Up to £17m of funding was launched on Monday 21 May; with the first two competitions from the ISCF £33m Audience of the Future Challenge opening for applications.

The £33m ISCF Audience of the Future Challenge Fund can potentially offer fantastic support to innovators, researchers, creators and technologists to create new products and services by adopting, exploiting and developing immersive technologies.

The competitions launched include:

£16m Audience of the Future: Demonstrators Programme

Opens: Monday 21 May 2018 | Closes: Wednesday 1 August 2018

Scope and Application Guidelines are available here

Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £16 million in four large scale creative industries demonstrator projects, with grants available up to the value of £4 million each.

This competition is designed to explore future global, mass market, commercial opportunities in immersive experiences and technologies through supporting a limited number of large and ambitious pre-commercial collaborations.

There are two stages to the application process; a written application and interview. Proposals must demonstrate the:

  • audience proposition you will create
  • innovation approach you will take
  • partners you will need to bring together
  • route to your audience

Projects must also be business-led and carried out in collaboration with organisations from relevant sectors.

 

£1m Audience of the Future: Design Foundations Competition

Opens: Monday 21 May 2018 | Closes: Wednesday 4 July 2018

Scope and Application Guidelines are available here

This is an early stage design competition focused on understanding the future consumer, delivering A vital insight into audience perceptions, motivations and behaviours.  It will help to de-risk and boost public RoI in subsequent R&D investment and help high-potential organisations (with the capability to innovate) to answer critical early-stage questions, and to build the foundations for successful innovation R&D activity.

This competition is for project’s with total costs between £20,000 and £60,000. Projects are expected to last between 2-6 months and to be able to start from 1 October 2018.