Latest collaborations at Kingston University showcased for businesses in the creative and digital sectors

Posted Friday 22 November 2013

Karen Cham A number of key players in the digital and creative industry met recently as part of Kingston University's Meet the Experts series of business seminars. The event was held in The Work Foundation in Victoria, central London and was well attended.

Aimed at businesses in the creative and digital sectors, the event showcased the latest research, technology and business collaborations from Kingston University in the digital and creative space. Delegates had an opportunity to participate in a question and answer session with the panel of expert speakers followed by a networking session over wine and canapés.

Kingston academics, Karen Cham, director of Digital Media Kingston and principal lecturer in digital media, and Dr James Orwell, from the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing hosted the event and gave a detailed presentation of Kingston University's capability in the creative digital space. Innovations highlighted on the day included: the Digital Imaging Research Centre, which the main body of work in image processing and computer vision aims to extract information from images and image sequences and is highly relevant in the domains of visual surveillance for security and sports, and medical imaging; the Design Research Centre, which works with industry to devise new methods and approaches to design; and InKUbator, the games development hub that brings together programmers, writers, artists and commercialisers.

Guest speakers included Elinor Olisa from degreeart.com, a pioneering online art dealership; Sven Krause from Seren, one of Europe's largest customer experience and service design consultancies; Wyndham Lewis, Executive Director, British Interactive Media Association (BIMA); and Mike Brown from the BBC.

Collaboration was a key theme for the seminar and Karen Cham cited numerous industry memberships and networks, including: BIMA, TIGA, and PlaystationFirst, as well as specific business collaborations with, among others, Seren and DegreeArt, all of which have an important role to play in the transfer of knowledge, innovation and continuing research and development to drive commercial success.

Sven Krause, head of Laboratory Experience and Innovation at Seren spoke of the need to connect people and technology to drive commercial success. "The transition to digital needs to be in a meaningful way – it is not simply about moving data, it must be done in a way that engages the customer so the key question is 'what drives emotional engagement?' hence the importance of user experience studies such as those done with Kingston University," Sven commented.

Elinor Olisa, director of degreeart.com outlined how her company is developing a technology solution entitled Artellite, which is aimed at future-proofing the online arts industry. Artellite is funded by NESTA, the digital R&D fund for the Arts. This project will involve a technology partner, Snowflake Digital, and a research partner, Kingston University, and is a perfect example of collaboration between the digital and creative sectors underpinned by academic research, to produce tangible business benefits.

Elinor also drew attention to the challenges a small business faces in trying to do research and development – in terms of demands on time, manpower and finance – and how partnering with a university can be the perfect solution to this challenge.

As well as receiving information on the latest technology and emerging trends, participants also heard about business support available to them in the form of funding, access to talent, expertise and resources through the European Development Fund programmes, London Fusion and Creativeworks.

Download the event presentation (PDF).

If you are interested in finding out more about potential collaborations with Kingston University in the digital space contact Peter Christian by email: p.christian@kingston.ac.uk or find out more generally about services for business on offer at Kingston University, please contact us at enterprise@kingston.ac.uk.

View images from the day: