Immersive experience is having a moment. It's attracting serious investment, cultural legitimacy and growing audiences. But beneath the surface, the sector is grappling with some uncomfortable questions that rarely get asked in public. "Does any of this actually matter to the people in the room?"

Who decides what success looks like: the artist, the brand, the critic, the algorithm, or the audience standing in the room? And is the rapid commercialisation of immersive experience, driven by IP-led spectaculars, scaled activations and brand budgets, crowding out the work that actually pushes things forward?

This panel brings together voices from across the ecosystem: creative practitioners, cultural programmers, academics and commercial producers. The aim is to have the conversation the industry tends to avoid. Not to reach consensus, but to get somewhere more honest.