Digital Placemaking aims to enhance and deepen the relationship between people and places. We believe the best examples of digital placemaking are co-designed by different kinds of communities, using digital technology and creative solutions to improve or enhance the public experience of place.
The Digital Placemaking prototypes call asked for ideas which explore questions of belonging, safety, hope and power in public spaces, expanding our understanding of the role of culture in the new digital infrastructure and the intersection of digital and physical space. We are pleased to announce the funded prototype projects are POPMAP, Everything is Music, Stupid Cities and Narratives, you can read more about their work below and here.
Many of us already move seamlessly between digital and physical worlds in our day-to-day life. From Google Maps, to wearable technology, to playing Pokémon Go in the park; digital technology can make things easier, more enjoyable and more accessible. Of course, if it’s not done right, digital technology can also make things more confusing, alienating or overwhelming.
In the first Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Pathfinder, we bring together new talent, university research and cutting edge industry and inclusion practice to address industry-wide challenges by making innovative work that finds its way to market and audiences.
Read more about Digital Placemaking
Digital Placemaking Prototype
City ID and Calvium – in collaboration with Bristol City Council – have been commissioned to explore the potential for an exciting new digital application that connects people with the events and activities that occur in Bristol’s streets, spaces and venues.
Digital Placemaking Prototype
boomsatsuma and Iconic Black Britons have been commissioned to showcase the intersections of culture, creativity and difference, co-constructing a collective AR experience of place. The digital placemaking project will make specific, location-based art and culture tangible, through AR animation of local art and spatialized audio.
Digital Placemaking Prototype
Bristol and Bath have long been a birthplace for new frontiers in music. Music is the living blueprint of a city through time. Everything Is Music will track, celebrate and explore the disparate and interlinked stories that have contributed to this unique musical fabric.
Digital Placemaking Prototype
Stupid Cities aims to improve the social equality of our cities by using placemaking tools to highlight how their current design creates disability.
Tim is a Bristol-based inter-disciplinary movement artist working in theatre, film and creative tech. Tim advocates for issues of gender, health, grief and belonging. Through increasing awareness of the body in relation to space, and embedding everyday embodied experiences into transforming spaces and creating new places.
Roseanna is a producer interested in the crossover between creative practice, emerging technologies and inclusion. She nurtures new networks, talent and inclusive practices through creative engagement. Her research focus is on participation, co-creation and creating spaces of care.
Grace Quantock is a psychotherapeutic counsellor, writer and non-executive director across social care, health and human rights. Grace’s work is embedded in the collection, processing, understanding and sharing of context, story and understanding of self and place.
Stephen has worked on Smart Cities since the term was first invented. His research, Rebooting the Digital City, explores how the digital histories of cities like Bristol shape the development of a place as much as global technology milestones.
Born and raised in South West London to first generation Ghanian immigrants, Will very quickly learned to question the issues raised by the diasporic experience. His work as a Podcaster, Creative Producer - BE IT Rising Arts Agency and Trustee of Arnolfini explores how we can pull new communities into conversations around creative tech and it’s use in the culture sector.
Paul Clarke is a Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies at University of Bristol and directs the theatre company Uninvited Guests. His work explores how science-fiction storytelling and Augmented Reality (AR) can inspire people to imagine preferable, more inclusive futures for their places together.
Associate Professor of Cultural Interdisciplinary Practice, University of the West of England. Shawn teaches into the BA and MA Photography and MA Research Practice, and supervises MRes and PhD students across topics including creative activism, social history, archiving, photography and film. His research concerns the nature of everyday life and notions of home, belonging, and small narratives.
Around the world, corporate giants are aligning with governments and Local Authorities to create new “smart” digitally enabled streets, waterfronts and even new build cities. But where does the local community fit in, if at all? This talk will consider three perspectives on localising the Internet, exploring what a local digital city might mean to Bristol, Bath and beyond.
Latest articles
21.09.20 Digital Placemaking
by Will Taylor
21.09.20 Digital Placemaking
by Paul Clarke
18.09.20 Digital Placemaking
24.01.21
by Little Lost Robot Studio
We are Little Lost Robot Studio. We make sensory, immersive, 3D artwork that amalgamates robotics and automation with humaneness and well-being. We present a vision of the future that is gloriously humane in all its messy domestic parts and we have been commissioned by the Bristol + Bath Creative R+D programme to make our prototype, Stupid Cities. Photo by Joseph Wilk.
24.01.21
by Rachael Burton
Over the summer we have welcomed eight fellows, three industry partners and a lot of questions. Through a series of workshops, we have begun the process of expanding the theme in this first pathfinder, and exploring what Digital Placemaking means for Bristol and Bath.