Vance Garrett is an award-winning creative director, producer, scenarist, and cultural architect who helped launch and define the experiential entertainment movement as a founding team member of its premier projects, including Sleep No More, Museum of Ice Cream, and Refinery29’s 29Rooms.
Vance creates original immersive worlds, theatrical events, art exhibitions, modern rituals, and large-scale location-based entertainment, cultivating the conditions for collective joy. Specializing in multi-sensory storytelling, he conceives, writes, and designs immersive worlds, shaping the spatial and emotional environments where stories unfold. His work connects audiences to something larger than themselves, fostering belonging, wonder, and cultural impact. To date, his projects have collectively reached more than three million guests across the immersive experiences he has launched and led.
As Westfield’s first Vice President of Experiential, Global Entertainment, Vance partnered with Broadway and film producer Scott Sanders (The Color Purple) to bring innovative live entertainment to a global portfolio of more than 100 retail and mixed-use properties. As the inaugural Chief Creative Officer of Constellation Immersive, a CAA-affiliated studio, he developed and directed Elf on the Shelf’s Magical Holiday Journey and conceived DiscOasis, collaborating with Nile Rodgers and creating a launch platform for Madonna’s Finally Enough Love.
His work has earned Clio Awards, BizBash honors, including recognition among Top People in Events, the Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award, and a Drama Desk. He is a member of the World Experience Organization, a mentor for the Australian Indigenous Mentorship Experience (AIME), a graduate of Northwestern University, and serves on UCLA’s Center of Performing Arts Executive Producers Council. He is also a guest speaker at Northwestern’s Master of Science in Leadership for Creative Enterprises (MSLCE) program and the Creative Independent Producer Alliance (CIPA).
A longtime creator of experiences for LGBTQIA+ audiences and communities, Vance’s practice has been deeply informed by queer spaces, rituals, and celebrations, including his work on Fire Island Pines, with Saint At Large, and as co-founder of Velvet Gloves Boxing. Known for his Maze-Maker approach to experience design, he continues to develop original experiential concepts while writing about form, culture, and the evolving art of experiencing stories in his newsletter, adVANCEd experiences.
