Cannes Lions Offstage

Off FROM the main Cannes Lions stage, AC hosted and moderated a series of immersive dinnerS, June 2026

Over three nights above the Croisette, Culture3 took the Cannes Lions conversation off the main stage and up the hill, focusing on the future of culture in a series powered by the UK's Department for Business and Trade (DBT). OffStage was an antidote to the festival's noise: no panels, no slides, no open bars, just one theme and one partner each night, with a led conversation over dinner at a beautiful villa. The series of interactive dinners of hot summer evening included… a fireside chat that AC held and moderated with everyone sitting on the edge of a swimming foot, with their feet in the water - because a shared, slightly absurd experience opens people up faster than any icebreaker.

Invited guests of the immersive dinner seated at the table in the villa’s garden

Each night put a different question on the table. The Culture of Creativity, with Higgsfield AI, asked what makes work count when anyone can make anything — just as Cannes has spent seventy years widening what it'll even call creative. The Culture of Leadership, with ProFinda, tackled value itself — when hours no longer equal output, how do you recognise and reward the people who actually move things? And the Culture of AI, with Found, pressed the harder version of the festival's favourite topic: what would it take for AI to deliver a real creative shift, rather than a faster route to the same work? With feet in the water, AC held a fireside chat about "liquid content" with Matthieu Lorrain, who helped build Google's Veo before leaving DeepMind. His provocation - that when machines can flood the world with infinite content, the new luxury becomes resonance, not reach - set the tone for the week.

Read coverage by Chris Hawes for The Observer UK - the dispatches here and here.

Picture: AC is moderating a fireside chat about liquid content with feet in the water