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Gem is a trained architect who has also been a curator, design journalist, furniture maker, and author of both fiction & non-fiction works sold worldwide.
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Gem is an award-winning educator who serves on the board of important architectural journals, and gives keynote speeches globally.
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Gem founded and leads the superFUTURES research-design unit at the Royal College of Art, the top art and design university for the last decade.
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Gem is a leader in combining spatial design and future planning, and her connections across different fields are unmatched.
“As an expert contributor to our Future of Film consulting project, Gem Barton of O-SSD challenged and stretched our client’s understanding of the ways in which film and media could be consumed in 2030+. She made creative connections between emergent forms of production and content, and the design of the places and spaces in which they might be experienced, elevating our project output and making our recommendations more holistic, disruptive and future-facing.”
Senior Strategy Consultant, Kantar.
“Gem brings a robust portfolio of provocations to push a teams thinking, reimagine fairer futures while also advocating for next Gen talent who are bursting with ideas we all need to listen closer to. In her you’ll find a true project partner - Gem is someone I listen closely to for new realms speculative futures thinking.”
Director, Culture Concierge.
Working in collaboration with DCMS and the Government Office for Science (GO-Science) Foresight team Gem Barton was invited as a specialist consultant to participate in a project that mapped the future of demand for wireless connectivity in the UK and explore how this might shape public service delivery in the next decade.
“Gem Barton was brought on as a specialist consultant to infuse our concept with speculative futures thinking. Not only did Gem push the bounds of our proposal, but she came to the table with lots of ideas, and facilitated connections with a network of creatives who are engaged in futures-focused installations and story-telling.”
Creative Director, Musem Studio.
Working in collaboration with Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies Gem Barton participated as an expert in the Metaverse Delphi study. This is the first-of-its-kind global delphi study seeking to source the collective knowledge and perspectives of a diverse panel of experts on the future of the metaverse. Gem was part of a diverse panel of experts who assessed a series of hypotheses and propositions in relation to the future of the metaverse towards 2030: What it is, what will it become, when it will be implemented, how impactful it will be, what it will be used for, and much more.