Studio Innovation Fund 2025 Awardees Announced
We are delighted to announce that three projects have been awarded £10k each from the 2025 Studio Innovation Fund, in addition to an extra £4k to support specific creative tech training.
The £50k fund is designed to support collaboration and partnerships between Studio Residents, external individuals and organisations to explore creative technology solutions that address pressing social issues.
The 2025 Studio Innovation projects are:
The Capitalism Escape Room
An exciting collaboration between Slowmentum (Stephen Hilton and James Martin), Kate Arthurs, Hand in the Dark (Sunnie Martin), Kilter Theatre (Olly Langdon), and Claudia Firth (University of Bristol).
Rooted in Bath and Bristol, this diverse team brings together expertise in interactive theatre, arts, alternative economies, creative audio technologies, and mental health to co-create a unique, immersive, and reflective experience.
This story-driven escape room invites participants to reimagine economic systems that prioritise planetary health, equality, and well-being. The challenge? To “escape” capitalism before ecological collapse.
Using Data to Empower the Arts and Cultural Sector
Studio Resident Nigel Fryatt (POLYMATHIC) will collaborate with Bath Arts Collective (Jasmine Barker, Kate Abbey, and Kate Hall) to develop a prototype web platform that collates and visualises cultural audience data across the city of Bath.
Co-designed with the sector, the platform will enable reporting of audience data by organisations/practitioners, which will be visualised through a 3D map of the City, graphs, and filterable charts. By revealing key patterns month by month, it will empower the sector to analyse engagement, identify opportunities, and plan strategically.
The project’s top-level aim is to highlight the value of the Arts and Cultural sector while providing an accessible tool for stakeholders to advocate for their impact and contribution to the city and sector.
Immersive Audiovisual Content for Staff and Patient Wellbeing in Healthcare Settings
This partnership between independent classical record label CRD Records and the Royal United Hospital in Bath offers a well-timed opportunity to explore how classical music and immersive experiences can tackle the myriad challenges currently being experienced in healthcare, both from a staff and patient perspective. The project will combine CRD’s experience of licensing music into content and knowledge of the ‘state of the sector’ with previous projects led with Dorothy House Hospice by RUH Video Producer Becky Bell and Clinical Scientist and NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Dr Darren Hart.
—
Proposals were selected through a comprehensive multi-stage process, including a selection round from external partners from local businesses and funding organisations.
The Studio Innovation Fund was initially launched in 2021 to help creative tech start-ups recover after the Covid-19 pandemic. The fund has supported local freelancers, micro-businesses, social enterprises and third sector organisations to progress their creative technology project ideas.
Over the past four years we have seen some amazing projects which have:
- Helped young people re-engage with learning through the creative use of AI.
- Helped visually impaired people connect with each other through sound and movement.
- Empowered people to access and create cutting edge visual, musical, and digital performance that supports unheard voices.
- Addressed the countless un(der)-used buildings in communities by exploring a new creative use of a 3D space capture technology.
Supported by the University’s strategic Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, the fund utilises a UKRI Policy Support Fund grant from Research England, the purpose of which is to support new interdisciplinary programmes and to help solve pressing public policy challenges.
Find out more about the Studio Innovation Fund here.