South Yorkshire Cultural and Creative Industries Network

Thursday 10 March 2022
Video Games Museum - Sheffield

We're most excited when we create something new” - creative leaders share inspirations, sneak previews and research findings at Sheffield’s SYCCIN event

The National Videogame Museum was the perfect setting for industry professionals to gather and share details of the ground-breaking work being crafted in immersive games and drama to delight, surprise and involve audiences in engaging ways. Attended by representatives working in the cultural and creative industries sectors, the evening was a chance to hear from several professionals in the region who are building impressive reputations for their outstanding work.

Also part of the evening was an overview of research being undertaken to understand more about the Creative Industries and Cultural sectors in the South Yorkshire region. Everybody working within the sectors can complete this online survey to share their experiences and thoughts on topics including challenges, what can be done to attract more funding, how to reach more people and provide more opportunities.

Insights from a BAFTA-winning creator

Luke Whittaker, the founder of State of Play, a BAFTA-winning indie games company, was the keynote speaker. He spoke of his journey since setting up the business in 2008. He shared details of various projects he’s worked on which the team have centred around “a love of arts, craft, story and message” and which have always been “powered by passion.”

This is an ethos that has continued to carry through different games developed by State of Play across different formats as technology has evolved. Luke described the joy of hand creating games, including puzzle adventure games, to immerse audiences differently. “Rather than being ambitious for money, we were ambitious to do something that we love,” he explained. “We’re most excited when we create something new,” he added.  

Luke shared his love of collaboration in order to bring a “whole new way of thinking” to the team because he recognises that “others will lift a project more than you can.” Once State Of Play started to collaborate, the team were empowered to embed new techniques and approaches, such as laser cutting. He also adopted an approach for the team to work on creative projects on Fridays, which ultimately gave space to craft smaller, interesting projects.

Luke shared an exclusive preview of upcoming work and  also reflected on the achievements of past projects and the fact they’ve taken him to some exciting places. He compellingly told the story of a journey to Antarctica to bring a games adventure to life.  

State of Play is based in Sheffield but has also expanded to other bases around the UK. Despite its impressive BAFTA accolade, the games company has grown organically and stayed true to its original mission. Luke summed up: “We followed our intuition, a sense of direction. We love making things by hand, putting as much as us into each of the games, writing books and collaborating where and when we can. Also important is being open to new ways of working,” Luke reflected.  

Creating “fantastical worlds” with the latest innovations

Ben Carlin is a creative director at Megaverse, an interactive studio based in Sheffield. He talked passionately about how exciting it is to work in the creative sector, continually adapting to use the latest innovations and bringing ideas to life. 

“We combine immersive and interactive technology with storytelling, which creates quite unique experiences. We're focused on the audience - they become active participants in the work as opposed to passive spectators,” Ben explained. 

He gave an overview of a recent project, called Flood, which is a mixed reality theatre experience. Ben said: “As a Flood audience member, you put on a headset, and then you see the actors, but virtualized. It’s like a big, open play space, where we can render these fantastical worlds that we've dropped them into.”

Ben showed the audience films to display how the VR experience works, as well as a behind the scenes video capturing the technology and complex process behind creating the content.  

The evening also featured an overview from Alexander Kelly, co-artistic director of theatre company Third Angel, of several immersive projects he’s been involved with. This included Distraction Agents, which he described as a combination of “a game, a story, a puzzle and a story in a box” that audiences explore in their own homes and environments. 

Leah Dungay of the National Videogame Museum and Joe Harris, an event producer and film programmer, also shared their experiences of jointly producing and running GameCity Adventures. This was a multi-location game, using 17 locations across Sheffield, enabling people to fully participate in games while interacting with real spaces in the city. This was a soaring success in autumn 2021, attracting more than 1,000 participants over its inaugural weekend. 

Both Leah and Joe reflected on how it was joyful seeing people interacting with  their city in a unique way, especially after lockdown. They also used independent venues in order to encourage usage of local businesses. "It was great to see people having fun with games and real experiences around the city. A creative and celebratory way to spend a weekend." 

Researching “sheer quality and distinctiveness”

The SYMCA has commissioned research, which the survey will feed into, into the cultural and creative industries in the region, due to be published in the summer to share a true picture of the work happening continually in these exciting sectors. It is aimed at forging a way forward which boosts culture and creative industries further - outlining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. 

Two people involved with conducting this research gave early snippets of their findings to date and asked audience members to engage with the research. Iain Bennett, founder and director of The Fifth Sector, is a culture and creative industries consultant conducting research into the breadth and diversity of the sectors on behalf of SYMCA. He revealed that in South Yorkshire there are around 4,000 people creating exciting content such as computer games; 3,000 making live experiences such as music, museums, festivals; 4,000 people working in fashion, fine arts, crafts; more than 8,500 in areas such as design and architecture; about 12,000 people specialising in software. 

Iain added he was intending to “knit together something which is more than just a statistical record of all that” to truly understand the full picture. He said: “It’s about acknowledging the sheer quality and distinctiveness - the work that comes out of this region is astounding.”

James Locke, director of Opus, specialises in solving complex problems within arts and culture. He explained: “One of the complex problems we've got at the moment is that in this region, we receive less public funding than other regions; by between nine and 12 per cent.

“This basically means that we've got less resources and we're doing less as a result of it. So part of my job is to understand why that is. And to understand how, together, across the region, we can develop a common ground that we can then talk to public funders about. 

“We're here tonight talking about experiences. And experiences are absolutely critical. Experiences bring us together. Experiences give us empathy for the different things we have encountered. Experience is endless skills in critical thinking. 

“And those skills are the things that are going to contribute to greater health and well being, reductions in social isolation, improve mental health -  all the things we value as a sector and much of which we’re already doing.”

The evening ended with a short panel discussion, some pitches from the audience and a chance to network with industry peers. Our thanks go to Nikki Stearman for curating the evening and to Emma Cooper, a creative producer who works in business development at Cooperative Innovations, who kindly hosted the discussions.