A funded microresidency bringing together two curated teams of five people, including artists, creative technologists and practice-based researchers who will each be creating a prototype that uses the Reality Emulator. 

In Autumn 2026 we supported two teams to create new immersive projects in the University of Bristol’s Reality Emulator. These teams brought together eight artists, creative technologists and practice-based researchers with an interest in making immersive work that engages people with the shared challenges of the region’s future. Through a series of workshops and hands-on time in the facility, the teams produced innovative experiences responding to ideas around civic futures.

This lab was delivered in partnership with Bristol Digital Futures Institute, as part of the MyWorld IDEAS programme, funded by UKRI.

The teams

Lucy Cassidy

Lucy is a theatre maker and performer completing a practice-led PhD at York St John University (Institute for Social Justice) with Theatre Hullabaloo and The Unicorn children’s theatres, co-creating theatrical play installations with very young children. Her practice spans twenty years: a background in live art and experimental theatre (shown internationally, most notably at the National Review of Live Art) before turning to children and young people. Her work sits between installation, theatre and play. Recent installations: Bloom, The Wonder Room, Whatever the Weather. She is Artistic Director of Aurora Theatre and Associate of The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath. www.lucycassidy.co.uk

Eirini Lampiri

Eirini Lampiri is an immersive artist, creative producer, and researcher using multisensory design to explore how sensory (mis)alignments between physical and digital spaces trigger emotional resonance. Her hybrid work combines somatic practices, different artforms, and tech to improve accessibility in XR. With a background in XR, filmmaking, and set and costume design, Eirini brings skills in co-design, accessible audience experience design, audience-centered phygital interactions, accessibility in hybrid environments, rapid prototyping workflows, light design, and prop-making. She also brings technical skills in 3D scanning, 3D printing, mocap, 3D modeling with Blender (beginner), and scene composition in Unity (beginner). Eirini also brings experience showing her work internationally across Europe and China.

James Pollock

As a Creative Technologist, James investigates emerging tools and processes, striving for innovative new ways to tell stories. With a background in immersive media, visual effects and motion design, James undertakes research projects for clients both inside and outside of the creative industries, bringing his enthusiasm for discovery and experimentation to fields such as AI, realtime rendering and volumetric capture.

Becky Bell

Becky is a creative storyteller with more than 20 years’ experience in the media industry. After 12 years working freelance as a Director, CO and Editor, she joined the Royal United Hospitals, Bath, where she currently works as a Video Producer.

In recent years, she has expanded her practice into XR and immersive technologies, developing 360° narratives that create meaningful and engaging experiences. Her latest project, Classical Immersion, combines biophilic 360° visuals with classical music, and she is about to begin an HRA-approved research project exploring the potential to improve staff wellbeing.

The above team is supported by Creative Technologis Joseph Wilk

Natalie Hyacinth

Natalie Hyacinth is a composer and academic creating and thinking about sound at the intersections of technology, climate justice and Black life.

Natalie’s artworks are intersectional and interdisciplinary, inspired by diverse sonic fields such as free jazz, hip hop, dub and electronic music, while drawing upon conceptual themes from Afrofuturism, Philosophy and Cultural Geography, to Black Studies, Ethnomusicology and Aesthetics. Experimenting with sounds and sonic technologies as a form of defiance and resistance, Natalie seeks to create new sound worlds as part of her activism, a creative practice she explores under the name The Black Astral.

Thomas Brooks

Part-time Computer Science master’s student at the University of Bath, researching emerging creative technology and developing my own practice around 3D capture and data visualisation in immersive environments.

Previously a senior member of ScanLAB Projects; an award winning creative practice who use machine vision technology to tell compelling stories. Most recently as Scanning and Visuals Lead for Desert Pulse – a piece which explores a year of change in the Sonoran desert using 3D Timelapse.

Ruth Mariner

Ruth is a creative director and narrative designer, creating story-driven immersive experiences across immersive theatre, arts & culture, and immersive & interactive technology (XR, LBE, Video games), 

She is drawn to bold concepts blending narrative with other media (story, space, sound, technology, performance, gameplay) to amplify what each form does best, and create something that is more than the sum of its parts. Recent projects include narrative design on an unannounced mixed reality title at Damp Gnat Ltd and Creative Director of Shapeshifter, a narrative-led VR LBE experience using live motion capture, developed with XR Stories. As District Narrative Designer at Boomtown Festival, she supports delivery of interactive narrative content across one of the UK’s largest theatrically-led immersive festivals.

Tanish Raorane

Tanish is an XR Developer, Research Engineer, and Trainer specializing in Unity and C# across multiplayer VR, virtual production stage, and wavefield synthesis array, with prior experience developing for the Reality Emulator. His research niche focuses on 3-DoF force-feedback haptics and spatial sound in virtual environments. Beyond software engineering, my practice bridges technical development with creative media, including VR filmmaking, 3D digital-twin modeling in Blender and Autodesk Maya, and music composition – having scored a feature-length film. He brings a multidisciplinary toolkit combining spatial computing and immersive design.

The above team is supported by Creative Technologist Antonia Forster

 Bristol Digital Futures Institute

Founded in 2019, Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI) is a University of Bristol Research Institute pioneering a new approach to digital innovation. Backed by £100m in funding – including a £29m UKRPIF investment – it brings together 26 partners across industry, government, and community sectors to shape a more inclusive digital world.

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Watershed and the Pervasive Media Studio are part of a programme called MyWorld. MyWorld is the flagship for the UK’s creative sector and is part of a UK-wide exploration into devolved research and development funding. Funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strength in Places Fund, MyWorld is Led by the University of Bristol, the £30 million programme is made up of 13 partners from the West of England region’s creative technologies sector and world-leading academic institutions to create a unique cross-sector consortium.