StoryFutures: Gateway Cluster Partnership for Audiovisual Digital Creativity

未来的故事将以全新而复杂的方式传达给观众，由沉浸式技术、数据驱动的个性化、智能设备和人工智能以及当代屏幕形式的演变推动。因此，屏幕行业的创意故事流程、技术、商业模式、价值网络和工作流程面临着挑战，以创造下一代讲故事的方式，让观众参与新颖和商业上可行的体验。我们横跨屏幕和广告行业，汇集了世界各地讲故事的领导者，包括Double Negative，Punchdrunk，nDreams，Sony，Pinewood，BBC Worldwide，HTC Vive和BFI，与中小企业合作。我们将这些与穿越故事形式的学术专业知识相匹配（媒体，游戏，戏剧）;观众行为（心理学）;商业模式（管理）;生产文化（媒体）;硬件，软件和用户界面（工程，Comp Sci，设计），以促进研发，为新兴创意技术创造创新和引人注目的内容，产品和服务。StoryFutures将发展屏幕和广告行业。在创新的StoryLab模式的引领下，我们围绕4个主题开展工作：T1 StoryLab; T2价值网络; T3创意工作流程中的数据; T4受众参与。我们的StoryLab（T1）提供专业知识和空间，以协作方式应对阻碍业务增长的创意挑战，例如如何提高VR中的用户舒适度，构建社交沉浸式体验或对现有IP的新颖利用。它将在专业和学生层面运作，涵盖FE，HE和CPD，培训下一代讲故事的人和企业家世界级的创意内容和产品。StoryLab将以故事形式开发、资助和支持原型和风险创新，以应对这些挑战，为中小企业提供新的商业机会，并获得进一步的资金和指导（T2）。SF的研发计划将这些创新产品与有效管理创意生产流程中数据的研发联系起来，从而实现更高效和更具创意的工作流程（T3）。通过我们的合作伙伴分销平台（HTC、希思罗机场、BFI、Sky VR），以新颖的方式测试下一代观众的体验，对他们的参与产生丰富的理解，包括与这些新空间（T4）中年轻观众偏好的长期分析相关的认知和神经反应。通过这项工作，我们将增加我们地区和其他地区的收入和就业机会。SF拥有超过670万英镑的杠杆资金，由皇家霍洛威及其行业合作伙伴和高等教育机构，布鲁内尔，NFTS和创意艺术大学领导。旧金山跨越电影，电视，游戏和沉浸在一个区域集群，形成了进出伦敦的门户。它将把北部的电影制片厂和南部的吉尔福德博彩业连接起来，穿过西部众多的博彩公司，回到伦敦密集的创意产业（见地图）。因此，该集群强调了该地区-以及英国经济-数字和创意技能的融合，这些公司可能“比完全位于一个学科的公司更有生产力，增长率更高”（Bazalgette 2017：14）。该地区拥有英国近20%的高集中度、高增长的创意工作区，是伦敦以外创造性工作和企业比例最高的地区。在集群内，希思罗机场是“该地区经济的关键驱动力”（TVBerkshire，2017），也是我们的创新产品和服务必须到达的全球市场和受众的门户。SF将解决英国创意经济在维持创意大都市方面面临的重大挑战，这些大都市具有比创意城市“更高水平的商业生产力”的潜力（Nesta，2016：6）。因此，门户集群有潜力形成一个类似于医学研究，工业合作和创新的“金三角”的动力。

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. Screen industries' creative story processes, techniques, business models, value networks and workflows are thus challenged to iterate a next generation of storytelling that can engage audiences in novel and commercially viable experiences. We span screen and createch industries, converging world leaders in storytelling, including Double Negative, Punchdrunk, nDreams, Sony, Pinewood, BBC Worldwide, HTC Vive and the BFI, to work alongside SMEs. We match these with academic expertise traversing story form (Media, Gaming, Drama); audience behaviour (Psychology); business models (Management); production cultures (Media); hardware, software and user interfaces (Engineering, Comp Sci, Design), to facilitate R&D that will create innovative and compelling content, products and service for emerging creative technologies. StoryFutures will grow both screen and createch industries. Led by an innovative StoryLab model, we work across 4 themes: T1 StoryLab; T2 Value Networks; T3 Data in the Creative Workflow; T4 Audience Engagement. Our StoryLab (T1) provides expertise and space for collaborative approaches to creative challenges that are barriers to business growth, such as how to increase user comfort in VR, build social immersive experiences or novel exploitation of existent IP. It will operate at professional and student level, spanning FE, HE and CPD, training a next generation of storytellers and entrepreneurs in world-class creative content and products. StoryLab will develop, fund and support prototype and risky innovations in story form that tackle such challenges, providing SMEs with new business opportunities and access to further funding and mentoring (T2). SF's R&D programme links these innovative productions with R&D on the effective management of data in the creative production pipeline, enabling more efficient and creative workflows (T3). And, via our partner distribution platforms (HTC, Heathrow, BFI, Sky VR), tests next gen experiences with audiences in novel ways that produce rich understandings of their engagement, including cognitive and neurological responses linked to a long-range analysis of youth audiences' preferences in these new spaces (T4). Across this work we will grow revenues and jobs in our region and beyond.With over £6.7m in leverage funding, SF is led by Royal Holloway together with its industry partners and HEIs, Brunel, NFTS and University of Creative Arts. SF spans film, television, gaming and immersion across a regional cluster that forms a gateway in and out of London. It will connect the film studios in the region's north to Guildford's gaming in the south, across to the west's plethora of createch companies and back to London's intensity of creative industries (see map). The cluster thus emphasises the region's - and UK economy's - fusion of digital and creative skills, with such companies likely to be 'more productive and have higher growth rates than [those] located entirely in one discipline' (Bazalgette 2017: 14). The region contains nearly 20% of the UK's high concentration, high growth creative Travel to Work Areas, forming the highest proportion of creative jobs and businesses outside of London. Within the cluster Heathrow constitutes "a critical driver of the area's economy" (TVBerkshire, 2017) as well as a gateway to the global markets and audiences that our innovative products and services must reach. SF will address a significant challenge for the UK creative economy in sustaining creative conurbations that have the potential for 'higher levels of business productivity' than Creative Cities (Nesta, 2016: 6). The Gateway Cluster thus has potential to form a powerhouse akin to the 'Golden Triangle' of medical research, industrial collaboration and innovation to its immediate north.