Opinion: why UWE Bristol is championing immersive arts as a 21st Century artform

Verity McIntosh, associate professor of Virtual and Extended Realities at UWE Bristol, explains why a new £3.6m Immersive Arts programme will explore the potential of art and technology, and engage artists from across the UK.

From losing yourself in a good book, to belting out your favourite song with friends at a gig, or being moved by an artwork that seems to speak directly your heart - art has always had the power to be immersive, profound, provoking, transformative.

In recent years, the term ‘immersive’ in the arts has started to take on an additional meaning, one that specifically refers to the melding of art and spatial computing technologies such as virtual, augmented and mixed reality as a way to actively involve the audience in an immersive experience.

Artists around the world are now exploring new ways to push the limits of tools that were primarily designed for productivity. They are leveraging and bending them instead, to make artwork that bridges physical and digital spaces, engages multiple senses, and connects people to each other and to their environment.

Here in Bristol, venues such as Wake the Tiger, Lost Horizon, and Watershed’s new Undershed immersive gallery offer new and exciting immersive encounters for eager audiences. Bristol-based artists like Anagram, Duncan Speakman and Antonia Forster are winning awards around the world for their incredible immersive artworks. Bristol companies such as Ultraleap, Air Giants and Condense are revolutionising what can be done with technology; bringing gesture and touch into virtual worlds, creating massive, soft, responsive robots, and streaming live 3D video performances into virtual spaces, respectively.

At UWE Bristol, we are proud to be an active part of this exciting community and are dedicated to transforming education and research to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving world. In teaching, our students are supported to incorporate immersive technology as an integral part of their creative toolkit. In research, UWE Bristol’s Digital Cultures Research Centre has long been established as one of the world’s leading hubs for the study of Evolving Media. Our fantastic facilities across Bristol include the VR Lab, The Bridge Studios, Pervasive Media Studio, and an innovative headset-free virtual reality and simulation CAVE system.

But we are not just keeping pace with the changes in the arts and technology sectors – we are helping to shape them.

UWE Bristol has just launched a new programme called ‘Immersive Arts’, a UK-wide research, training and grant funding programme, designed to support over 200 artists to engage with immersive tools and technologies. The scheme offers an inclusive and accessible programme of funding, training, research, and events for artists in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to explore the potential of immersive tools within their creative practice. The first round of funding, opening very soon, will invite artists to apply to one of three funding schemes, ranging from £5,000 to £50,000.

We recognise there are huge structural inequities in the way that people are and are not empowered to engage with the arts. We also know that these inequities can become amplified and entrenched when technology is involved. We believe that immersive arts, as a 21^st Century artform, contains within it the opportunity to resist that trend, and to reject some of the historical prejudices and hierarchies of older arts and media industries.

There are signs of change everywhere. Recently, immersive experience venue Outernet overtook the British Museum and Natural History Museum to become the most visited tourist attraction in London. A recent report from the Immersive Experience Network found that audiences who attend immersive experiences now are more representative of the UK population than those of ‘traditional’ arts and culture.

Working with an incredible consortium of partners across the UK, the Immersive Arts programme is committed to fostering a UK-wide network that supports diverse voices and ensures equitable opportunities across regions and communities. By centring accessibility and inclusion, we aim to build a sustainable, vibrant arts ecosystem that represents the population that we live within.

Immersive Arts will be running training, events, mentoring and research activity around the UK, and distributing £3.6m in grant funding to artists between now and January 2027. For more information and to join the mailing list visit immersivearts.uk