Wales Millennium Centre announces new ‘digital-first’ venue

Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) has announced the opening of a new digital-first venue, a part of its continued focus on creative development in Wales.

The venue, a 550-seat immersive space with production, rehearsal, and training facilities, will be WMC’s first stand-alone building since its opening in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II. The initiative will be located opposite the main Centre, on a site identified in collaboration with Cardiff Council.

Set to engage over 10,000 participants in creative training over the next five years, the new venue will expand WMC’s youth programmes and offer emerging artists the opportunity to work with immersive technologies. The facility will complement WMC’s existing venues: the 1900-seat Donald Gordon Theatre, 250-seat Weston Studio, and a 150-seat cabaret space.

The new space builds on WMC’s success with its immersive XR venue, Bocs, which launched in 2022 and has since hosted over 31,000 visitors across 18 immersive experiences. Highlights have included In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, a virtual reality recreation of the ’90s rave scene, and Colored: The Unsung Life of Claudette Colvin, a Cannes prize-winning immersive work. WMC’s digital programming has recently included Invisible Ocean, an immersive site-wide production that attracted 7,500 visitors over six weeks.

WMC is also part of the Immersive Arts consortium, a UK-wide initiative supporting research and skills development in digital and immersive arts. The consortium will distribute £3.6 million in grants to UK artists from 2024 to 2027, furthering WMC’s commitment to making immersive technology accessible to diverse artists.

This development coincides with WMC’s 20th anniversary. Since its 2004 opening, WMC has become the UK’s largest arts centre outside London, with recent milestones including co-productions like Nye with the National Theatre, as well as housing the touring production of Hamilton, and the annual Llais festival.