We believe that investing in a community over time, without targets or pre-defined outputs, leads to all kinds of brilliant and unexpected things. This is the foundation of the Pervasive Media Studio, and it requires our partners to take a leap of faith.

To help fuel that faith, every year the Studio team write a report for the Universities that contribute to our core funding (UWE Bristol and the University of Bristol). This is an edited collection of our projects and the stories that Residents tell us about their work; collected through conversations, observations and a survey that we ask everyone to complete. It also outlines what we spent money on, and our plans for next year. 

This year we decided to put that report here too. We do this to be transparent, but also because we want to show that the gift of stories shared really, really makes a difference to our ability to keep doing what we do.

It is important to stress that this report is an advocacy document written for a particular audience and is in NO WAY the total sum of everything that happened last year. The report doesn't tell us about the tiny sparks of new ideas, the skills people shared, the funding we missed out on, the minds that were changed or the shoulders that were cried on. It also doesn't tell the story of the wider system of people, projects and organisations that underpin the things that happen here.

It does however, enable our partners to advocate for our collective work to their stakeholders across a whole range of other outcomes and values. We, for example, also use the information to report to our other core funders - Arts Council England.  So THANK YOU to everyone that completed the Survey and WELL DONE to us all!

Read the full report