The “Catalysts and Connectors: Tools for the Creative Industries” Challenge is part of MyWorld, a unique collaboration of organisations, from across the West of England region’s creative and technology industries, led by the University of Bristol and funded by UKRI’s Strength in Places Fund.

To kick off the challenge, Digital Catapult with NVIDIA rallied local businesses to explore how advancements in technology will provide new opportunities to create, deliver and assess experiences, focused on new forms of reality capture, real-time collaboration and creation, and multi-platform delivery of experiences and content. Participating companies will receive up to £50,000 of funding from MyWorld to help develop a proof-of-concept prototype, or innovation to extend an existing project or product. 

With the rapid evolution of simulation and digital twins, interconnected virtual worlds will revolutionise multiple sectors. Many of the novel technologies and developer tools that underpin these advancements are being developed by NVIDIA as part of Omniverse - a Universal Scene Description (USD)-based development platform for creating and operating industrial metaverse applications - and related ongoing research in domains such as Neural Radiance Fields. 

Now, a cohort of small businesses - some of whose work is steadily gaining traction as well as award winning companies - from across the West of England region will join the NVIDIA Challenge and Open Challenge programme working with Digital Catapult and NVIDIA for 16 weeks over the summer to develop and deliver cutting edge work that will have a global impact on the region and the UK’s creative industries as a whole. 

Dr Jeremy Silver, CEO, Digital Catapult said: “This new MyWorld cohort is tackling a multitude of the most pressing challenges and opportunities currently facing the sector. The UK’s creative industries lead the world, and the South West has some of the best creative minds in the country. We’re thrilled to be working alongside NVIDIA, strengthening our existing relationship by introducing them to the region’s top talent - and working together to achieve an innovative future for media. The combination of NVIDIA and their toolset in collaboration with these exciting businesses is going to produce some super-intriguing new experiences.” 

Jamie Allan, Media, Entertainment & Broadcast Industry Lead EMEA, NVIDIA, said: “NVIDIA is committed to nurturing innovation across industries all over the world by supporting the MyWorld Challenge call. Connectivity and collaboration are critical in the creative sector, and NVIDIA technologies enable the cohort to approach the challenge in unique ways.”

The nine companies selected to take part in the programme are: 

Lux Aeterna (Bristol),  Black Laboratory (Bristol), Force of Habit (Bristol) and Meaning Machine (Bristol), Motion Impossible (South Gloucestershire), who are all working with NVIDIA. 

Zubr and Uninvited Guests (Bristol), GroundWaves (Bristol), Anagram (Bristol) and Larkhall (Bath) who will be working on the Open Challenge.