As EPSRC announce the launch of the annual EPSRC Digital Economy Theme’Telling Tales of Engagement Competition’, we look back on the successful application of CDE Research Engineer (RE) Phil Wilkinson, to give encouragement to those wishing to apply.
In 2016, CDE RE Phil Wilkinson and his supervisory team worked together with Phil’s host partners, Samsung and IPACA on an application for the EPSRC Telling Tales of Engagement Competition.
The original project was looking at developing digital skills in the community. Phil’s research has very much focused on this area, exploring the process of game development as a creative research method. Game Makers is an after-school club run at the Isle of Portland Aldridge Community Academy (IPACA). During this club college students are tapping into the growing trend in society towards developing purposeful games and developing Games for Social Change. These games are designed to raise awareness of social issues in their community.
You can see more details in the application document here.
The application was successful and Phil and the team received an award of £10,000. The grant allowed Phil to develop further digital engagement activities with community outreach practitioners, educators, and academics with a focus on ‘Digital Families’.
Phil promoted key research from his CDE studies including his ‘Researcher in Residence’ work at the Isle of Portland Aldridge Community Academy. The engagement activities built upon the Digital Capabilities project that Phil has been involved in with Samsung and Bournemouth’sCentre for Excellence in Media Practice.
Aside from the main research, the team developed a Digital Families programme of activities – a series of lessons for parent-child co-production of digital media.
The grant helped to pay for a research assistant to help produce this ‘promotional’ video.
The funding was also used for further promotion at the Festival of Learning, held at Bournemouth University, as well as developing new activities and workshops in the community, including ‘Beat the Hacker‘ and ‘Stop Motion Animation’.
The Digital Economy (DE) theme intends to launch a ‘Telling Tales of Engagement Competition’ (TTE) in August 2019 to help capture and promote the impact of UKRI-funded DE research.
It is anticipated that three TTE awards will be available, each worth £10,000 spanning over 18 months. These awards are designed to help capture the wider impact of DE research and to provide researchers with the opportunity to tell their story of research impact in an interesting and engaging way to a wider audience, including the general public.
To be eligible to apply the proposed TTE activity has to be aligned with previous DE funded research. Applications are open to teams as well as individuals.
**Applications will be welcome from all academic career stages (ranging from PhD students to established researchers), as well as from industry, users and the third sector**.
The call will open on 31st August 2019 and will close on 12th December 2019.
Further details can be found on the EPSRC Website.