Andy Barnes is co-founder of the Immersive Experience Network (IEN), a collaborative organisation that enhances standards, resources, and training within the immersive entertainment sector. This network offers events where professionals from the industry discuss best practices, emerging technologies, and challenges unique to immersive storytelling and experiences. Its mission includes promoting creative collaboration and advocating for financial and institutional support to ensure the growth of immersive work within cultural sectors, helping creators access benefits like theatre tax relief.
The Immersive Experience Network Summit is IEN’s flagship event, inviting speakers from across the globe to share their knowledge and experience about creating, developing, operating and marketing immersive work. The IEN also produces the Immersive Audiences Report, which captures insights into audience expectations and perceptions around immersive experiences. This helps creators better align their offerings with audience interests and provides data to support sustainable growth in the sector.
Andy Barnes is also the director of Entourage, an event production consultancy that specialises in ambitious, large-scale projects for brands, agencies, and immersive experience creators. Barnes has been instrumental in pushing the boundaries of interactive experiences through his work, providing unique and memorable productions for various clients and audiences. He has worked on the production delivery of some of the largest and longest-running immersive theatre shows in the UK.
Barnes’s work with Entourage and IEN has made him a significant advocate for innovation and professional development in immersive entertainment. His role often bridges the gap between the creative team’s vision and the practical realities of budgets, timelines and venue spaces. Leading iterative design processes, he has worked alongside design teams from backgrounds ranging from theatre to themed attractions to help realise the possible version of a creative concept.
Having worked on 11 Secret Cinema shows over four years, which sold over 500,000 tickets, he is adept at working with creative visionaries and IP owners who collaborate to create memorable experiences.