Creative Industries Clusters Programme
Lead Research Organisation:
University of the West of England
Department Name: Fac of Arts Creative Ind and Education
Abstract
The Bristol + Bath Creative Industries Cluster [(B+B)XR+D] is a new partnership designed to improve the performance of the Creative Industries in the Bristol & Bath region. The partners are UWE, Bristol, Watershed, and the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Bath Spa, working with a range of industry partners from Television, Theatre, and Computing. The Bristol + Bath Creative Industries Cluster will support its business partners in finding new ways to engage the audiences of the future in new market places. Our R&D-led productions will lead the cluster into the future, engaging with emergent technologies, boosting inward investment and developing a new talent base to lead the cluster's creative industries in the next ten years. Our core proposition is partnering with industry in understanding user engagement in new platforms. Next generation content delivery methods must preserve the immersive properties of content as perceived by humans when transmitted over bandlimited networks. We will mobilise the cluster research base to support businesses in improving their performance through projects that exploit the new relationships between content type, acquisition format, format parameters, coding artefacts, user environment and engagement.The (B+B)XR+D programme is designed to offer many points of contact and collaboration for industry partners that will produce several different kinds of impact for a range of different service users, participants, companies and individuals. Our goal is to lay the foundations for the Bristol + Bath cluster to be internationally successful by 2030.
Planned Impact
The project will engage 200 businesses through the breadth of its activities in meaningful capacity building in creative technology innovation and build 120 different kinds of R&D Collaboration across our range of projects. These collaborations will be driven by the 40 secondments that constitute our Fellowship programme giving industry creatives and university researchers the opportunity to work together to produce innovative ideas. We expect to support the development of 10 new businesses and create or safeguard 80 jobs. Our commitment to inclusive talent development for the Creative Industries in our New Talent internship scheme aims to ensure that the regional industries future growth is driven by a new cohort of creative technology innovators with an understanding of what the audiences of the future want and how to deliver it to them. We will also aim to produce at least five projects based on new business models that look to exploit content or IP in new ways as well as leveraging our existing international contacts to produce five new international R&D or trading networks for the new products and services that our partnership projects will produce. We will also create impact through our programme of capturing learning and engaging publics though the production of 8 Working papers, 30 academic papers, 250 Blog posts, 100 presentations, and direct engagement with 20,000 people through our events and showcases across the course of the programme. Finally we aim to generate income, investment and further R&D funding of £7m for the new products, processes and services that we produce.
Organisations
- University of the West of England (Lead Research Organisation)
- Epic Games Inc (Collaboration)
- Bristol Cultural Development Partnership (Collaboration)
- Theatre Royal Bath (Collaboration)
- BT Group (Collaboration)
- Real World (Collaboration)
- Stride Treglown Group Plc (Collaboration)
- British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) (Collaboration)
- Sennheiser (Collaboration)
- Bath Spa University (Project Partner)
- University of Bristol (Project Partner)
- University of Bath (Project Partner)
- Watershed (Project Partner)
Publications
Levordashka A
(2021)
Sensing the Audience in Digital Streaming: Lessons from a Global Pandemic
McIntosh V
(2022)
Dialing up the danger: Virtual reality for the simulation of risk
in Frontiers in Virtual Reality
Moreton S
(2021)
Knowledge exchange in the arts and humanities as creative economy policy assemblage
in Research for All
Moreton S
(2018)
Contributing to the creative economy imaginary: universities and the creative sector
in Cultural Trends
Przybyszewska A
(2021)
Miedzy drukowanym kodeksem a powiescia na ekranie telefonu. Z Kate Pullinger o zaklinaniu slów, multimediów i cial czytelników w e-literackich opowiesciach rozmawia Agnieszka Przybyszewska
in Czytanie Literatury. Lódzkie Studia Literaturoznawcze
Roberts, L
(2022)
Growth alternatives and the creative economy: A literature review
Sen B
(2021)
Personalized One-Shot Lipreading for an ALS Patient
| Title | Bonnie Binary |
| Description | An experimental immersive sensory experience, Bonnie Binary believes in the healing power of immersive musical experience. We aim to bring the calming sounds and joyful experience of making music together to a wider audience for entertainment, positive mood, and relaxation. Their ambitious idea is to combine Smart Textiles, human interaction design, and calming musical soundscapes to open up access to beneficial immersive sensory experiences. This funding is to support the R&D development of the interactive product - the Music-cush. Embedded technology turns the cushion into a musical instrument. The touch of the soft buttons (textile sensors) on the cushion trigger pre-recorded sounds and movement of the cushion triggers sound effects to add a playful interaction. Their vision is to break down the barriers to making and enjoying a shared performance and open up opportunities to experience the physicality of music. We are putting musicians, non-musicians and people with disabilities at the heart of the musical experience. Enabling another level of togetherness and participation. The products have an international market with the potential to create revenue for the UK. A successful launch of the Music-cush will enable Bonnie Binary to build our expertise and offer employment opportunities. Bonnie Binary are crafting textiles, electronics and music, creating a unique, immersive, high-quality multi-sensory/healing experience. Innovations include: - delivery of music through accessible Smart textile interface - software design for intuitive user-experience - modular tech platform can be updated with minimal technical support - seamless integration of electronics within textiles - designed for ease-of-use and portability, simple and safe for different abilities |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in progress |
| URL | https://www.bonniebinary.co.uk/ |
| Title | Bristol Arts Channel |
| Description | B+B Creative R+D supported Bristol Arts Channel (BAC), a collaborative response to the pandemic from a group of the city's cultural organisations who had to close due to the first lockdown. BAC hosted live entertainment in lieu of access to physical venues. They generated a collaborative, curated programme to host and produce live events for the city on a bespoke microsite. They worked to ensure audiences were guided between different venues' online spaces to build longer term audiences across them and build a sense of community within the city at a time when people could feel isolated. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | Between 1 June - 6 July, BAC worked with over 60 organisations, independent artists and festivals based in Bristol to showcase a programme of over 140 online offerings. Two businesses from our Expanded Performance Pathfinder were partners in this collaboration (MAYK and ParaOrchestra), alongside Watershed, who used BAC to experiment with online content that specifically spoke to local audiences. In response to B+B Creative R+D core inclusion strategy, BAC provided more accessible content, using captioning and BSL interpretation, and supported work from under-represented communities. B+B Creative R+D researcher, Dr Ana Levordashka, based at the University of Bath, supported evaluation. She conducted a focus study that illuminated how individuals engaging with the Channel attended more events, experienced a greater sense of place and connection and were inspired with a desire to revisit performances and venues in person, strengthening relationships between online content and physical venues. BAC gained half a million interactions across the programme with almost half from the South West, which speaks to the success and future possibilities of a curated online programme of events for city regions to build support, sustainability and community around arts venues. |
| URL | https://www.bristolartschannel.com |
| Title | Bristol PopMap |
| Description | A digital prototype called Bristol PopMap, in partnership with Calvium and Bristol City Council. PopMap connects people with the events and activities that occur in the city's streets, spaces and venues, responding to your location and preferences, to reveal activity relevant to you in a time sensitive way. PopMap is about making what is so often invisible, visible. It is about revealing the quirky, hidden and surprising using the updated Bristol Legible City digital mapping resources and giving the city a unique local platform from which it can share and encourage all forms of cultural activity. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | Follow on funding from Innovate UK to pivot tech to different content through a new prototype called CoMap featuring services and information relevant to Bristol citizens during the Pandemic.Despiteimpacttotheirbusinessasawhole,thisaspectoftheirwork has gained support through a £25k COVID-19 response grant from Innovate UK. This new trajectory has opened up business opportunities for the future, with Director Mike Rawlinson identifying 10 areas that they are now looking at, huge interest with their existing client base, and new regional conversations taking place due to involvement in our scheme. They have tested the platform with over100 people and had an overwhelmingly positive response. They have made contact with 60 local businesses and demoed to 20. They have been successful on Innovate UK's Creative Scale Up programme, which will take them through an accelerated programme of specialist IP, spin-out, growth and new market development. Their prototype funding has also given City ID time and support for learning and skills development related to community engagement, tech/programming and project management. This allowed them to upskill and sustain their existing long-term staff who are already committed and share the company vision, rather than bringing in external expertise, contributing to in-house and regional resilience. |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/article/popmap-transitioning-to-a-new-normal |
| Title | Celestial |
| Description | Celestial see themselves as the natural successor to fireworks, as they use drones for lightshows, using each drone as a pixel to illuminate the night sky. Celestial see themselves as the natural successor to fireworks, as they use drones for lightshows, using each drone as a pixel to illuminate the night sky. Currently, the shows are all pre-programmed before the performance, but funds from the Trailblazer scheme have gone towards research and development to prototype a printed circuit board (PCB) which will allow them to have direct remote control of their fleet of 300 drones, opening up the creative potential of their technology. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in progress |
| URL | https://twitter.com/CelestialDrones/status/1453652771601846273 |
| Title | Circle/????? |
| Description | Circle/????? is a collaborative project between Roxana Vilk/Vilk Collective and Squidsoup exploring themes of inclusion, immersive experiences and shared spaces. This prototype will expand the spatialised light and sound technology AudioWAVE into a performative tool to unlock experiences for audiences in the co-creation and composition of new work. Circle/????? is a collaborative project between Roxana Vilk/Vilk Collective and Squidsoup exploring themes of inclusion, immersive experiences and shared spaces. This prototype will expand the distinct AudioWAVE technology, a system of networked light and sound devices into a unique spatialised tool for live performance. Focusing on distributed rhythmic composition, live voice spatialisation and the development of a new intuitive interface the collaboration will develop and test a new approach to performance. This project considers themes around liveness, togetherness, trust and empathy through an iterative, playful approach with an aim to unlock new experiences for audiences in the co-creation and composition of new and exciting work. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | This collaboration has won follow on funding, they have performed at multiple venues across Bristol and Bath, they are continuing to develop the technology to increase audience co-production during performances. |
| URL | http://roxanavilk.com/circle |
| Title | Compound |
| Description | Alex Witty Compound takes motorsport industry waste and converts it into recycled, fashionable footwear. Using discarded Formula 1 tyres and shredding them to create a unique rubber filament to 3D print shoe soles. Saving F1 tyres from the incinerator and making some fire kicks in the process. Compound shoe uppers are created from motorsport clothing offcuts that are shredded and then converted into brand new recycled yarn which is then fed into a 3D knitting machine, creating unique knitted uppers with little to no wastage! Compound Footwear will be designed specifically with disassembly in mind, by using as few components as possible, resulting in sneakers that can be easily and endlessly recycled. Our aim is to create a recycled footwear business that benefits motorsport teams, race fans and the planet. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in progress |
| Title | Dark Land Light House VR |
| Description | Tanuja Amarasuriya & Timothy X Atack (Sleepdogs) There's a lighthouse orbiting a Dark Land, in the depths of space. A lone Keeper is tasked with ensuring the beam stays lit, watching out for the many souls on passing interstellar ships; warning them from the edges of the Dark Land. This is the story of Teller Ghent, the last Keeper on Lighthouse 5, and what happened when the Dark Land started changing, when the ghosts began emerging, and when the light finally went out. Dark Land Light House is a VR adaptation of Sleepdogs 2016 sci-fi theatre show. Drawing on Sleepdogs' experiential, sound-led, cinematic approach to theatre making, they wanted to create a VR experience that combines the compulsion and scale of genre storytelling with the tenderness and intensity of an intimate one-to-one theatre encounter. Sleepdogs Trailblazer award is allowing them to work with specialists to develop the concept, strategy and pitch for the next stages of fundraising and development. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Tanuja Amarasuriya & Timothy X Atack (Sleepdogs) There's a lighthouse orbiting a Dark Land, in the depths of space. A lone Keeper is tasked with ensuring the beam stays lit, watching out for the many souls on passing interstellar ships; warning them from the edges of the Dark Land. This is the story of Teller Ghent, the last Keeper on Lighthouse 5, and what happened when the Dark Land started changing, when the ghosts began emerging, and when the light finally went out. Dark Land Light House is a VR adaptation of Sleepdogs 2016 sci-fi theatre show. Drawing on Sleepdogs' experiential, sound-led, cinematic approach to theatre making, they wanted to create a VR experience that combines the compulsion and scale of genre storytelling with the tenderness and intensity of an intimate one-to-one theatre encounter. Sleepdogs Trailblazer award is allowing them to work with specialists to develop the concept, strategy and pitch for the next stages of fundraising and development. |
| URL | http://sleepdogs.org/ |
| Title | Dhaqan Collective |
| Description | Ayan, Asmaa and Fozia The dhaqan collective is a feminist art collective of Somali women, centering the voices of womxn and elders in our community, and privileging co-creation and collaboration. This project will focus on finding new ways to combine sound with physical 'woven' artefacts to create audible tapestries. Creative ecology is rooted in the collective thinking of Somali nomadic life and creativity is at its heart. In the last few decades, Somali nomadic life has become endangered due to environmental collapse which is fueled by an extractive capitalism that benefits the global north. Dhaqan Collective want to learn sustainable weaving methods in order to maintain the endangered traditions of Somali nomadic life. Additionally, sourcing sustainable materials that are available locally which will be used during the tapestry making process. They are aware of the high levels of carbon emissions associated with the textile industry and would like to approach this project with the mindset of preemptively reducing or eliminating a carbon footprint. This project will be tying together the Collective's ongoing work in storytelling, soundscapes and combining it with Somali weaving practices. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in progress |
| URL | https://www.dhaqan.org/ |
| Title | Echoborg Goes Ethical |
| Description | 'I am Echoborg' is a live show created afresh each time by an audience in conversation with an artificial intelligence. Writer, Rik Lander and conversational AI developer, Phil D Hall has been evolving it since 2016. It provokes audiences to think about an individual and collective relationship with these technologies. Trailblazer funding will help transition the show into one that explicitly explores the unforeseen consequences of allowing AI's to make decisions on our behalf. There's ambition to shape this to become a tool for planners, designers and implementers of AI systems to explore potential ethical problems. The team are particularly interested in reflecting the unheard voices of groups and individuals who are affected by AI but under-represented in their design. The team will modify the event and the existing software and will run some shows for these two groups; the makers and those affected by AI systems. This experimental approach will inform a larger funding bid. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in progress |
| URL | https://echoborg.com/ |
| Title | Everything Is Music |
| Description | Everything Is Music is a collaborative project between Crack Magazine and Landmrk. Everything is Music is a network of location based experiences built around newly commissioned pieces, unheard archival works and classic material forming an immersive journey through the musical history of Bristol and Bath. Audiences will travel to specific locations where they unlock media linked to that place. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | When Everything is Music is unveiled, audiences will have a new relationship and understanding of places they formerly thought of as familiar. Somewhat ironically, this had always been an objective of our project - creating an experience which reframes your understanding of places you thought you knew. We'll now be unveiling our project in a world where going outside, in and of itself, is novel. Everything is Music will hopefully enhance that renewed sense of connection. The team are creating a music experience that doesn't necessarily rely on indoor, mass gatherings, connecting people with meaningful sounds and stories in open spaces with individualised routes that won't lead to big meetings. This objective has a new significance in a socially and physically distant world. |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/article/maintaining-musical-connections-in-a-socially-distant-world |
| Title | Follower.TV |
| Description | Network N will build Follower.TV - a better way for creators to reach their fans, find new audiences, and monetise their content. Think about all the places a creator distributes their content - across Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the web. Sharing content and building loyalties across these platforms is hard. A Follower.TV channel is a place that pulls together all the content produced by a creator from multiple platforms into a single, chronological flow. Users will be able to sign into Follower.TV and get their own personalised experience, pulling in channels from their favourite creators - they will not need to miss a thing and no longer depend on algorithms. Founded in 2012, Network N operates three divisions. The Publisher Collective is an advertising network that looks after 150+ websites and serves around 5 billion ads per month, delivering technology, programmatic, direct sales and growth support. Project N is the in-house creative agency, delivering solutions for clients including Amazon, Red Bull, Epic, Riot and Electronic Arts. The owned and operated portfolio includes brands like PCGamesN, PocketTactics, The Loadout, WarGamer and The Digital Fix. The company is based in Bath, in the UK, but operates with clients, partners and audiences all over the world. The group employs just over 120 full-time staff and continues to expand. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in progress |
| URL | https://www.network-n.com/ |
| Title | Future Places Toolkit |
| Description | Participatory architecture service - digital tool and creative practice. The toolkit is being designed in collaboration with creative technologists Michele Panegrossi and Luca Biada (Fenyce), along with Jessica Hoffmann of Uninvited Guests and sound artist Duncan Speakman. The team have partnered with architects Stride Treglown and Knowle West Media Centre, with additional support from University of Bristol's Knowledge Exchange Fund. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | Collaboration with architectural company Stride Treglown. It has impacted their business practice. They are developing promotional materials to explain Future Places Toolkit to other architecture and design studios, consultants, and developers. |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/article/digital-tools-for-imagining-future-places |
| Title | Ghost Orchid |
| Description | Originally a stage play that was recently performed as part of SparkFest in Bath, some of the themes within Ghost Orchid were used as the basis for creating fun, imaginative and empowering creative tech workshops for teenage girls living in North Somerset who do not have easy access to digital technologies. They will be supported to use different creative technology like soft robotics, simple coding and animation to build their own mini narratives. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Three creative technology workshops held at Pill Youth Club. |
| URL | http://www.agapanthusproductions.org.uk/ghost-orchid-project.html |
| Title | Inclued AI |
| Description | Inclued AI is a companion software that helps content creators identify bias as it happens. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | New IP: inclusive word alternative dictionary |
| URL | https://www.inclued.ai/about |
| Title | Lost Horizon |
| Description | Lost Horizon will deliver a scalable content delivery platform for publishing and distributing live and on-demand music, performance and visual art. We will develop a 3D immersive social VR and gaming environment as a digital twin of our IRL venue to prototype a new digital economic model for the music, entertainment and live sector.? Lost Horizon will deliver a scalable content delivery platform for publishing and distributing live and on-demand music, performance and visual art. We will develop a 3D immersive social VR and gaming environment as a digital twin of our IRL venue to prototype a new digital economic model for the music, entertainment and live sector. The prototype will be a rich, intuitive and detailed 3D free-roaming, open-world game environment offering social and real-time access to a global network of real-world venues and festivals. Lost Horizon was founded in 2020, by the team that produces Shangri-La at Glastonbury Festival and the rolling visual and digital art collection, ShangrilART. The team is renowned for bringing emerging culture to wider audiences, pushing boundaries and pioneering new ideas, so when Glastonbury 2020 was cancelled, Lost Horizon was created, a sprawling metaverse of six virtual venues, to produce an interactive festival that attracted an audience of 4.36 million globally. In 2021 Lost Horizon HQ opened in Bristol, an IRL creative digital hub, incorporating a gallery, bar, and live music venue, and will soon launch an exact digital twin capable of replicating performances into VR and free-roaming gaming environments in real-time. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in progress. |
| URL | https://www.losthorizonlive.com/ |
| Title | Rabbit Holes |
| Description | Penny Hay, Ian Forrester & James Cook Rabbit Holes Collective involves a group of artists and creative professionals exploring adaptive podcasting to create unique content and invite (especially young) people to metaphorically 'fall down a rabbit hole' to connect more deeply with nature. Individuals discover how they can use adaptive technologies to create podcasts unique to the listener and their context. BBC R+D is supporting the Collective in new ways of sharing ideas via digital and emerging technologies, creating peer-to-peer connections and networks of learning and support. Working alongside artists and tech wizards, the Collective aims to constructively disrupt and reimagine possibilities for digital collaboration by developing ideas in different immersive and sensorial technology. Inviting their audiences to have a fulfilling and enriching experience, one that allows a personal journey based on imagination and transformation. Rabbit Holes Collective is a community of practice that prioritises openness of delivery, creative consumption and co-creation. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | https://bristolbathcreative.org/article/rabbit-holes-collective-dr-penny-hay-and-the-team-offer-reflections-on-progress |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t0fhtneLAE |
| Title | Stormjar |
| Description | With the use of environmentally sustainable NFTs Stormjar are creating a new, horror social content creation experience called the Nightmare Auction, where monsters trade the nightmares of humankind. The project will build a community around nightmares that then become different forms of content - a game demo, a short film and a digital experience. With the use of environmentally sustainable NFTs Stormjar is creating a new, horror social content creation experience called the Nightmare Auction, where monsters trade the nightmares of humankind. The project will build a community around nightmares that then become different forms of content - a game demo, a short film and a digital experience. Stormjar Ltd is a new company exploring hybrid horror experiences for live and digital audiences. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in progress |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/article/what-an-nftease |
| Title | Storyhaven |
| Description | Gareth Osborne Deep into Earth's next ice age, stories have become the fuel for lifeStoryhaven is a table-top reading and roleplay game for families to play together over three weeks at home, in which children co-create the narrative with their parents and live-streamed immersive theatre sessions with an actor bring their storytelling to life. It reimagines childhood reading experiences as playful and exploratory social fictions that can exist in parallel to our daily lives, creating imaginary sites of intergenerational exchange and exploration. Storyhaven will be piloted in the Bristol and Bath area in 2022 as a new community business model that brings bookshops, public libraries, and theatres into closer collaboration. Project lead: Gareth Osborne is an immersive experience producer and researcher. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in progress |
| URL | https://garethosbornewriter.wordpress.com/for-bookshops/ |
| Title | Stupid Cities |
| Description | Stupid Cities is a Digital Placemaking prototype which aims to improve the social equality of our cities by using placemaking tools to highlight how their current design creates disability and environments full of micro-aggressions which stop people engaging in society. We will be creating tools initially for wheelchair users to record their experiences journeying through public spaces. Using this placemaking data to find new ways of seeing our public space with respect to access. Creating physical sculptures, street art and advocacy events that give visibility in public spaces of the invisible obstacles in our cities. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | Little Lost Robot Studio is a newly created company as a result of prototype funding that is having an impact on the creative community in Bristol and Bath, offering small grants and other support to freelancers. Audience reach has been limited and postponed due to Covid 19. |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/article/art-technology-and-engagement-in-a-time-of-isolation |
| Title | The Lantern Room |
| Description | The Lantern Room R&D is a proof of concept/prototyping project investigating a synchronised cross-Atlantic immersive theatre experience fusing digital technology/mixed reality with live performance. It heralds a new creative collaboration between Raucous and Toronto based immersive company Lost & Gone. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Public engagement: presentations/showcasing of work for 355 people at Hopeful Futures event and for 80 people at Watershed; discoveries from the project published on the Raucous website £42,000 in follow-on funding from Arts Council England |
| URL | https://raucous.org.uk/the-lantern-room |
| Title | Unlock Bath |
| Description | Unlock Bath is a 'games for a purpose' heritage project that invites multiple museums across the region to co-design a digital escape room experience. Led by Echo Games CIC, Unlock Bath traces the economic and socio-cultural development of the city through the lens of Bath Stone. Through a series of puzzles, players explore the geological formation of the stone in the Jurassic period, the life of miners, the evolution of regional industrial transport, and the buildings that the stone helped bring to life. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | New collaboration between 5 museums in Bath to co-design the project with Echo Games. |
| URL | https://echogames.co.uk/unlock-bath/#about |
| Title | Unpleasantville |
| Description | A mixed format, geo-located 'alternative' audio walking tour of Bath, using a mixture of local music and spoken word content, with an emphasis on promoting the work of emerging acts. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Public engagement: geolocated audio tour in Bath, September 2022, for 166 people |
| URL | https://www.unpleasantville.com/ |
| Title | While We Are Apart |
| Description | While We Are Apart will build collaborative and playful tools for the creation and use of hyperlocal geographical maps whilst exploring how such tools might sit within current placemaking practices. Building a new kind of collaborative and social mapping platform, whilst the associated research funding will be used to look at how such a platform can be used to map human and non-human community assets, shared spaces, and power in land systems. Somewhere on the spectrum of civic participation, engagement and community consultation processes is a business model that centres a community creating value for itself, whilst enabling productive and non-extractive conversations with those who seek to change or develop it. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Project in Progress |
| URL | https://freeicecream.co.uk/consultancy-labs-and-workshops/ |
| Title | Who is She |
| Description | This project takes a deep dive into imagined stories, and future possibilities of how Black women exist, and are presented in Bristol. The city becomes our canvas, and its history becomes a springboard. We hope to inspire conversations about how public art can be a place for justice for those erased. Who is She is a project created by Nancy Medina and Chinonyerem Odimba. Using outdoor projection mapping and innovative technological tools, Who is She project takes a deep dive into present imagined stories, and future possibilities of how Black women exist, and are presented in Bristol. The city becomes our canvas, and its history becomes a springboard. We want to have conversations about how public art can be a place for justice for those erased, and a place to assert ownership. Partnering with creatives and communities, we hope to create work that's an exploration of our relationship to natural spaces, spaces charged with colonial history; and what it is to express ourselves through technology as Black artists. It is part of A National Conversation, a UK wide project produced by English Touring Theatre (ETT). |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Unknown |
| Title | With You |
| Description | Hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 sufferers have been admitted to hospital, often with no access to phones or personal devices. WithYou is a free digital service being created to support isolated patients by bringing together voice messages, image, song and music from their friends and family on one playable audio track. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The company responsible for development - Trigger - have received follow on funding and have built partnerships with a broad range of UK hospital trusts to scale up their customer base. |
| URL | https://www.withyou.org.uk/ |
| Title | breathing.systems |
| Description | breathing.systems is led by Nik Rawlings. This project will create a flexible, wireless multichannel sound system to be worn by performers, through which their vocal performances can be processed and amplified to explore ideas of remote networked presence, polymorphous bodies and vocal transformation. breathing.systems expands on Nik's previous practice as a vocalist - they have long been interested in the voice as a way of expressing a mediated relationship with alternate bodies in sound. Their work has often focussed on ideas of remote networked presence, polymorphous bodies and vocal transformation, using granular and spectral techniques to process their voice. breathing.systems expands on previous work that attempted to create fluid and relational bodies of sound that were formed by using performers to spatialise Nik's voice using worn speakers - and creates a system for doing this live, which has not been possible before. At a time when Covid has made live group singing impossible, they're interested in the possibility of creating a chorus of their own voice by temporarily inhabiting the presence of our performers. By working with a multi-speaker array, and ten performers, they therefore aim to create performances that use their processed and distributed voice to explore network modelling, clouds of voices and distributed presence. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Nik has won additional funding and its exploring ways to commercialise the technology. |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/article/watch-breathing-systems |
| Title | nARratives |
| Description | The prototype offers a dynamic and purposeful alternative to current AR tours, creating a product that will demonstrate its ability to enhance art, culture and heritage, celebrating the impact of place on creative practices and, in turn, the impact of creative practices on place. The product will be co-constructed to exhibit culture specific to the Seven Saints of St Pauls Mural Project but the technology has the intelligence to exhibit any content, in any space or location. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | A prototype that will digitally augment local art and cultural narratives to allow people to collectively experience place. Reaching audiences has been limited and postponed due to Covid 19. |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/article/whose-new-normal |
| Description | We are working towards our final report and formulating a set of key findings around the following headings :- 1 Complexity, Simplicity and Accessibility Have a clear brand with a very clear set of offers. Use the languages and spaces of the communities you aren't reaching. Localised, targeted outreach is needed to widen accessibility. 2 Building Regional Capacity Set aside time and resource at the beginning of your programme to study the creative sector profile of the region. Use the findings to inform how you design and structure R&D activities. Innovation expertise is unequally available across geographical clusters. Design and fund processes of knowledge exchange in order to raise as many boats as possible. Tailor funding opportunities to different stages of professional development, to have impact across the diversity of your regional creative sector. Supporting businesses to be inclusive and sustainable costs money and this should be reflected in SME R&D budgets. There is a pressing need for business development support and investment to fill the gap between prototype and market. Funding for innovation communities over extended periods of time will help to retain expertise, develop alternatives, and produce ongoing social and technological innovation. Bring diverse people together to support innovation clusters. 3 Inclusion and Diversity Inclusion work needs to be generously funded and resourced, avoiding tokenistic engagement or seeing it as a 'spillover impact' of existing work. Co-design programmes with third sector/businesses organisations whose work directly addresses questions of exclusion and inequality: they are experts. Actively invite people from outside higher education to ensure diversity of background and expertise. This expertise may reside outside the creative sector (e.g. talent development, advocacy, third sector). Design ladders of opportunity appropriate to new entrants to your sector. Talent development, early ideas funding and new start-ups are as important as service or product development for inclusive R&D. When awarding grants, ensure that the individuals who are asked to shortlist and interview applicants for funding come from diverse backgrounds. Pay these experts for their time. Test the language you are using in your funding calls with targeted communities. Consult with experts and communities directly so that team members responsible for writing funding calls can use the most inclusive language. Place opportunities in the forums reflecting the communities you are trying to reach. This might mean thinking 'outside the box' of the usual networks and recruitment sites you use. Transparency: your user community should know who is making decisions about investment and against which criteria. There should be clear recourse in the case of discrimination or complaint. 4 Programme Structure New partnerships across sectors or regions can be a significant legacy of 'clustering' processes. Ensure that 'R' does not become separated from 'D'. Find ways to forge strong connections between university research and project development that maximise programme impact. Clustering systems and processes need to be agile enough, flexible enough to respond but repeatable enough for the partners to manage. Some fixed challenge processes and some responsive funds is, for instance, a good combination. Establish where the value lies in the creative ecosystem you are supporting and orient your programme towards maximising this value. Because conducting equitable and inclusive Creative Industries R&D is a novel practice for most cluster partners, it's important to attend to the work of culture change at the start of the project. Mobilise not only the front of house delivery teams but also legal, finance and other institutional support teams so that everyone buys into the project. 5 Supporting Innovation Provide a supportive environment for self-guided R&D, which is focused on outcomes rather than outputs, to encourage confidence in taking risks and iterating to achieve innovation. Provide as many opportunities as possible for collisions between a diversity of people across the ecosystem you're engaging with. Don't create siloes unnecessarily: many of the most valuable connections are unexpected. Ensure that practical guidance (e.g. on business development, intellectual property, managing finances) is readily available for those wanting to take the next step in their development. Build capacity to support R&D participants after programmes have formally ended, to maximise the potential of newly-established creative networks. |
| Exploitation Route | As the summary above this award, its practices and some of its teams are already supporting the development of the Bristol and Bath 'Strength in Places' My World programme (PI Professor Dave Bull, Co-I on this project.) Our Pathfinders are a curated environment, supporting Fellows and industrial partners to make new connections that support production of original content, services, products, and experiences. The participants have been enabled to move forward with their own R&D agendas. Expanded Performance industrial partner BBC R&D teamed up with Bath industrial partner House of Imagination to implement the BBC's Adaptive Podcasting platform for a community of artists and young people. A trainee from Creative Workforce for the Future worked on that proposal, gaining professional experience and supporting the creative businesses. Industrial partners Real World, a record company and global events producer who run WOMAD festival, also worked with our Understanding Audiences research team at Bath University to conduct preliminary research in immersion that correlates facial responses to different online audio experiences. The Egg Theatre in Bath have transformed their approach to technology adoption, engaging with our Fellows and through our support they were awarded £25K from Innovate UK to develop this work into a core part of their business. Industrial Partner MAYK have leveraged the research conducted in the Pathfinder into a successful £500k consortium bid to Arts Council England (ACE) to showcase new work from this cohort at the Edinburgh Festival. Inclusion fellow Roxana Vilk developed a successful £15k ACE bid to continue her Lullabies project, which celebrates the diversity of cultures in Bristol, with technical support from BBC R&D. In another single enterprise example. Bristol+Bath Creative R+D has provided award-winning international urban design agency City ID the opportunity to fulfil a long-held ambition to update and 'digitise' their mapping resources. City ID is focussed on improving people's understanding and experience of places, transport environments and mobility services through wayfinding and placemaking projects all over the world. Previously expressed via static on-street information and printed maps, the Digital Placemaking Prototype Scheme enabled them to join forces with Bristol-based locative app specialists Calvium and Bristol City Council to create PopMap. This project connects people to what is happening locally, tailored to their own interests, revealing the 'quirky, hidden and surprising' forms of cultural activity that may not be listed in more generic events lists online. Early into the prototype funding timeframe, the COVID 19 pandemic took hold and City ID had to rethink how they would find event data and test their platform when there were few cultural activities happening. Our support offered them time and thinking space, support from the delivery team, and a business planning process, allowing them to pivot to a new, highly relevant form of content for the same technology. This is based on connecting people to local services they might need during lockdowns, such as information about who is doing local delivery, call-outs for volunteers, and businesses' revised opening hours. Despite impact to their business as a whole, this aspect of their work has gained support through a £25k COVID-19 response grant from Innovate UK. This new trajectory has opened up business opportunities for the future, with Director Mike Rawlinson identifying 10 areas that they are now looking at, huge interest with their existing client base, and new regional conversations taking place due to involvement in our scheme. They have tested the platform with over 100 people and had an overwhelmingly positive response. They have made contact with 60 local businesses and demoed to 20. They have been successful on Innovate UK's Creative Scale Up programme, which will take them through an accelerated programme of specialist IP, spin-out, growth and new market development. Their prototype funding has also given City ID time and support for learning and skills development related to community engagement, tech/programming and project management. This allowed them to upskill and sustain their existing long-term staff who are already committed and share the company vision, rather than bringing in external expertise, contributing to in-house and regional resilience. Our projects in the Here and There Pathfinder have also been enabled to develop new international collaborations . |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/ |
| Description | As we approach the conclusion of the project our list of beneficiaries, impacts and engagements is :- 65 jobs generated 18 new businesses started up 66 new prototype products and services 59 new business models £22 million co-investment (£64.3 million if including UKRI sources) 1.6 million engagements with the public 327 industry figures engaged 329 new collaborations 30 new international networks established 29 academic publications and 21 working papers 299 non-academic written outputs 498 presentations/public appearances |
| First Year Of Impact | 2020 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Economic |
| Description | AHRC Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Membership of a guideline committee |
| Description | Bristol+Bath Creative R+D was highlighted in a keynote address on Monday 8 June from Caroline Dinenage MP, Minister of State for Digital and Culture |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Citation in other policy documents |
| URL | https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/caroline-dinenages-keynote-speech-at-the-cogx-createch-stage |
| Description | Business Development manager responds to BEIS Select Committee consultation |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| URL | https://committees.parliament.uk/work/342/postpandemic-economic-growth/publications/ |
| Description | Defining national Infrastructure for the Creative Industries - CoSTAR |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| URL | https://www.ukri.org/news/shaping-cultural-and-creative-research-through-infrastructure/ |
| Description | Prof Darren Cosker presented to the Westminster eForum policy conference on Immersive Technologies in the UK |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Description | Professor Darren Cosker (Bath University) participates in Immerse UK steering committee and UKRI policy Industrial Strategy group |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Description | Verity McIntosh co-authored report on safeguarding the metaverse, discussed in UK and EU Parliaments |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| URL | https://www.theiet.org/impact-society/factfiles/information-technology-factfiles/safeguarding-the-me... |
| Description | Creative Workforce for the Future |
| Amount | £600,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | West of England Combined Authority |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2019 |
| End | 04/2021 |
| Description | MyWorld |
| Amount | £29,900,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | United Kingdom Research and Innovation |
| Department | Research England |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2021 |
| End | 03/2026 |
| Description | New Scholars: ECR and PhD Training Scheme (Grant Title) |
| Amount | £100,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2021 |
| End | 01/2022 |
| Title | The Pathfinder |
| Description | 1. Each Pathfinder is a £500k themed package designed to deliver a range of benefits around industry challenge. These substantial investments will allow us to support high profile work, leverage additional finance and ensure large scale outcomes. Each Pathfinder will be comprised of the following elements: ? Pathfinder Fellowships (New Talent x 2, Industry x 2, Academic x 2 and Inclusion x 2) ? Innovation and partner R&D commissioning (industry partners, SMEs/start- ups and delivery partners) ? Business development (product development, business models for sustainable growth) ? Engagement (skills workshops, placements and mentoring) ? Showcasing (events, exhibition and distribution) PHASE 1: Consult on theme What are forthcoming opportunities and challenges in creative technologies for creative industries? What research can the universities offer? What play can the cluster companies make? Do we have partners to help us find audiences? Do we have partners to find further investment? What are the timelines and when can we do it? PHASE 2: Recruit key industry partners Each theme will have one or two key industry partners recruited by the Executive Team to co-design the Pathfinder with us. Our criteria for recruitment are: ? Institutional readiness for collaboration and future focussed R&D, ? Ability to deliver match funding ? Extent to which they offer route to market opportunities ? Commitment to the triple bottom line. The relevant member of the Exec team will hold an eligibility conversation with the prospective key industry partner, based on the above, complete an eligibility checklist document and bring this back to the Exec group meeting for decision making. Following ratification by the Exec group, an agreement of terms will be negotiated between the industry partner and our team, and we will issue them a contract and payment profile. Our offer to our key industry partners is: ? Shaping of and participation in a large R&D project where new talent, cutting edge industry and university research addresses challenges by making innovative work that finds its way to market/audiences ? Connecting with new talent ? Connecting with new ideas ? The opportunity for foresight thinking on the future of their market Our ask of key industry partners is: ? Contributing company R&D time (as a minimum) into co-designing the R&D challenge with us, working as in an advisory role on our productions ? Supporting the production of the work as a critical friend ? Supporting the outcomes of the work with finding a market at scale ? Supporting our ambition to create, social and cultural value as well as economic value (sharing business practice with new talent recruits, mentoring, offering placements, engaging in research conversations around inclusive growth) |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | Four new prototypes, numerous presentations ( see Engagement data), publication and further investment in project development. |
| Description | BBC data collection |
| Organisation | British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) |
| Department | BBC Research & Development |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | AI workflow development - 1st joint denoising, colorisation and enhancement framewiork |
| Collaborator Contribution | Filming and collation of low light video content at various light levels and parameter settings for a range of realistic scenarios. |
| Impact | Dataset of low light video content used in joint enhancement and denoising of natural history content |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Drone Simulation Virtual Production |
| Organisation | British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) |
| Department | BBC Research & Development |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Creation of drone simulator |
| Collaborator Contribution | Use cases, evaluation of platform, filmmaking |
| Impact | None to date |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Here and There Pathfinder Prototype Company Bristol ideas formed new partnerships with Aké Arts and Book Festival in Lagos and Toronto International Festival of Authors. |
| Organisation | Bristol Cultural Development Partnership |
| Department | Bristol Festival of Ideas |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Here + There facilitated an excellent learning experience about what we share and where we differ, and how we change as a result - from management and governance to the opportunities ahead and the threats we face. Most discussions were hosted on Zoom, which has advantages and disadvantages, but we were able also to visit Toronto and Lagos and work with our partners face-to-face. |
| Collaborator Contribution | We challenged 12 poets - four from Canada, four from Nigeria and four from the UK - to write poetry responding to The Waste Land. All 12 poems were published online, in a special zine - itself the product of a relationship with the designer Grace Kress (we were both on a linked programme on Amplified Publishing) - in print in Aké Review, and presented live and digitally in our three cities. Events have been held in our three cities. And we each ran events on linked themes of climate change, protest, and defending and extending democracy. In our 2022 Bristol Mayor's State of the City address we had a panel with Mayor Rees and the mayor of Kaduna in Nigeria live on stage and the Head of the Canadian Arts Council by Zoom - all three debating the future of cities. |
| Impact | Our discussions looked at programmes to 2027. Some of these plans involve Toronto and Lagos - we're working on projects on James Baldwin, robotics, and the future of welfare states - others will work with new international partners. Our 2023 Festival of the Future City will work on Syria, Ukraine, and Berlin; one project on the 15-minute city for 2005 will bring together Bristol, London, Stockholm, and Rome. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | The Amplified Publishing Pathfinder of the Bristol and Bath Creative R&D programme working with BBC R&D |
| Organisation | British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) |
| Department | BBC Research & Development |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | BBC R&D were invited to participate in workshops with the Amplified Publishing pathfinder cohort to share expertise, build knowledge, creative ideas and collaborations. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Content and Technology Partner Uniquely funded by the licence fee, BBC Research and Development is enshrined in the BBC's Royal Charter and agreement with the UK government to provide "a centre of excellence" for research and development in broadcasting and the electronic distribution of audio, visual and audiovisual material. Based in Research Labs in the North and South of the UK, the department is comprised of just over 200 highly specialist research engineers, scientists, ethnographers, designers, producers and innovation professionals working on every aspect of the broadcast chain, from Audiences, Production and Distribution right through to the Programmes themselves. |
| Impact | Too early to report |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | The Amplified Publishing Pathfinder of the Bristol and Bath Creative R&D programme working with British Telecom |
| Organisation | BT Group |
| Department | BT Research |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | BT have been invited to join workshops held for the Amplified Publishing Pathfinder cohort to share expertise, build knowledge, collaborations, and creative ideas. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Technology Partner BT is one of the world's leading communications services companies. They serve the needs of customers in the UK and in 180 countries worldwide. Their main activities are the provision of fixed-line services, broadband, mobile and TV products and services as well as networked IT services. BT's Applied Research organisation supports the strategic aims of the whole of BT's business. We work with the very best technologists from all over the world, drawing research and technologies from partnerships with universities and academia, start-ups, strategic partners, Government bodies, other telcos and key customers. They apply their own deep research skills and expertise, combined with their business and market know-how, to deliver innovative solutions that better serve their customers. |
| Impact | Too early to report |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | The Amplified Publishing Pathfinder of the Bristol and Bath Creative R&D programme working with Unreal/Epic Games |
| Organisation | Epic Games Inc |
| Department | Unreal Engine |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Epic Games have been invited to participate in workshops for the Amplified Publishing Pathfinder cohort to share expertise, build knowledge, collaborations and creative ideas. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Epic Games is leading American interactive entertainment company and provider of 3D engine technology. Their Unreal Engine, provides a complete suite of development tools for anyone working with real-time technology. Unreal Engine is a complete suite of development tools for anyone working with real-time technology. From design visualizations and cinematic experiences to high-quality games across PC, console, mobile, VR, and AR, Unreal Engine gives you everything you need to start, ship, grow, and stand out from the crowd. Founded in 1991, Epic Games is an American company founded by CEO Tim Sweeney. The company is headquartered in Cary, North Carolina and has more than 40 offices worldwide. Today Epic is a leading interactive entertainment company and provider of 3D engine technology. Epic operates Fortnite, one of the world's largest games with over 350 million accounts and 2.5 billion friend connections. Epic also develops Unreal Engine, which powers the world's leading games and is also adopted across industries such as film and television, architecture, automotive, manufacturing, and simulation. Through Unreal Engine, Epic Games Store, and Epic Online Services, Epic provides an end-to-end digital ecosystem for developers and creators to build, distribute, and operate games and other content. |
| Impact | Too early to report |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | The Digital Placemaking programme of the B+B Creative R+D project formed a new collaboration with industry partners including architects Stride Treglowan. |
| Organisation | Stride Treglown Group Plc |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Stride worked with our Digital Placemaking fellows to inform new approaches to placemaking. In particular Dr Paul Clarke ( University of Bristol Fellow funded by our programme) developed his Future Places Toolkit with them advising on user & market requirements. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Stride Treglowan advised on the need for a new tool for public consultation in planning which was then developed by Dr Paul Clarke. |
| Impact | Awarded funding by Bristol University KE investment. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | The Digital Placemaking programme of the B+B Creative R+D project formed a new collaboration with industry partners. |
| Organisation | British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) |
| Department | BBC Research & Development |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | We have faciltated a research inquiry for our partners around the theme of Digital Placemaking. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The partners have worked with our research fellows to design business, technology and design outcomes for the use of creative technology in digital placemaking. Use case generation. |
| Impact | We have invested in four prototypes in the field of digital placemaking. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | The Digital Placemaking programme of the B+B Creative R+D project formed a new collaboration with industry partners. |
| Organisation | Stride Treglown Group Plc |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | We have faciltated a research inquiry for our partners around the theme of Digital Placemaking. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The partners have worked with our research fellows to design business, technology and design outcomes for the use of creative technology in digital placemaking. Use case generation. |
| Impact | We have invested in four prototypes in the field of digital placemaking. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | The Expanded Performance Pathfinder of the Bristol + Bath Creative Industries Cluster Programme working with Real World Studios. |
| Organisation | Real World |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Connecting Real World with an innovation lab looking at future developments in performance.Leading to new participation in experiments in face tracking for immersive experiences in audio. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Information on market conditions and user requirements in future audio development especially in regard to live performance. Teaming up with industry fellows and prototype team to develop showcasing opportunities for WOMAD festival. |
| Impact | Real World were able to broker their research with us into a £49,000 Innovate UK Award. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | The Expanded Performance Pathfinder of the Bristol + Bath Creative Industries Cluster Programme working with Sennheiser. |
| Organisation | Sennheiser |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Establishing a research conversation between live performers and Sennheiser as regards cutting edge audio technologies. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Partnership with R&D cohort member Roxana Vilk to produce prototype project 'Binaural Baby'. |
| Impact | Development of a proposal for a new piece of work 'Binaural Babies' |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | The Expanded Performance Pathfinder of the Bristol + Bath Creative Industries Cluster Programme working with The Egg Theatre Bath |
| Organisation | Theatre Royal Bath |
| Department | Egg |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Introduction for The Egg of ways to digitise live performance during lockdown. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Understanding and insight around young people's theatre and the impact of Covid. |
| Impact | The Egg were able to receive £25,000.00 from Innovate UK from their Covid fund in order to be able to develop streaming capability. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Company Name | Agapanthus Productions |
| Description | Agapanthus Productions was founded by Rachel Pownall to explore the boundaries of creative storytelling in theatre, film and audio. Rachel's vision is to develop Agapanthus into an inclusive space where professionals work alongside members of the community to co-design creative projects to be enjoyed by a wide audience. |
| Year Established | 2022 |
| Impact | Three creative technology workshops ran at Pill Youth Club; new IP: Ghost Orchid play |
| Website | http://www.agapanthusproductions.org.uk/ |
| Company Name | Bath Futures Global |
| Description | Bath Futures Global Bath is a World Heritage City with burgeoning Creative, Digital and Sustainability sectors. We formed Bath Futures in 2019 to accelerate our work with stakeholders interested in the future of the Bath city region. This builds on projects we have undertaken in Bath over the last 18 months including: Delivering the Smart Tourism Testbed "Turning on the Lights"- research report into the UK Tourism Sector's appetite and readiness for digital innovation Setting up our new home in The Studio at Palace Yard Mews, Bath Spa University's new co-working space |
| Year Established | 2019 |
| Impact | The company is working closely with Local and Regional authorities in the Bath area: The Renewal Vision for B&NES - Working with the new B&NES Economic Recovery and Renewal board to develop a Renewal Vision for the Bath and North East Somerset region The Bath Augmented Digital Twin Tourism Innovation Zones: our Turning on the Lights report into the UK Tourism Sector's appetite and readiness for new digitally-enabled services for visitors and smart approaches to destination management. |
| Website | http://www.cityglobalfutures.com |
| Company Name | DHAQAN COLLECTIVE LLP |
| Description | Dhaqan Collective is a feminist art collective of Somali women, centering the voices of womxn and elders in our community, and privileging co-creation and collaboration. |
| Year Established | 2022 |
| Impact | Running an international project involving workshops with people in multiple countries; new IP in the form of audible tapestries that combine sound with physical woven tapestries; achieving £9,980 in follow-on funding from Arts Council England and £44,588 in follow-on funding from MyWorld. |
| Website | https://www.dhaqan.org/ |
| Company Name | EVERYTHING IS CIC |
| Description | Everything is Music is a digital museum platform that allows users to discover the musical history of cities. A collaboration Landmrk and Crack Magazine. |
| Year Established | 2021 |
| Impact | Production of the Everything is Music location-based platform in Bristol, Bath and Amsterdam. Platform showcased at several regional, national and internatinoal events, including BEYOND Conference, The Great Escape in Brighton, the Night-time Economy Summit in Bristol, the Digital Heritage Awards in Venice, the Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Hopeful Futures showcase event. The platform has received press coverage from national and international news publications including the BBC and NME. |
| Company Name | LITTLE LOST ROBOT CIC |
| Description | Little Lost Robot is a new CIC founded by Artists Ruby Jennings and Joseph Wilk. Coming from contrasting artistic backgrounds their skills are wide ranging - from structural set design to creative coding. They use technology to create a vision of the future that is non-slick, human centric and gloriously humane in all its messy domestic parts. |
| Year Established | 2020 |
| Impact | They are currently working on three projects to make cities more accessible and playful. |
| Website | https://lostrobot.org |
| Company Name | STORMJAR LTD |
| Description | Stormjar reimagine, design and build hybrid immersive experiences with a horror twist for modern audiences. |
| Year Established | 2021 |
| Impact | Stormjar have produced significant new IP: The Nightmare Market prototype and The Dive at Wax Cave film. They have developed a new business model off the back of this IP. They have hosted film screenings for public audiences at Encounters Film Festival and PYTCH. They have given talks and presentations at the Pervasive Media Studio (lunchtime talk) and The Studio in Bath. |
| Company Name | Studio Susegad |
| Description | Studio Susegad is a home for creative production that focuses on rest, care and connection. It brings critical thinking, and curatorial, production and engagement expertise to the table to support those often marginalised by traditional production processes and leadership models. |
| Year Established | 2022 |
| Impact | New IP: A-Z of Care Cards; Creative + Care project with Knowle West Media Centre |
| Website | https://www.roseannadias.com/studio-susegad |
| Company Name | MUTI IMMERSIVE LTD |
| Description | Supporting live arts sector workforce and recruitment. |
| Year Established | 2021 |
| Impact | Article exploring liveness and how different methods of capture, production, and distribution can be utilised to convey the sense of it to audiences via the Internet. |
| Company Name | COMPOUND FOOTWEAR LTD |
| Description | Utilising waste streams such as used motorsport race tyres, outdated race suits, team clothing and manufacturing offcuts, Compound Footwear creates recycled mono-material yarns for manufacturing high-quality shoe uppers that can be recycled after use. |
| Year Established | 2022 |
| Impact | Received £50,000 in follow-on funding from the Innovate Fast Start Grant; exhibited at the London Design Festival in 2022 to an audience of 600,000. |
| Website | https://www.compoundfootwear.com/ |
| Description | 41 blogs on the B+B Cluster website engaging our creative community |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Blogs have been written by team members, fellows from our Pathfinders and Prototype teams. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020,2021 |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/articles |
| Description | 47 new blogs on the B+B Cluster website engaging our creative community |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Blogs have been written by team members, fellows from our Pathfinders and Prototype teams (January 2022 - March 2023) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/articles |
| Description | 50 Online Presentations of work in Progress by Projects funded in Bristol + Bath Creative R+D due to Covid |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | During Covid our engagement programme moved online with a series of 50 events presenting & debating work in progress including the launch of our new online journal for interested publics 'Container' . We estimate that these talks, presentations, debates and events reached a combined audience of 10000 individual users across 2019/2020. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020 |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/events/ |
| Description | Bristol and Bath Creative R&D Twitter 290 new followers |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | 290 new followers since last entry (January 2022 - March 2023) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://twitter.com/Bristol_BathRD |
| Description | Bristol and Bath Creative R&D Twitter 3921 followers |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Current followers end date of December 3,921 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021,2022 |
| URL | https://twitter.com/bristol_bathrd |
| Description | Climate Action researcher Zoe Rasbach has presented work and delivered workshops/training to diverse audiences (January 2022 - March 2023) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Zoe Rasbash has undertaken engagement activites on 27 occasions within the past year, including a workshop at BEYOND Conference, Climate Action and Climate Literacy training to a wide range of industry and third sector organisations, and events for young people at Watershed in Bristol. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| Description | Climate Action researcher Zoe Rasbach has presented work to diverse audiences |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Zoe has spoken for the below groups, invited them to speak, interviewed, or participated in workshops together: Bristol Green & Black Ambassadors WECA sustainability team Black and Green Ambassadors Bristol Green Capital Partnership National Trust public engagement & youth engagement Bristol Festival of Nature Natural History Consortium Culture Weston Our Air Our City group Culture Declares Emergency Julies Bicycle Julies Bicycle The Colour Green Lab Nudge Group (sustainable architects) Film Strike for Climate COP26 Coalition Arts & Culture International Working group COP26 Coalition Bristol XR Bristol Arts team The Resilience Project Waves of Change Global Goals Centre Bristol COP26 union bloc Bristol Junior Chamber Earthly Make money matter campaign Artdoteearth Creative sustainability |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCgfQd71_L4 |
| Description | Container Magazine (publication for creative technology in the South West) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Container, our online magazine that launched in November 2020 (https://containermagazine.co.uk). This publication is overseen by Editor-in-Chief Alice Quigley, and its editorial board includes Co-I Simon Moreton, Inclusion Producer Tony Bhajam and R&D Fellow Roseanna Dias. The magazine offers a range of content types each issue to explore questions of ethics around creative technology. It aims to avoid the homogenous, dominant 'Techno-Heroic' narratives of big tech or big data as providing all the answers and solutions, and instead creates a more critical space for a range of voices and narratives, that 'question, dissent and explore' to 'harnesses the powers of technology for social and cultural means'. The first issue featured articles on data rights, digital activism, and a podcast on queering VR. As of January 2021 Container had reached 1.7k unique visitors. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021 |
| URL | https://containermagazine.co.uk |
| Description | Container Magazine 5 issues |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | CONTAINER magazine is reaching international audiences. As of January 2022 in had 11,200 unique website users, 609 Twitter followers; 315 instagram followers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://containermagazine.co.uk/ |
| Description | Designing Digital Cities event, hosted at Arnolfini, Bristol. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Designing Digital Cities event hosted at Arnolfini, Chaired by Digital Placemaking fellow Stephen Hilton (In partnership with The Architecture Centre, sponsored by Institut Francais du Royaume Uni) How can the Smart City be reclaimed for the people? What if human intelligence rather than artificial intelligence drives future development How do we design digital cities as 'platforms for yes' rather than uniting people through opposition? These are a few of the questions about #DigitalPlacemaking that Stephen Hilton will be exploring at 'Designing Digital Cities' with international acclaimed Brazilian-French Architect and Urbanist Elizabeth de Portzamparc and Jeff Risom, Partner and Chief Innovation Officer at Copenhagen based Gehl. This talk is jointly hosted by the Architecture Centre and Bristol+Bath Creative R+D with support from University of Bristol's new Bristol Digital Futures Institute, Stride Treglown Architects and Institute Francais. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.bristolfutures.global/blog/designing-digital-cities |
| Description | E Will Taylor (New Talent Fellow on Digital Placemaking ) presenting his fellowship research at Pervasive Media Studio Friday lunchtime talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | New Talent Fellow Will Taylor was invited to the Pervasive Media Studio Lunchtime talk to present the thinking he had been undertaking for an industry and general public audience, the work is concerns the relationshiops between digital space, public space and safe space, especially analysed from a the point of view of people of colour. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/events/ |
| Description | Engagement events hosted by The Studio in Bath |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | 586 people in total attended engagement events hosted by The Studio in Bath which were funded by Bristol+Bath Creative R+D. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021,2022,2023 |
| URL | https://thestudioinbath.co.uk/events/ |
| Description | Engagement programme consisting in Bristol + Bath opening meetings, workshops to consult on themes, and bid development with companies. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | In the opening phase of the Bristol + Bath Creative R+D programme we have engaged with 113 businesses from the Creative Industries who have taken part in briefings, research development sessions, ideation workshops or applied for investment from the programme. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020 |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/ |
| Description | Hopeful Futures Seminar Series |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A series of four panel discussions that brought together different sectors to discuss opportunities for sustainable and equitable futures in the creative economy. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbP2rruaw4Ot8GXmP904v0zM3hb_LHwlU |
| Description | Hopeful Futures showcase event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | A two-day exploration of the future of creative technology, showcasing work produced by fundees of Bristol+Bath Creative R+D and bringing our community together in talks, workshops and panel discussions. A total of 355 people attended 33 sessions across the two days. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hopeful-futures-a-two-day-exploration-of-the-future-of-creative-techn... |
| Description | Inclusion Producer Tony Bhajam has delivered workshops and presentations to diverse audiences |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Tony Bhajam has undertaken engagement activites throughout the Bristol+Bath Creative R+D programme, including workshops for the AHRC, BEYOND Conference, Connecting through Culture as We Age and MyWorld partners. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| Description | Leticia Lozano presents at Watershed about placemaking in Mexico City. Leticia is co-founder and director of MACIA Estudio, a transdisciplinary practice challenging the boundaries between architecture, experience design and applied research. Hosted by Digital Placemaking Inclusion Fellow Roseanna Dias. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Leticia Lozano presents at Watershed about placemaking in Mexico City. Leticia is co-founder and director of MACIA Estudio, a transdisciplinary practice challenging the boundaries between architecture, experience design and applied research. hosted by Digital Placemaking Inclusion Fellow Roseanna Dias. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://bristolbathcreative.org/events/ |
| Description | Panel discussion with Amplified Publishing Sector in South West |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Amplified Publishing Event had 22 attendees. Amplified Publishing - Looking ahead to 2030 Thursday 26th November, 1 - 2pm Chair - Kate Pullinger, Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, Bath Spa University Sam Robson - Director of Audience, Future (Industry Partner on Amplified Publishing) Jodie Azhar - Co founder POC in Play, and CEO Teazelcat Tom McNeill - Creator Partnerships Manager, Patreon The panel of guest speakers will be responding to the following provocation: 'What are the most exciting and most challenging developments in your sector and, with these in mind, what could publishing look like in 2030?' The conversation will explore some of the key themes and questions to emerge from the salon dinner in March followed by a Q&A: What's new? In our broadly defined publishing sector, what new innovations with lasting impact have emerged during lockdown? Changing the model (new ways of doing business): What kinds of new business models are possible? What no longer works? Reaching and retaining new audiences: How will we engage new audiences in the attention economy? |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Recipients of CICP funding have presented work at Watershed lunchtime talks (January 2022 - March 2023) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Recipients of CICP funding have presented work at 10 Watershed lunchtime talks with a total viewership of 1,654 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbP2rruaw4OvyHmG5tYtqgtJ67xIJ5rOf |
| Description | Recipients of CICP funding have presented work at Watershed lunchtime talks. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Recipients of CICP funding have presented work at Watershed lunchtime talks. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021,2022 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbP2rruaw4OuTA4TQ9k2XdRGfky97bHKV |
| Description | Supporting Fair Creative Economies (in Bristol and Bath) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In this talk, Liz will be asking, what would an alternative Creative Economy look like if it wasn't highly precarious, often reliant on short-term contracts and free labour? If survival or success wasn't measured purely on economic terms? If 'soft skills' were recognised and valued alongside 'high skills' as integral to making the Creative Economy thrive? If collaborations were supported and opportunities better shared so that the 'creative entrepreneur' wasn't operating in isolation and in competition but worked in a supportive environment where financial and other rewards were more distributed? If creative workforces and freelancers had access to the same benefits as other workforces such as appropriate unions and benefits and had more of a say in what their work conditions looked like? If culture and creativity were understood as a right that everyone should have equal access to and an integral part of citizenship? |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Ht-6vEPYw |
| Description | Third Thursdays sponsored by Cluster, 6 workshops Oct 2019 - March 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Third Thursday events sponsored by the research programme that brought together creative industry professionals from Bath with academics from the region to listen to work in progress presentations and build new networks of collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020 |
| Description | Third Thursdays sponsored by Cluster, 17 workshops April 2020 - December 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Third Thursday events sponsored by the research programme that brought together creative industry professionals from Bath with academics from the region to listen to work in progress presentations and build new networks of collaboration. Between April 2020 and December 2022, 798 people attended 17 Third Thursday events. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021,2022 |