752403Playful Interactive DesignsClosedVouchersInnovate UK"The innovation award will enable me to take successful interactive art practice into a more commercial direction, learning how to licence my ideas and scale my business by working directly with manufactures. The award will provide expert knowledge outside my core skills in order for me to learn how to transfer my capability as an artist and researcher specialising in interactive art and play theory, into a new and exiting direction. I am a professional artist and researcher (PhD) with a strong cross-disciplinary practice and specialising in creating innovative interactive and playful experiences for people. I work in a range of fields from galleries, museums, and public art commissions to theatre and public playground design. My practice merges sculpture with the digital language of technology and is concerned with the dialogue of interaction that is enacted between artwork and audience. Ultimately, my practice aims to provoke curiosity and connect people with their immediate environment, the artwork and with each other. I create large, stunning artworks and I am known for artworks that pop up in unexpected places. My work explores the relationship between play and public space, including the importance of the invitation to play, encouraging audiences to move from looking to doing, and centres on the kinds of play that can be initiated through interactive participatory artworks and events. I believe a playable city is where spaces and events afford playful interactions and encounters that invite people to be curious – it seeks to engage audiences into dialogue and thereby open up the possibility for play. "