Creative Human-AI Futures: Prototyping a Nordic-UK Immersive Art and Trustworthy AI Network for the Performing Arts’, generously supported by the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS).
Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina 