Mapping the UK's Immersive Production Ecosystem

Client: Immersive Arts (University of the West of England, Bristol)
Project: Joining the Dots - UK Immersive Production Facilities Map

The Challenge

The UK's immersive arts sector has grown rapidly, but that growth has outpaced the infrastructure connecting it. By 2026, Immersive Arts had identified around 120 dedicated immersive venues across the UK and mapped 60 production facilities offering everything from motion capture to volumetric filming. Yet the artists, freelancers and small creative teams the sector depends on had no reliable, centralised way to find and compare these facilities.

Immersive Arts' research (Joining the Dots, 2026) surveyed 42 UK immersive production facilities on what they offer, who they serve, and how accessible they are. The findings needed to be turned into something artists could actually use: a searchable, filterable national map.

The Solution

Pindar Creative worked with the Immersive Arts research team to translate their national survey data into an interactive, public-facing map of UK immersive production facilities.

The collaboration took detailed survey responses covering:

• Facility location and contact details
• Types of production supported (from virtual/mixed reality development to haptic feedback and volumetric capture)
• User eligibility (individual creatives through to international companies)
• Physical and digital accessibility provision

We then developed a tool that allows artists to filter facilities by location, production type, and accessibility requirements. It responds directly to a key finding of the research: that a lack of clear, accessible information was itself a significant deterrent to artists engaging with production facilities.

The Outcome

The resulting map is published at immersivearts.uk/facilities, giving artists, producers and companies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a single point of access to discover the facilities best suited to their project - by capability, location and accessibility need.

It stands as a practical, working answer to one of the report's central questions: not just what exists, but how do people actually find it.

Verity McIntosh, Director of Immersive Arts and Professor of Immersive Arts and Culture at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol).

It has been a pleasure working with Pindar Creative on this project. We came to them with a really tight timeframe, needing to create something that could be legible and accessible to a range of different users, and that would satisfy multiple stakeholders. Maria, Igor and the team worked closely with us from the start to ensure that we had a shared understanding of the brief. They then expertly managed the development process, looping us back in for key decision points, and to undertake cycles of testing, feedback and iteration. We are absolutely delighted with the result, and have had no hesitation in recommending Pindar to peers around the world.