Tom Burke will appear at On Sale Live 2026 on 15 May 2026 at King’s Cross in London, joining Dawn Farrow for a conversation about why local communities matter more than ever. Their session, titled Building Audiences from the Ground Up: Why Local Communities Matter More Than Ever, puts the actor and theatre founder in front of an audience gathered around the business of selling culture as much as making it.
The appearance gives the event a high-profile voice with direct experience of both the stage and screen. Burke most recently starred opposite Cate Blanchett in The Seagull at the Barbican, appeared alongside Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth in George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and played Orson Welles in David Fincher’s Oscar-nominated Mank. He trained at RADA and won the 2008 Ian Charleson Award for his performance in Creditors at the Donmar Warehouse, marking him out early as an actor with serious stage credentials.
The wider setting matters too. On Sale Live 2026 is being presented as a marketing event focused on the experience economy, which makes Burke a fitting guest for a discussion about how audiences are built and retained. He founded Wheelwrights, a theatre company rooted in community-first thinking and built on the principle of creating work based on what communities are actively seeking, a line of thinking that sits neatly with the conference theme.
That is also where the friction lies. Burke’s career has ranged from major film franchises to prestige theatre, but the event is asking a more practical question: how do cultural organisations turn local connection into sustained attendance and loyalty? His recent work suggests he understands both the scale of the industry and the value of the smaller, harder-to-win audience close to home. He recently wrapped on Amazon’s Blade Runner 2099 series and Kasia Adamik’s The Winter of the Crow, and he is next set to appear in Legends for Netflix opposite Steve Coogan, Hugo Blick’s series California Avenue, and Lenny Abrahamson’s feature Hillside Drive alongside Eve Hewson.
Burke’s slot at King’s Cross is likely to land because it connects theory to a working career. He is not just talking about audience-building from the outside; he has spent years moving between institutions, companies and formats that depend on it. If On Sale Live wants a case for why local communities still anchor cultural life, Burke is one of the few people on its programme who can make that argument from experience.
