Tea Uglow is co-founder of Dark Swan - a creative & strategic consultancy focused on future trends and exploring cultural-digital interfaces with corporations, consultants, creative agencies, individual creators, and producers at the boundaries of traditional cultural practice. She has remained a strong advocate of the evolutionary primacy of physical digital tools, and on highlighting the malleable nature of truth, contiguity, linearity, and value that digital introduces into established cultures.
Her projects during her time at Google included multiple collaborations with artists, publishers, museums and culture orgs that explore new forms of creative practice using digital tools. Previous projects include Editions at Play, including A Universe Explodes, a proto-NFT blockchain artefact. That body of work won a 2018 Peabody award for digital storytelling and was included in a British Library exhibition in 2023.
Other projects include Life in a Day, and the YouTube Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and YouTube Play the Guggenheim, A intermedia Royal Shakespeare Co production, LEGO, the Royal Opera House, Science Museums, Art Galleries and cultural projects all around the world
In 2023 Tea Uglow left Google after 17 years as a founder member of Google's Creative Lab. The Creative Lab is a global team of creators, developers and film-makers who examine the technology that surrounds us and explore the potential of digital tools. It was founded in 2007 by Andy Berndt in New York. Tea built the EMEA and APAC teams in London (2007 - 12) and Sydney (2012-2020) before moving to a Individual Contributor role in 2021. At Creative Lab her work won every kind of industry award and shaped the way we look at creativity and interaction with digital technology.
In 2023 she was President of the Cannes Glass Jury, she has also been President of Spikes Influencer jury (2021), President of D&AD Digital Jury (2019).
She is a member of AGI; the ABC Arts Advisory Panel; Edinburgh Festival Culture Summit; and the Global Science Gallery Leonardo Group. She sits on the board of ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) and spent several years on the boards of directors for the Biennale of Sydney; D&AD in the UK; and other national design groups.
Tea studied Fine Art at the Ruskin in Oxford, before completing two further degrees in Book Arts and Design Management at UAL. She spent 6 years in arts publishing and design management for charities as well as in various digital start-ups joining Google in 2006. Prior to Dark Swan, Tea had worked for Google, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Wellcome Trust, Random House and Christian Aid.
At the moment the "interests" list contains: augmented audio, digital books, proximity tech, non-linear storytelling, and the physical web... plus a few things that are less tech-geek like uncertainty, small people, and yoga.
Tea is well known for her many online talks. She has spoken, judged, and mentored for 20 years and is a global advocate for queer, neurodiverse, trans and mental health representation.
In May 2018 Tea was celebrated as one of Australia's #OUT50 LGBTQ Leaders by Deloitte
Her 2015 TEDx talk on the contrast between the screen-based world we live in, and the natural, organic world that we say we love has been viewed over 1.5m times.
Tea is also a very active and proud parent of two small boys. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
Contact
Speaking / Talking: info@claxtonspeakers.com
Literary agent: inquiries@susannalea.com