It’s been an exciting week in the Studio as we hosted Wales’ first Digital Producers Lab, we held a work in progress event for our magicians in residence and two of our residents have been preparing to speak at TEDxBristol. Read on to find out all about these developments and more...

This week we were very excited to host Wales’ first Digital Producers Lab in the Studio in partnership with National Theatre Wales and Arts Council Wales. The Digital Producers Lab is a development programme that aims to foster digital talent and catalyse production of creative technology projects in Wales. On Monday we were joined by the twelve brilliant participants (you can read more about them here) who were treated to a fantastic talk by Kate Tyndall author of The Producers, Alchemists of the Impossible. Since then they’ve been playing with arduinos, listening to some more brilliant speakers and taking time to share experiences and learnings from their individual practices. If you want to catch up on the last few days, Jess our projects co-ordinator has been keeping a day by day blog of the key activities from the labs (you can find day one, day two and day three here) and you can keep up to date on the rest of the weeks developments using the twitter hashtag #digiproducers or take a look at the Storify.

React are excited to announce UnBox LABS 2014, a unique experience which celebrates the collaborative power of design, research and digital technologies. The lab will bring together inspirational academic and industry researchers from UK and India to explore Future Cities. The project is a collaboration between UnBox, British Council, the AHRC, and the Science & Innovation Network, supported by the REACT and the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. UnBox are seeking eight creative practitioners and eight academic researchers from the UK to collaborate with 20 creative practitioners and researchers from India. You can find details of how to apply here.

On Thursday we gathered together in the events space for our Magicians Kieron Kirkland and Stuart Nolan Work’s in Progress event. The work in progress event was a brilliant chance for Kieron and Stuart to update us on their work in the Studio so far and share their hopes and project plans for the upcoming month. We heard more plans about Kieron’s Magic Hack taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week and Stuart spoke about creating an OuijaBird. If that’s sparked your interest you can follow their progress on their blogs here and mark the 4 December in your calendar for an evening showcase of their residency.

On Friday at 1pm Games designer Gaz Bushell and Biochemist Jody Mason gave a Lunchtime Talk introducing their extraordinary new game, Cascade, which recently took home the coveted UK Game of the Show title at this year’s Gamescom in Cologne. Cascade is a game set in a brain under the siege of Alzheimer’s disease. Moving between brain cells you have the power to stabilize them against this onslaught. The environment and gameplay are based on compelling research to suggest that certain therapeutic interventions at a biomolecular level can have a powerful effect against the disease. You can find a full programme of our Lunchtime Talks here.

Then on Sunday Laura Kriefman performed in a solo show called Captured in Stone at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester commissioned for Remembrance Sunday. Combining sound, digital projection and contemporary dance, the piece explores our relationships to public monuments. Inspired by the museum's collections, the piece highlights the way in which war shapes and changes people's lives and is a creative reinvention of Guerilla Dance Projects Rolling Stones performance, developed in the Studio.

Finally on Monday our brilliant Studio residents Paul Archer (Daredevil Project) and Michael Johnson (Pocket Spacecraft) are giving TedX talks in Bristol. The whole day of talks will be centred on the theme of ‘Failure’. Michael’s talk; “Failure is not NOT an option”, will be about his project Pocket Spacecraft and Paul’s; ‘Around the World in 20 Fails” will be on his recent circumnavigation of the globe in a black cab. It’s now sold out but the organisers led by former Studio resident Nat Al-Tahhan are running a competition where you can win a pair of tickets every day on their facebook.