StoryFutures

About

The stories of tomorrow will reach audiences in new and complex ways, fuelled by immersive technologies, data-driven personalisation, smart devices and AI, alongside evolutions in contemporary screen form that threaten our very conception of the ‘screen’.

These changes bring new challenges to the screen industries – to their storytelling forms and techniques, business models, value networks and workflows. StoryFutures responds to these challenges by providing an R&D base for screen industries.

The Programme

StoryFutures has four objectives that aim to deliver cross sector innovation:

  1. Innovation in story form, business models, creative data flows and audience insight;
  2. Generate regional economic growth by brokering collaborative partnerships;
  3. Enhance Cluster Connectivity by strengthening cross-sector and region networking;
  4. Develop Next Generation Talent, emphasising increased female representation, whose skills span the arts, humanities, social, formal and applied sciences.

The programme will follow four core themes. The first, StoryLabs, will look at how creatives harness emergent and established storytelling forms on new platforms. Use-case prototypes and pilots will be developed that respond to industry wide barriers to growth in immersive and beyond.

The second aims to provide SMEs with development support, improving networking, increasing additives to access further funding, and developing new business models. The programme will review value networks – the production networks, revenue streams, collaborations and business models and IP opportunities for Next Generation stories.

The third theme focuses on how the increasing volumes of data/metadata in production can be better managed and processed to drive commercial prospects and generate greater collaboration. < enabling development of new tools and efficiency gains. Finally, the programme will test new productions with audiences, utilising cognitive psychology, neuroscience and media research to provide rich insights that can fuel commercial growth.

 

The Partnership

The Cluster is located in one of the UK’s most important creative clusters, spanning a unique fusion of creative audiovisual and technology companies that form a gateway in and out of London, the potential of which has been
long-overlooked.

The partnership brings together Royal Holloway University of London, Pinewood Studios, Immerse UK, Pact, Ukie, British Screen Advisory Council, Resource Productions, the BFI, Connect TVT, Imaginarium Studios, The National Gallery, BBC Studios, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Endemol-Shine UK, Double Negative, n:Dreams and Heathrow, as well as our Local Economic Partnerships: EM3, TVBucks and TVBerks.