09:00 - 10.00

Registration

10:00-11.15

PLx opening and Keynote 1

Creating team of teams in an AI-powered future

To explore how high performance leaders can lead, adapt, and thrive in increasingly complex environments shaped by AI, by building fast, connected, and adaptive ‘team of teams’ networks - drawing insights from Special Forces, and innovation in human performance, performance innovation to enhance performance and win well in.

11:15 – 11:30

Break – refreshments and movement to sessions

11:30-13:00

Sessions

Session 1 – Designing for optimal performance: Building a performance plan for Paris 2024 through blending internal and external expertise

To explore how high-performing teams embrace their own knowledge limitations and strategically reach beyond their immediate expertise to solve complex problems. Through a real-world sports example, this session will provoke thought and inspire attendees to adopt a ‘team of teams’ mindset—where collaboration across boundaries drives innovation and performance impact.

Session 2 – Understanding innovation: Ideas, thinking and networks that can change the game

To explore the deeper value of innovation beyond technology and tools - focusing on the mindset, collaboration, and strategic thinking that have shaped UK sporting systems approach to performance enhancement over the past two decades. This session will highlight how the UK Sports Institute Innovation team have partnered and supported sports to challenge norms, connect expertise, and solve performance questions across disciplines and technologies.

Session 3 – Making sense and performing under pressure in ever changing situations and environments (Dark Swan challenge based learning) (Limit to 55)

This interactive and immersive session will require active participation to explore teaming and collaboration through scenario exploration and real-play. The session will challenge all involved to reflect on their decision making, communication, willingness to invite and receive feedback, highlighting the opportunities to evolve our professional practice in performance programmes.

Session 4 – Immersive Workshop: “Team of Teams in Action” (Dr Andy Walshe and Colonel Jurgen Heitmann)

This hands-on session moves from theory to practice. Through team challenges, peer collaboration, and real-world case application, leaders will explore a number of themes: 1. How to shift from hierarchical control to distributed leadership, 2. What slows down information flow—and how to remove it, & 3. Creating shared consciousness and local empowerment in high-performance environments.

13:00 - 14.15

Lunch

14.15 – 15.15

Keynote 2

The “winning formula” – environment, aspiration and wellbeing

Stuart Worden OBE, Principal – The BRIT School

Stuart will explore the role of the arts in education as a powerful driver of creativity, resilience, and excellence. He’ll share how The BRIT School has cultivated a culture that consistently produces world-class talent across multiple creative industries, and reveal the “winning formula” embedded in its environment—where aspiration, achievement, and wellbeing are carefully balanced to sustain long-term talent development.

15.15 – 15.30

Movement to sessions

15:30 – 17:00

Sessions

Session 5 – Building to win: Reimagining the foundations of support, strategy and team culture

This workshop explores how development funded sports - often operating with limited resources (both finance and people) - strategically build performance programmes with the aspiration of achieving and sustaining medal success. Through the lens of three Olympic / Paralympic programmes, the session will uncover the varying methodologies, performance structures, and strategic decision-making processes that helped shaped each sports journey.

Session 6 – Expanding to win: Integrating new disciplines into successful high performance systems
This workshop explores the strategic challenge of integrating new Olympic and Paralympic disciplines into already successful high performance programmes. With new athlete cohorts and evolving support needs, how do sports maintain existing success while building new pathways to podiums?

Session 7 – Medals, mindsets and momentum: Sustaining success in high performance sport

This workshop explores how different sports have approached the challenge of sustaining medal success across multiple Games cycles. With varied athlete populations, evolving competition landscapes, and limited resources (both finance and people). The sports presenting highlight through alternative lenses how they have and continue to build resilient, adaptive, and sustainable high-performing programmes.

Session 8 – Teaching for tomorrow: What music and creativity reveal about learning (The BRIT School)

This session explores how insights into the musician’s brain—and the cognitive differences between performers like dancers and musicians—can inform and enhance teaching practice. It also considers how to manage mavericks by balancing individuality with collective excellence, draws lessons from the high-performance cultures of sport and the creative industries, and discusses how to future-proof young people with skills in resilience, adaptability, and sustainability.

17:00-19:00

Connection time and drinks reception

19:00- late

Dinner and PLx Awards 2025

07:30 – 08:30

Breakfast sessions – Optional

Breakfast Club 1 – Breakfast insight session: Digital twins, simulation and scenario thinking

Explore how digital twin technology and AI-enabled simulation are being used to test decisions, accelerate feedback loops, and personalise athlete journeys. A practical look at how sport leaders can use new tools to lead with foresight and reduce uncertainty in the system. The session will enable you to understand what digital twins and simulation can offer performance environments, identify where scenario testing can strengthen preparation and resilience and evaluate readiness to adopt digital innovations in sport.

Breakfast Club 2 – Female performance leadership

This session shares key findings from the Female Leadership Scoping Conversations (2025), revealing persistent barriers and a strong call for systemic change— including just 16% female representation among Performance Directors. It will feature lived experiences, outline practical actions to accelerate progress, and launch a first-step initiative reflecting UK Sport’s commitment to meaningful change.

Breakfast Club 3 – AI practical: Prompt engineer

Writing prompts for different AI tools can be a powerful way to build digital fluency, creativity, and strategic thinking—especially in leadership, learning, and development contexts. The focus of the session will be to equip participants with the skills and confidence to craft effective prompts tailored to various AI tools, enabling them to leverage AI for ideation, productivity, learning, and problem-solving.

Breakfast Club 4 – Para community session

Enable you, as part of the Para performance community to take the opportunity to contribute to further discussions around the key performance opportunities and challenges for LA and beyond that will enable us to maintain and consolidate our competitive edge.

Breakfast Club 5 – Moments that matter within the art and impact of coaching: a short film

Sit back and watch a short film celebrating the craft, skill, and commitment involved in coaching Olympic and Paralympic sport. Following the film as a stimulus we will enter discussions around what we have seen, heard, and felt.

08.45 – 10.00

Keynote 3

Adapting to new challenges and contexts

10.00 - 10.15

Movement to sessions

10:15 – 11:45

Sessions

Session 9 – Realising potential: Navigating the future of talent and performance (Changing Minds)

This session aims to deepen understanding of the developmental needs of athletes as they progress within high performance environments. The session will explore the complex challenge of preparing athletes psychologically for the demands of sustainable elite performance, while proactively addressing factors that contribute to performance breakdown.

Session 10 – Future-ready: Integrating sporting specifics cultures and communities into the high performance system

This workshop explores the integration of changing athlete populations, and sporting cultures into the British Olympic and Paralympic high performance system. Sports discuss and highlight the challenges along with their key learnings from specific experiences of blending organisations and people with the demands of the Olympic and Paralympic traditional landscape with the aim of being ready for the future performance.

Session 11 – Driven to win: Identifying talent and closing the gap in motorsport (More than Equal)

In this session, the team from More than Equal will share their journey so far and offer insight into their ground breaking work in motorsport. They will discuss how they are actively breaking down barriers to create new opportunities, and how their Elite Driver Development Programme supports individuals in growing not only as drivers but also as athletes and well-rounded people. The session will also explore their mission to close the performance gap in pursuit of developing the first female Formula 1 World Champion.

Session 12 - Strategic forum: AI + teaming: How do we evolve?” (Liminal Collective)

A dynamic dialogue on how leadership, teams, and innovation must evolve in tandem with technology. Through live scenarios, system storytelling, and challenge-led breakout groups, participants will; Examine where AI can strengthen—not replace—team function, identify what “readiness” looks like in their context, build clarity around where to go next with experimentation and shared insight.

11:45 – 12:00

Move to keynote

12.00 – 13:15

Keynote 4

Serial success & UK Sport closing remarks

13.15 – 15.00

Lunch and depart