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Immersive installations could be a gateway into the world of visual arts for young people, according to George the Poet, who said the new technology removes traditional barriers that have historically excluded certain groups.

George the Poet, the award-winning podcaster and spoken-word performer, has worked with a group of young people from the Mayor of London’s violence reduction unit, who he helped reinterpret classic works of art.

The Scream by Edvard Munch, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt, the Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai and The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch will all be shown during the summer as part of Art of Expression in Frameless, an immersive art space in London.

He said: “When it comes to immersive art, there are no barriers to entry. You don’t need a language for this. It’s accessible in many ways.

“Sometimes it gets exhausting reading all of the texts of all the artworks that you find interesting. But in an immersive setting, you literally come and sit in some art.”

George the Poet chose Reflections on the Thames by John Atkinson Grimshaw, the enduring image of the moonlit river that runs through the centre of London.

Alongside the immersive artwork that will be projected on to the walls, ceiling and floor of the space, are spoken-word pieces about the paintings, which were developed during workshops.

The poet, who has worked with offenders in prison, believes art can broaden horizons.

He said: “A lot of the conflict that I saw growing up was exacerbated by the feeling of not being able to leave the community, not being able to see beyond our immediate environment. One way to combat that is to invite new experiences.”

A new piece of research was commissioned as part of the project, which surveyed 2,000 young people, asking them about their views on art and accessibility.

It found that almost two-thirds of young people want more access to art, while a quarter said that art galleries “can be intimidating”.

Nearly half said that historical art is not relevant to their modern lives, and when asked if they considered a career in the arts, 40% stated they did “not know where to start”.

Tafari Clarke, a member of the Young People’s Action Group at the violence reduction unit, said: “Being an artist isn’t really glamorised like being a lawyer or being a footballer. For me, art was definitely outside the box.”

Access to the arts differs greatly depending on someone’s class background.

Sutton Trust research released last year found the creative industries were dominated by people from the most affluent backgrounds, which it defined as those from “upper middle-class backgrounds”, while a Netflix report claimed working-class parents did not see film and TV as a viable career for their children.

The proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s, according to one piece of research, while another study found fewer than one in 10 arts workers in the UK had working-class roots.

Guardian analysis from earlier this year found that almost a third (30%) of artistic directors and other creative leaders were privately educated, compared with a national average of just 7%.

George the Poet said improving access to the arts is beneficial for young people and arts institutions themselves. “When you give a young person the confidence to explore their own artistic interests, it does untold things for their mental health, it has untold benefits for their confidence and their ability to express themselves,” he said.

“And then with these institutions, it brings them into the future. The future is our young people. And if our young people don’t feel like they are custodians of these arts and these institutions, then it seems to me we would be moving backwards.”

A person who was present when the mainstage caught fire at Tomorrowland 2025 on Wednesday (July 16) describes the scene as one of “disbelief.”

Kay Soesbergen works for a company that does catering for festivals in the Netherlands and Belgium, where Tomorrowland happens in the town of Boom. He tells Billboard he was working in a vending area of the festival’s camping area, called DreamVille, when he saw someone filming in the direction of the mainstage, located across the site.

“I looked [in that direction] and saw a really big [cloud] of smoke coming from the festival area,” Soesbergen tells Billboard. “That’s kind of when we were like, ‘Okay, something is wrong.’ But then the fireworks start going off, and then we knew it was really wrong. Then I got a call from one of my supervisors who told me that it was the mainstage on fire.”

As Soesbergen describes it, and as heard in widely shared videos of the fire as it burned, the sound of fireworks could be heard going off as the fire consumed the stage and everything on it, burning the massive structure down to its scaffolding.

Soesbergen says that at this point, he and his colleagues were instructed to gather in a holding area for food and beverage supplies while firefighters put out the blaze, which Soesbergen estimates took approximately two to three hours. He says he and other staff stayed there until approximately 8:30 p.m. local time, after a festival press conference and a staff briefing on next steps. At that point, he was allowed to leave the site.

He adds that the mood on site shifted after he and other vendors saw firefighters refilling their water near the vending area, and “we kind of saw [among them] that they had the situation under control, so we got a little bit more relaxed.”

During the press conference, Tomorrowland’s longtime spokeswoman Debby Wilmsen said that the plan is for the festival to go on as scheduled starting Friday (July 18), but that it will be without the mainstage this weekend as well as the second weekend of Tomorrowland, scheduled for July 25-27.

“Our production team will now do everything to make something beautiful out of it,” Wilmsen said during the press conference, as reported by Belgian outlet GVA. “We’ll have to make some changes, but the intention is for all the big artists to perform. We hope to be able to provide more clarity on this on Thursday.”

Wilmsen also said that cancellation is not a consideration for organizers, although “if tomorrow it turns out that the site is not safe and we receive instruction from the authorities, we will follow them. Safety is always the priority.”

There’s very little precedent guiding how Tomorrowland officials should move forward. Festivals have been afflicted by all kinds of terrible weather incidents, from torrential downpours and lightning strikes to tornadoes, wind storms and even a small earthquake at this year’s Coachella festival. But never before has a fire hit a festival’s main stage a day before the festival started.

The cause of the Tomorrowland fire is not yet known, but the public prosecutor’s office in Antwerp, Belgium, has launched an investigation. No one was injured in the blaze, and Tomorrowland still plans to open its DreamVille camping area to attendees on Thursday (July 18). Tomorrowland reports typically hosting 400,000 people across its two weekends.

But for organizers and fans, the loss of the mainstage is a crushing blow. Changing designs each year, the mainstage is the festival’s primary showpiece, with the fantastically designed structure hosting sets from the biggest artists on the lineup and drawing crowds that can swell to more than 100,000. At the press conference, Wilmsen noted that this year’s stage had been in the works for the last two years. On social media, some attendees are already requesting refunds, given that Tomorrowland 2025 will be without what is arguably one of its primary attractions.

“The Tomorrowland mainstage is a project on its own. It’s something that’s super special, and not only the people working for Tomorrowland, but everybody around the globe who loves it and looks forward to the reveal of the Tomorrowland mainstage and what’s going to happen there,” says Soesbergen.” So there was a lot of disbelief that this was the situation. The first hour and a half [of the situation] was really about disbelief.”

Additional reporting by Dave Brooks.