Future Centre
The NIDA Future Centre is NIDA’s research and innovation lab.
It identifies and fosters courageous and ambitious new ideas for entertainment experiences created through new technologies, new forms, and new relationships with audiences. It takes a global perspective and draws on a diversity of influences from arts, media, interactive entertainment, and generative AI.
It is a space for imagining and inventing the future of entertainment.

NIDA X
NIDA X is a program supported by The Girgensohn Foundation offering grants to alumni to develop live entertainment projects that push the boundaries of storytelling and technology using digital tools. Read about the 2023 recipients below.

The Future Award
One of the first initiatives of the Centre will be the Future Award – a $50,000 triennial award investing in ideas or work for stage, screen, or any other platforms that have a transformative potential for our culture. Details will be announced soon.

The DNA
The Centre extends NIDA’s unparalleled rigour, practice-based learning, connections to industry and culture of innovation into a direct dialogue with professional artists and organisations at the forefront of new storytelling thinking. The Centre also draws on the entrepreneurial DNA that has seen NIDA play a central role in many ground-breaking cultural moments, including the establishing of the Old Tote Theatre Company, the Jane Street Theatre, the NIDA Company and as curator and manager of the inaugural season of Sydney Theatre Company.
We now look to the future.
The NIDA Future Centre was seeded by a generous donation from the Jim Sharman Future Fund. Jim Sharman, a NIDA alumnus, is an Australian director of stage and screen whose work has had a profound cultural impact in Australia and internationally.