esc films seek to develop XR to assist in Transforming Trauma in a Virtual World

A new Research & Development project titled “Transforming Trauma in a Virtual World: new tools for transformation – self-paced trauma recovery through immersive technologies” seeks to import a successful filmmaking workshop within forensic mental health to Expanded Reality technology. Drawing on their workshop success with Second Chance for Change (SCFC), esc films have begun R&D into a project to process and transform trauma in a virtual setting. 

Esc films have over 17 years of experience developing creative processes with therapeutic benefit to those within marginalized populations. Their R&D project aims to use Virtual Reality/Immersive technology as a delivery mechanism for the existing SCFC programme whilst exploring further therapeutic intervention potential. The project intends to explore different ways of drawing out and visualizing people’s stories for them to benefit from self and peer validation and gain a new perspective on the turning points and traumas in their lives.

The team’s belief is that VR / Immersive technology could provide accessible means to share therapeutic services with more people, locally, nationally and globally through remote access. Furthermore, immersive storytelling could prove to be a better platform to aid recovery, implemented remotely, in a shorter time, and prove more cost effective than standard face-to-face programmes. 

esc films is an award-winning culture and arts education charity based in Belfast. They use storytelling, drama and film to change lives, challenge perceptions and tackle social exclusion, stigma and discrimination. Their overall aim is to transform the lives of socially excluded people through film-therapy, exploring new and innovative ways of digital storytelling.

TEAM

Dr Kirsten Kearney, CEO, esc films 

Tom Magill, Artistic Director & co-founder esc films

CO-INVESTIGATORS

Dr Declan Keeney, Director of the Ulster Screen Academy, Ulster University

Nigel McAlpine, Immersive Lead, Digital Catapult

Dr Paul Best, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work

Dr John Ferguson, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Belfast Trust

Conor Brown, former participant, Second Chance for Change) 

ADVISORY PANEL

Prof. Gavin Davidson, School of Social Sciences, Education & Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast

Paul McAleer, Lecturer, School of Nursing & Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast

Laura Ornsby, BHSCT, Lead Occupational Therapist, Medium Secure Psychiatric Unit, Shannon Clinic

This project is funded by a Future Screens NI Research & Development award.

JamBird Marketing’s new R&D project aimed to assist in future proofing independent music artists.

JamBird Marketing have started a Research & Development project developing an app for independent music artists to assist in audience development and key industry expansion in an affordable package. The app will engage with fan bases through animations and fan avatars to assist drawing in crucial data for future projects. The software will collect data drawing from demographic, transactional, psychographic and behavioural content with AI Analysis to provide a deep knowledge of the musicians’ fan base. The data packages can then be presented to industries for musical endeavours in the likes of fashion, film and television expanding commercial opportunities and freeing artists to focus on their music.

JamBird Marketing is a new, Belfast-based, music-specific marketing company dedicated to helping unsigned, independent artists monetise their music through consultation, coaching and new technology development. They are CIM-qualified digital marketers with 20+ years’ experience in the music industry and 40+ years’ combined experience in marketing, sales, business development, project management and training. 

TEAM

Co-founders/ Directors: Amanda Hickman and Caroline Fleck.

Co-investigator: Dr Darryl Charles, Senior Lecturer, Computer Science Research Institute, Ulster University.

This project is funded by Future Screens NI Research & Development award.

Lia Campbell’s Run with Her to receive its World Premiere at the BAFTA qualifying Edinburgh International Film Festival 2021

Writer/Director Lia Campbell is a participant in the Future Foundation mentorship scheme funded by Future Screens NI and based at Queen’s University. While under mentorship she created Run with Her, a short creative documentary focusing on female athletes from Willowfield Athletics Club in East Belfast.

 “Endurance running creates a secure world for 16-year-old Emmy, where everything can be quantified. As influences from the outside world start to permeate, we follow the change it might bring to her relationships with the other girls on the team and within herself.”

Run with Her has been selected to screen at the BAFTA qualifying 74th Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) which takes place at the heart of Edinburgh’s festival season, between 18th and 25th August, and presents a fantastic programme of feature and short films celebrating the long-awaited return to cinema.

Run with Her will receive its World Premiere in the Bridging the Gap – Mobile selection on Filmhouse at Home.

While creating Run with Her Lia worked closely with Future Foundation mentor John McIllduff, who offered advice and creative feedback throughout. She is currently being mentored by Future Foundation’s Darren Young, creative director of Young Creative.

Lia is the Writer and Director and Anna Callan is the Producer, with Executive Producers: Walk on Air Films. The film was commissioned and funded by the Scottish Documentary Institute, Screen Scotland and Northern Ireland Screen. It features a cast of Willowfield athletes: Emmy Thorton, Mabelle Wilcox, Emer McKee, Kirsti Foster, Erin McDermott, Erin Cross and Emily Morris.

This year’s Edinburgh festival will be a mix of online and in-person screenings, with Run with Her being streamed from the Filmhouse website from 4pm this Sunday 22nd August.

Tickets are available here: 

https://www.filmhouseathome.com/bundle/shorts-bridging-the-gap-mobile/

Official NIScreen Press release: https://www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk/news/filming-in-northern-ireland/northern-ireland-shorts-selected-screening-eiff/

Scottish Documentary Institute Press Release:

https://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/2021/07/28/bridging-the-gap-mobile-at-eiff/

Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/runwithherfilm/

Team

Lia Campbell is an Irish-German filmmaker working in fiction and documentary. A graduate from the IADT National Film School, Dún Laoghaire, her fictional debut ‘To All My Darlings’ won the Audience Award for best short film at the Virginmedia Dublin International Film Festival 2021 and was shortlisted for a GSA BAFTA award 2021. For the past year, Lia has worked as the production assistant for Dumbworld - an artist led creative production company established in 2009 by composer/conductor Brian Irvine and filmmaker/writer/director John McIllduff – a Future Foundation mentor.

Anna Callan Since graduating with a BA Architecture in July 2016 Anna has been working consistently in the Film and TV Industries. Over the past three years she has worked as an Assistant Director on productions ranging from HETV to Film and Comedy, including ‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Bloodlands’ and ‘The Northman’ and is currently working as a Producer’s Assistant on the Netflix film ‘The School for Good and Evil’, filming in Belfast. In November 2020 Anna received funding from Northern Ireland Screen to produce the BBC Two Minute Masterpiece ‘Best Served Cold’ which premiered on the BBC Iplayer and is available to watch across the UK.

Dumbworld makes work that is to be found at the intersection of music, image and words including film, opera, documentary, oratorio, animation, public art installation, performance pieces, theatre, and curatorial projects. John McIllduff and the Dumbworld team – Brian Irvine, Susanna Lagan & Koichi Samuels supported Lia throughout the development and production of Run with Her. 

Poster image: Jess Whelan

Stills photography: David Copeland

The Future Foundation mentorship scheme is funded by Future Screens NI

Rewriting the Narrative awardee Ben Bland has developed a tool kit, Neoco, for remote working specially aimed at creative industries.

Ben Bland received funding from Future Screens NI to research and develop a web platform to facilitate working remotely. Titled Neoco Toolkit & Playbook, the project built during lockdown by Ben Bland and partners with the goal of helping people find ways to improve the way they work, collaborate and build successful lives for themselves. Neoco includes over 240 tools, 50 published guides, 16 case studies and much more. The playbook aims to be of particular value to anyone currently working remotely or considering remote work – both independently and within teams and organisations – in any sector, but with a specific focus on the creative industries.

More information on Neoco Toolkit & Playbook can be found here: https://neoco.io/

Ben Bland has spearheading developments in online marketing and e-commerce, digital strategy, and wider tech start-up consulting & entrepreneurship. Ben is a partner at a newly founded innovation practice, Loopers. 

For more information on Ben please follow the following link: http://benbland.me/

This project was funded by a Future Screens NI Rewriting the Narrative award.

Sentireal develops XR programme to assist educators in social work with limited technical experience.

Belfast-based software development company Sentireal have teamed up with Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) researchers on a Research & Development project aimed at accessibility to Extended Reality (XR) use by non-technical educators. The project engaged various social work, education, medical and sonic arts researchers associated with QUB to focus on various safety-critical applications.

The project’s primary objective was the creation of a software and media platform that educators could use to author immersive experiences to train student social workers. The project focus was on Authoring Virtual/Augmented Reality media and associated software apps for safety-critical training applications. Often the domain expert or educator wishing to author this type of immersive training scenario would need significant experience in specialist technical areas. The project sought to develop the appropriate techniques and software tools for non-technical specialists to author adaptive immersive experiences to train student social workers. Eliminating the need for third party specialist for the technical tasks the objective would minimise costs and give direct agency to the intended practitioners in the hands-on design of the software. 

Sentireal is now utilising the outcomes from this R&D project to feed into a wider Sentireal R&D and product development programme for a new software platform called “immersonal”. 

Sentireal was founded in 2013 and based in Belfast. The company’s projects focus on the fields of augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Their team have expertise in audio and video processing, digital communications, data security and System-on-Chip.

For more information on Sentireal visit: https://www.sentireal.com

TEAM:

Sentireal Team
Dr. David Trainor, Chief Technology Officer. 

Greta Kelly, XR Content Designer 

Ryan Pendleton, XR Content Designer 

Philip Caraher, XR Application Developer 

Queen’s University Belfast Team

Dr. Paul Best, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work 

Dr. Carolyn Blair, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work 

Dr. Janine Stockdale, School of Nursing and Midwifery

John Doran, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences 

Dr. Franziska Schroeder, Sonic Arts Research Centre, School of Arts, English & Languages 

Dr. Matilde Meireles, Sonic Arts Research Centre, School of Arts, English & Languages 

Michael McKnight, Sonic Arts Research Centre, School of Arts, English & Languages 

Hanna Slattne, Sonic Arts Research Centre, School of Arts, English & Languages 

This project was funded by a Future Screens NI Research & Development award.