GB-London: CreativeXR Programme Evaluation

Research and development services and related consultancy services. CreativeXR (the programme) is an innovation accelerator programme designed for small businesses, creative innovators, and arts & culture organisations capable of producing immersive content. The programme gives the opportunity to experiment with immersive technologies (virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality) to create new experiences for and from the arts and culture sectors. Delivered in partnership, Digital Catapult and Arts Council England (the Partners) launched CreativeXR in September 2017, driven by the common mission of enabling new forms of content innovation and support for future-proofing the UK creative industries.

To date the programme has invested approximately £3.2m to support the UK's creative immersive sector, with this being used to both run the programme and award the funding. This includes £20,000 for each team for their prototype, with a limited amount of further funding to support 2-5 projects per year with production funding. These are virtual, augmented, and mixed reality experiences, which include artistic performances, cultural experiences (including those inspired by museum, gallery, library, or heritage experiences), new forms of storytelling (fiction and non-fiction) and new forms of interactive entertainment.

Arts Council England and Digital Catapult are seeking to commission an experienced evaluator to deliver an external and independent evaluation of the CreativeXR programme. The evaluation will have the following main outputs:

•Evaluation of the Creative XR programme against the aims and objectives of the Partners. In particular it will: -assess the impact on the individual creative teams from a skills and business development perspective -assess the impact achieved by the programme and funded projects on the immersive creative sector more broadly

•Make recommendations and provide learning to the Partners to support potential future iterations of the programme, including an assessment of whether the original rationale for making an intervention at R&D and production phases of developing content still holds.

•Supporting the development of a longitudinal evaluation framework for the programme, building on the work Digital Catapult has already started and making recommendations for its development.