A Celebration of North East Creativity and Collaboration

9th July 2018

Creative Fuse North East, an action-research project led by the region’s five universities and creative businesses, will be sharing its early results at a free conference on the 10 and 11 July.

The Creative Fuse Conference will bring together SMEs, freelancers, creatives and academics from across the region and beyond to showcase and celebrate creative innovation projects.

Project Director, Mark Adamson said: “The programme provides a mix of presentations, panel discussions, workshops and performances – as well as an interactions gallery which offers a first look at some of the outcomes from the Creative Fuse Innovation Pilot projects that were funded through an open call earlier this year – it’s going to be a fantastic event, a culmination of everything the project has achieved so far, blended with a consideration of future directions.”

Through the Creative Fuse Innovation Pilot programme, 31 creative, digital and cultural organisations received seed funding to team up with researchers and work on innovative ideas.

During the conference, the Interaction Gallery will showcase some of the collaborations developed by Creative Fuse NE.

The Innovation Pilot project, Passive Management of Building Environments Using Thermal Sculptures, will be one of the projects featured. A collaboration between Full Blown, an Ouseburn-based metal studio, and engineering researchers from Northumbria and Newcastle universities, the team has developed a method of encapsulating a thermal regulation substance within an inflated metal casing. This could be shaped into sculptures, office partitions, and other structures, to passively regulate a building’s temperature in an energy efficient way.

Also featured is Mymo, a collaboration between Washington-based micro-business Shoes2Run and researchers from Sunderland and Northumbria universities. Shoes2Run has developed a portable, wearable tool for gait analysis, which uses an artificial intelligence algorithm developed by Northumbria to match a person’s gait to the most suitable type of running shoes on the market. The University of Sunderland are working with Shoes2Run on the Big Data elements of this project.

The Bowes Museum will also be exhibiting, showcasing the early results of their work with researchers at Durham, Sunderland, Newcastle and Teesside universities. The project team, which explored potential uses for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and other digital tools within a museum context, will be presenting a first glimpse into the Bowes Centre’s experiments with photogrammetry, creating an interactive experience with museum objects.

Scheduled speakers for the Discussion Panel sessions include: Alan Welby, Innovation Director at North East LEP; Darren Henley, Chief Executive of Arts Council England; and Caroline Norbury, Chief Executive of Creative England. The Keynote speakers are Zoe Laughlin (Institute of Making) and Jo Lansdowne (REACT Watershed). Performances on Tuesday evening will include local bluegrass band, The Often Herd.

The Creative Fuse Conference will be held at the Discovery Museum, Newcastle, and is part of the Great Exhibition of the North ‘Inspired By’ Programme.

The Conference will be livestreamed, and can be watched via the Creative Fuse website Insights from Workshops and the Interactions Gallery will be posted live on twitter and Instagram @CreativeFuseNE, #FuseCon18.