The Platform

The Platform is a space for young, emerging artists to share their work with Hay Festival audiences. Spanning a diverse range of art forms it aims to help promote and develop outstanding young creative artists aged between 21 and 28 who are at the start of their careers. These three works are taking place across the festival site from 10-5pm. There are also three artists performing in the Creative Hub at 7pm (free but ticketed)

Beth Lewis - Ebb & Flow

Ebb & Flow is a sound installation inspired by rock pools and the act of deep listening. Discover a series of handcrafted cardboard sculptures embedded with speakers, breathing life into immersive coastal landscapes. Come to the rock pool to rest a while and explore the tidal pools, seals, coastal birds and seaweed formations. An invitation to slow down and listen to the seals singing, seabirds calling and lose yourself in a swelling coastal soundscape and ambient folk music as the tide comes in and out. Ebbing and flowing.

Beth Lewis is a sound artist and creative technologist. She creates scores and sound design for live performance, screen and site-specific art and develops interactive installations in XR and other immersive technology. Her work is rooted in creating the opportunity for play and reflection, combining her love of music and the natural world into immersive, interactive playgrounds.

Hannah Hoebeke - Tea Talk

Tea Talk is a one-day performance in which tea, conversation, and sculpture come together in a shared experience. Visitors are invited to sit with the artist, engage in conversation, and have their portraits sculpted in clay. Throughout the day, a single block of clay is continuously reshaped — each new face replacing the last, leaving only the final portrait as a trace of all the encounters that preceded it.

Hannah Hoebeke is a sculptor from Ghent, Belgium, whose practice relocates the traditional studio encounter into social and community environments. Working directly from sitters, she uses the act of sculpting as a method of encounter — a way to slow down, occupy shared space, and open room for deeper conversation

Scott Wearing - Sonic Networks

Sonic Networks is an immersive audio-visual installation that transforms live video input into dynamic electronic soundscapes. Using the provided phones, participants can explore their environment through the camera lens, discovering a sensory crossover where sight becomes sound.

Scott’s research focuses on electronic and alternative forms of musical scores that reshape how performers interact—both with the score itself and with each other. By moving beyond traditional notation, his work explores new ways of guiding performance, often encouraging more dynamic, responsive, and collaborative relationships between performers.