COMPUTALA 2026
Art AI and Creativity
COMPUTALA 2026 was our January digital arts festival at LCB Depot in Leicester, produced with New Media Art Club. Running from 12 to 30 January 2026, the festival focused on AI as something to question, test and work through critically in public.
This year’s programme brought together exhibition, workshops, tours and live events. The festival opened with a launch and private view on 9 January, included curator tours during the exhibition period, hands-on activities such as Music with Robots and CreateAI & Art, and closed with Slop, an evening of experimental audio-visual performance.
Robots for a Safer World
Taking its cue from a government initiative to automate the dangerous and difficult work of manual labour, this exhibition asked what happens when that same logic is applied to creative practice, and whether automating the hard parts of making art frees us or diminishes us. The works on show offered no single answer, ranging from sharp reflections on commodification and servitude to more playful explorations of music, puzzles, and the strange intimacy of cyber pets.
The exhibition Robots for a Safer World helped frame that approach by putting questions about AI, robotics and creative practice at the centre of the season.
CQ Earlies Family Open Day
On the first weekend of the festival we took over LCB as part of their monthly kids open day CQ Earlies welcoming over 300 people into the exhibition to take part in coding and junk robot building.
What made COMPUTALA 2026 work for us was the mix of critical discussion and accessible activity. The programme made room for artists exploring AI in different ways, while also giving people a direct route in through workshops, talks and informal encounters with the work.
Ceremony X COMPUTALA - SLOP
For the second year we’ve been lucky enough to have Ceremony close COMPUTALA for us. SLOP was a night of live experimental AV performaces that explored interaction with computers in new and interesting ways.
