XRtists: Artists Extending Realities

Artists Extending Realities will convene, commission and support a new inclusive wave of artists to make and share extraordinary immersive work.

Our proposal brings together two universities, four producing venues and UK-wide expertise from organisations with specialist expertise around inclusion, training, showcasing and research. The partners - Pervasive Media Studio (Watershed, UWE Bristol, University of Bristol, England), Wales Millennium Centre (Wales), Nerve Centre (Northern Ireland), Cryptic (Scotland), Crossover Labs (Sheffield), Unlimited, XR Diversity Initiative and Immerse UK - are united by an ongoing commitment to support artists and reach audiences while building equity in the sector. Collectively we bring the practical experience needed to successfully deliver this programme.

In three years, we will commission over 200 artists to engage, experiment and explore the possibilities of immersive technology. We will create inclusive opportunities for artists of all backgrounds, from across the four nations and multiple languages of the UK to bring their creativity to the fore. Through an integrated programme of research, we will capture and share insight and learning about what works best for the wider sector. We will establish a powerful network of practice and exhibition within which a distinctive UK immersive arts sector can emerge and flourish.

The UK made early investment into first immersive content production, then XR infrastructure and skills. This programme will offer joined up support for artists to make work that integrates content and technology with purpose and audience in mind. To realise the potential of existing investment, artists (especially those currently underrepresented in the sector) need access to tools, training and expertise for experimentation, support from producers who understand the field, better distribution routes and showcasing opportunities, and audience development that builds confidence and criticality into the immersive arts.

We believe that the unique characteristics of XR technologies create opportunities for artistic, cultural, economic and societal impact. Immersive tools allow artists and audiences to inhabit fluid personas and shape rich storyworlds alongside one other. Embodied experiences can have a profound effect on people; engaging them with each other, with their environment and with stories in visceral and long lasting ways. This sparks new forms of imagining, desperately needed in a divided and endangered planet.

Hybrid and social XR enable new ways of being together in physical and digital space. People who are isolated from the arts through geography, a lack of economic opportunity and/or disability can find meaningful ways to create and connect with cultural experiences. If carefully supported, new business models emerge, attracting audiences who may not have otherwise participated in 'mainstream' arts and generating new distribution routes while minimising carbon impact. Through a responsible approach to research and development, in which inclusion, sustainability and ethics are considered at every stage, we will unleash this latent potential of XR to build a sector that can thrive in regenerative partnership with the wider ecosystem.

Artists Extending Realities will act as a creative catalyst, raising profile and ambition, and generating a culture in three years that becomes the foundation for the next twenty.