Supporting UK arts venue with COVID recovery via creative technology

Tramway Revisited is an R&D project bringing arts producers and venues together with specialists in architectural design, digital experience design and audience engagement to find innovative solutions that support the sector’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

To investigate how innovative applications of digital technology can help venues bounce back after the pandemic, the project team worked with international arts venue TRAMWAY in Glasgow and partners from audience evaluation, architecture, LiDAR scanning and BIM modelling. Across a series of feasibility studies, prototypes and co-design workshops, they also worked with theatre makers, art curators, producers and technical staff to explore new tools and methodologies for bringing the arts and audiences together in a post-COVID world.

The presentation in the Immersive Futures Lab includes examples of LiDAR scanning and the modelling of the TRAMWAY venue, and how this was taken into realtime environments allowing for new audience experiences to be quickly visualised. These techniques were then deployed to archive selected exhibitions from Glasgow International (festival for contemporary visual art). Applying these new workflows to theatre design also created new spinoff products that will be developed post-funding. 

Head of Research & Innovation

Verena Henn

Hardware

Oculus Quest (for VR demo)
PC (online social VR space)

Team

Damien Smith – Creative Lead
Verena Henn – R&D Lead
Thomas Pollock & Eloise Shaw – Digital Experience Design
Stephen Roe – Project Management
Jared Hutsby – LiDAR Scanning & Entertainment Industry Consulting
Aleksander Gil – BIM Modelling
Brian McGinlay – Architectural Design
Angus Ritchie – Architectural Design
Katy Raines & Flo Carr – Audience Research

Partners

Tramway
Stageport
McGinlay Bell
Indigo-Ltd
RVT Parametrix
ASE Consulting