Announcing Amplified Publishing
News
New Bristol + Bath Creative R+D research partnership "Amplified Publishing" announced
Friday, 30 April, 2021How has publishing content across lots of different platforms, changed in the 21st century – especially following the pandemic?
"Over the past year we’ve seen a sharp rise in content creation, with people making and publishing their own content on everything from TikTok to SoundCloud."
A new research project that’s been launched today by Bristol + Bath Creative R+D – a first-of-a-kind collaboration between the region’s four universities – Bath Spa University, the University of Bath, the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol – will aim to find out.
Amplified Publishing brings together a multi-disciplinary group of 10 academic and industry-based Fellows, and eight industry partners for a four-month ‘deep dive’ into the potential, challenges and opportunities of publishing –which has seen an explosion of content creation online.
The partnership also includes industry names such as BT, Future, Epic Games and BBC R&D, and will look at a range of diverse areas, including children’s animation, gaming, social inclusion, the use of AI to create content, digital zines and more, as well as the latest technologies, platforms and trends.
"Over the past year we’ve seen a sharp rise in content creation, with people making and publishing their own content on everything from TikTok to SoundCloud," said Kate Pullinger, Co-Investigator at Bristol + Bath Creative R+D Partnership, and academic lead for this project.
"In early March 2020, we brought a group of content creators and distributors together – we didn’t know then that this would be our last interaction for over a year, but we continued working in the background to launch our latest pathfinder. It’s become apparent that the pandemic has only intensified the need for R&D based on the issues and ideas discussed that evening all those months ago."
The new cohort of researchers is made up of four academic researchers from a wide range of professional backgrounds, and the group will now spend the next four months researching a variety of different topics before a call for prototypes in September. The programme will run for four years in total.
Find out more the programme and the new cohort of researchers online.
Project Fellows
Take a look at the people working on the project, and a bit about their backgrounds...
- Lily Green (No Bindings): alternatives to mainstream publishing models
- James Binns (Network N): understanding and unlocking the discovery value chain
- Sammy Jones: reimagining comments sections as a space for constructive dialogue
- Grace Kress: social activism and digital zines
- Linus Harrison: how personalisation can serve underrepresented audiences
- Jasmine Richards: making the creation and consumption of audio content more inclusive and equitable in children's publishing
- Tom Abba (University of the West of England): innovating business models for the independent sector
- Mel McCree (Bath Spa University): social inclusion in location based content production
- Vinay Namboodiri (University of Bath): the role of AI in the production cycle
- Agnieszka Przybyszewska (Bath Spa University visiting fellow): the crossover between VR and Literature
- Jack Gibbon (Bricks): commissioning, presenting and publishing grass roots visual art via a hybrid platform
- Karolina Latka (Complete Control): interactive storytelling and personalisation in content creation for children's animation
- Louise Brailey (Crack Magazine): the role of payment gateways in producing content and digital content ownership (NFTs)
- Matt Roebuck (Rocketmakers): making personalised immersive experience production tools accessible to content creators and digital publishers
- Andrew Kelly (Bristol Ideas): also exploring the role of festivals in publishing and use of archive