Francesca Panetta

Francesca Panetta is Director of the AKO Storytelling Institute and an Emmy award-winning immersive artist and journalist.  She has long been a pioneer in new forms of storytelling, running the Guardian's vanguard initiatives for over a decade including podcasting, immersive features and virtual reality.

While at the Guardian, Francesca’s work included a VR exploration of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons in a work called 6x9, and a child development-based work about seeing the world through a baby’s eyes called First Impressions. Such works merge journalistic reporting, scholarly sources, and artistic expression.  Subsequently, while Creative Director at MIT’s Centre for Advanced Virtuality (2019-2021), Francesca made flagship work that pushed XR storytelling, including In Event of Moon Disaster.  Her most recent work includes a collaboration with artist Halsey Burgund on the AI art-experiment Vocalise, ‘a fictional voice over agency with ulterior motives’.

Francesca’s films and artwork have won critical acclaim – receiving awards around the world.  Her work has been shown in museums such as MOMI, MOMA, Barbican, Sainsbury Centre and film festivals such as Cannes, Tribeca, Sunday, as well as venues such as the White House and European Commission.  She was a 2019 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.