Highlights from Creative Industries Clusters Programme April 2021 Newsletter

The recent Creative Industries Clusters Programme April 2021 Newsletter has featured Future Screen NI projects. Below are selected highlights from the newsletter.

Welcome to the April 2021 Clusters newsletter, with the latest on cutting-edge projects, events, launches and lots more from across the Creative Clusters.

Applications Open To Become A Future Foundation Mentee

Mentoring is a powerful personal development and empowerment tool. As part of the Future Foundation established by Future Screens NI, the first call for mentees will close on 22 April. Mentees will have access to a Future Foundation Mentor who will assist them to become more sustainable post-Covid-19. 

➤  Read more and apply (NOTE: This call has now closed)

Up To £50,000 From Future Screens NI For R&D Led Pre Commercialisation

Future Screens NI Commercialisation Funding is for R&D led product development that is ready for market and has commercial potential, through the stimulation of commercial outcomes with impact. Projects previously funded that can demonstrate significant commercial potential are welcome to apply, alongside new applicants meeting the criteria.

The focus of this funding is to develop a project from Proof of Concept stage through to a point where it can be launched commercially. Applications should clearly demonstrate how the project will employ R&D led strategies to release the commercial potential of a new product, service or production process.  

➤  More info and apply

Access Up To £20,000 From Future Screens For Proof of Concept Innovations

Future Screens NI Proof of Concept Funding is directed towards addressing R&D led challenges at the earliest stage of marketable product development. 

➤  More info and apply

RETìníZE Launch Animotive With HTC VIVE

Funded through Future Screens NI, Animotive is a professional 3D animation production tool that harnesses the power of off-the-shelf VR headsets, allowing users to create 3D animated content for any medium at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional workflows. Working in partnership with HTC, Animotive offers robust body capture and full facial capture - all while wearing a headset - taking affordable performance capture to the next level and proving anyone can be an animator.

➤ Read more

Thrive Launch 'Changing The Game'

Launched last month by Thrive, Changing the Game is a 5-step framework that NI organisations can use to assess and create their own digital offer. Providing a roadmap for digital, tailored to Northern Ireland’s arts and culture organisations’ needs, Thrive Audience Development hosted a roundtable to discuss the findings of the Future Screens NI funded report. Hosted by Thrive, the webinar also included speakers from Future Screens NI and Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics.

➤  Read more and watch webinar

XR Bootcamp Explores Immersive Recruitment & Professional Upskilling In XR At Future Tuesdays

XR Bootcamp Co-Founder Ferhan Özkan recently presented at Future Screens NI's Future Tuesdays event series, as part of XR Bootcamp's mission to build a community of upskilled XR creators. As the world’s first bootcamp for professional upskilling within VR/AR, XR Bootcamp provides cutting edge education experiences that provide participants with the skills, knowledge and ability to create VR/AR applications and assist companies to bridge their skills gap in XR development.

➤  Read more

INCISIV Make Top 50 MediaTech Innovators In The UK

Future Screens NI partner INCISIV Sport have been ranked 43 in UK and 2 in NI within companies who are blazing the trail in Media Tech. INCISIV have pioneered Action Intelligence and are at the forefront of brain decision making and concussion innovation.

➤ Read more

Yellow Design Secure A Place In Intelak Hub Accelerator Programme In Dubai

Funded by Future Screens NI, the AR360 Platform by the innovative team at Yellow Design applies creative thinking to incentivise and reward tourists exploring a smart city. Partners include The Emirates Group, Microsoft, Accenture and Dubai Tourism to deliver an enriched visitor experience within a smarter more sustainable city.

➤Read more

Future Tuesdays presents Neoco: Tools & Patterns for Progressive Operations with Ben Bland 11th of May 2021

For Future Tuesdays Ben Bland presented his Future Screens NI Rewriting the Narrative funded project Neoco: Tools & Patterns for Progressive Operations. The Neoco Toolkit & Playbook is a collection of “pathways to brighter business”, built during lockdown by Ben Bland and partners. The new web platform aims to help people find ways to improve the way they work, collaborate and build successful lives for themselves. Neoco includes over 240 tools, 50 published guides, 16 case studies and much more. Ben shared key insights from researching and building Neoco over the last year.

More information on Neoco can be found here: https://neoco.io/

Ben Bland is a leader within the digital industries, spearheading developments in online marketing and e-commerce, digital strategy, and wider tech startup consulting & entrepreneurship. He is a partner at a newly-founded innovation practice, Loopers. http://loopers.co/

Ben has a twenty-year career split between London and Belfast, working within agencies, small-to-medium size businesses, NGOs, and as a freelancer. Ben's creative industry experience includes working with dozens of local startups, agencies and industry bodies. He led operations at Belfast-based AI company Sensum for five years, and serves as Chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ P7014 working group to develop a global standard for the ethics of empathic technology.

More information on Ben can be found here: http://benbland.me

Future Screens NI Host Policy Roundtable with the DUP

Future Screens hosted a policy roundtable with the DUP on Friday 30th of April.  The roundtable was attended by representatives from across all levels of the party including Carla Lockhart MP and Paula Bradley MLA and Chair of the Assembly Communities Committee.

Professor Paul Moore opened the session noting the strength of the creative industries within the local economy. 

Greg Maguire Founder of HUMAIN Studios provided a presentation showcasing cutting edge innovation in emotional, facial and body rigging which have stimulated significant global relationships within the region.

Lucy Baxter Founder of Mental Abuse Matters provided a thought provoking presentation of her VR training pilot Mental Abuse Matters.  This project has played a significant role in the advancement of Coercive control legislation within the region.

Watch again here:

Future Screens NI participation in ECA Showcase.

Future Screens NI has recently participated in the recent ECA Showcase. Please see our contribution in the embedded video.

Future Tuesdays present: The Whalebone Box (2019) with Andrew Kötting, 27 April 2021

Andrew Kötting is one of the most innovative filmmakers who employs Punk multimedia aesthetic to circumvent the conventions of narrative cinema, experimental film and fine art. Kötting is known for his experimental travelogues that form portraits of landscapes and communities. Kötting employs the psychogeographical use of landscape and soundscape as a form of idiosyncratic and frequently playful wandering through and documentation of environments in order to examine the effects of natural and manmade landscapes on the psyche of individuals and communities. Kötting’s unique use of film and sound creates an at times hallucinatory effect that is simultaneously disorienting and familiarly cohesive.

For Future Tuesdays Kötting discussed his projects including a recent Documentary/Drama feature film The Whalebone Box. The film follows the filmmaker returning a gift, the eponymous box, in a reverse pilgrimage from London to the Isle of Harris with his daughter and muse Eden, photographer Anonymous Bosch, and writer Iain Sinclair. Kötting frequently collaborates with his daughter and has previously worked with Sinclair on the films Swandown (2012), By Our Selves (2015) and Edith Walks (2016) and on several writing and performance art projects.

Andrew Kötting was born in Kent and studied at The Slade School of Art. He began making short films in the late 1980s. Kötting has been awarded prizes at international film festivals and won commissions from the BBC and Channel 4 and The Arts Council. He also produces bookworks, CDs, LPs and paintings, many in collaboration with his daughter Eden. Gallivant (1996), was his first feature film, a road/home movie about his four-month journey around the coast of Britain, with his grandmother Gladys and his daughter Eden, which won the Channel 4 Prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival for Best Director and the Golden Ribbon Award in Rimini (Italy). In 2011, the UK publication Time Out voted Gallivant as number 49 of Best British Films of all time.

 For more information about Andrew please visit:

http://www.andrewkotting.com

http://www.andrewkotting.com/ak web/THEWHALEBONEBOX.html

https://lux.org.uk/artist/andrew-kotting

https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/collection/andrew-kotting