On the 21st of March the CReATeS team met the four projects who had been successful in securing funding from the second round of the NESTA R&D Digital Fund.
The first project to present was led by Ben Kampas of the Scottish Documentary Institute who are working along-with Peter Gerard at Distrify. This project involves exploring and developing a fundraising widget that is embedded on the website and within the film that will generate capital through the sale of documentaries and enablement of community screenings. The CReATeS expert lead will be Dr Niall Mackenzie of the University of Strathclyde.
The next project was presented by Marion Sinclair of Publishing Scotland who is working alongside Sara Hunt of Saraband Books and Alastair MacCallum of Spot Specific to create a database of Scottish books in a humorous and informal manner in order to support and increase the purchase of Scottish titles. The database will generate a website and app. The CReATeS lead will be Prof Claire Squires at the University of Stirling.
The third project is led by Nicola Kenny at The Audience Business which is working alongside The Queen’s Hall. They will be assisted by tech partners Whitespace and Ingresso to develop social ticketing that will enhance The Queen’s Hall’s customer experiences and enable them to attract a larger audience. The CReATeS lead will be Dr Padmini Murray at the University of Stirling.
The fourth and final project funded by the NESTA R&D Digital fund is the National Theatre of Scotland who, working with tech partners Flip and We are Everyone, aim to improve access to their performance by providing technology to their visually impaired and hard of hearing consumers and enabling the use of smartphones to increase access. By doing so, they hope to open up the consumption of culture to all individuals and reduce the access limitations that currently exist. This project will be jointly led by Dr Gail Greig and Prof Nic Beech of the University of St Andrews
A press release about the Nesta RD Winners – 25 3 13 has been made regarding the winners and the CReATeS team are looking forward to working with each of the projects and evaluating how their project has gone over the next seven months.