Hurrah! Some Good News………
We are really excited to announce that we have been awarded a £20K Grant by the ESRC & University of Birmingham Commercialisation Impact Acceleration Account to undertake the project:
‘Working with creative and cultural businesses to increase understanding of immersive forms of live experience as a foundational step towards innovating commercialisation opportunities and professionalising the field as a discrete CCI Sector’.
Dr Joanna Bucknall from the University of Birmingham will be the Principal Investigator for the project with IEN working as the industry partner.
The Projects Vision
We aim, through novel data collection, to understand the nature and scope of immersive cultural practices to identify ways to expand and accelerate its commercial potential and contribution to the economy. It will facilitate the development of commercial strategy and new resources, responding directly to the challenges contributing to the sectors future sustainability.
Immersion, interactivity and experience is one of the fastest growing sectors within the ‘experience economy’, therefore it is vital to understand the nature and scope of the practices that are operating within the sector, to establish the ways in which it can be sustained as a valuable UK cultural, economic asset.
We will engage in data collection to demonstrate, extend and increase the economic benefit of the sector. Our vision is to generate powerful cultural currency through empirical data-based evidence, to build knowledge exchange opportunities that proliferate the sharing of innovation and best practice, consolidating UK Immersive experience as world leading.
What Does that Mean in Practice?
Datasets will be fundamental as a capacity building process for the live immersive creative communities, (you!). It will develop ‘evidence-based’ resources providing new understanding about the burgeoning sector, generating opportunity for its various communities to identify novel areas of revenue and growth. The market research shall lead to impacts on commerce, the economy, and supporting commercialisation. In addition to impacts on society, creativity, and culture.
We want to engage as many of the creative communities operating across the 10 pillars of live immersive practice, (again this is you!), to understand the barriers, challenges and needs of those communities so that we can gain an insight into the ways in which those needs might be met through infrastructure, funding, policy and cultural practice. We hope to understand the nature of your practice, the audiences that you engage, the spaces that you occupy, the finance models that you employ so that we can ascertain the nature and scope of the full spectrum of the live immersive experience landscape in the UK.
This data will then be employed to strategise, advocate and develop resources to serve the communities immediate and direct needs.
What Are We Going to Produce?
We will generate new datasets and market research that gives a sense of the nature and scope of the live immersive experience spectrum in the UK.
We will also produce 5 infographics with supporting web resource that articulates the key findings of the data sets for lay audiences.
We will gather granular qualitative datasets from holding focus groups to drill down into the initial datasets collected at the inception of the project. The research will culminate in a launch event where the new resources and insights will be shared with the live immersive experience community.
How to get Involved in the project
If you want to be involved in the process of building this new powerful resource for the sector, simply sign up to our mailing lists and keep an eye open for the comms calling for participants in late October 2022!
Help us to help you; together we can build a more visible and credible cultural sector.
