Creative leadership / Immersive storytelling / Community building
Impact Reality
Virtual art. Real-world change.
What would happen if the people creating immersive stories for social good had more opportunities to work together, find support, and turn ambitious ideas into reality?
In January 2020, Vulcan Productions and Kaleidoscope brought XR artists, funders, impact organizations, technologists, and journalists together in Seattle for a two-day summit dedicated to answering that question.
The opportunity
Bring the right people into the room.
There was no shortage of imaginative XR projects tackling conservation, climate, ocean health, and social justice. But artists often lacked access to funding, technical partners, and organizations that could help turn powerful experiences into meaningful action.
Working with a small Vulcan team and XR pioneer René Pinnell at Kaleidoscope, I oversaw summit planning, budget, project curation, creative expression, and the panel lineup. We built a program around practical conversations on fundraising, ethics, accessibility, and impact, alongside hands-on immersive experiences and a live project pitch showcase.
The gathering
More than a conference.
The summit paired discussions and workshops with a curated exhibition of immersive work, including Traveling While Black, Tree, and Ghost Fleet VR. Its pitch competition gave emerging creators direct access to funders, with $50,000 awarded to four projects through the formal showcase. Beyond those awards, more than 20 XR-for-good projects secured funding through connections made at the summit.
We wanted the connections to outlast the event: an ongoing community where artists, technologists, philanthropists, and impact partners could learn from one another and help promising work get made.
Beyond the summit
A community that showed up for its own.
The summit helped establish a shared conversation around what immersive storytelling for social good needed next: funding, collaboration, practical impact planning, and lasting support for creators. In a Forbes reflection, it was described as a watershed moment for social-impact XR.
When COVID-19 brought much of the creative industry to a halt just months later, that community faced an immediate crisis. Working with Kaleidoscope and our partners, we turned the network we had built into an emergency relief effort, raising and distributing funds to help XR artists through the pandemic.
It became the final act of Impact Reality, and perhaps its clearest expression: a community brought together to create positive change finding a way to support its own people when they needed it most.
Summit attendees
Artists presenting work
XR-for-good projects funded
Direct pitch awards
Attendance and artist counts are contemporary estimates from summit co-organizer René Pinnell. The $50,000 represents four direct pitch awards; the 20+ funded projects figure reflects the broader summit network and is based on my firsthand account. The community later raised and distributed separate COVID-19 relief funding for XR artists.