Arcade Shortlisted for Niantic Lightship AR Accelerator

Niantic Lightship

Arcade is very pleased to announce that we have been shortlisted as one of eight immersive studios invited to develop and pitch game-changing immersive experiences, in the hope of being offered a place on the Augmented Reality Accelerator run by Digital Catapult and powered by Niantic Lightship.

An open call by Digital Catapult and Niantic Labs – creator of some of the most famous AR experiences in the world, including Pokémon GO – was announced earlier this year, inviting creators from across the immersive sector in the UK to develop new ways of demonstrating Niantic’s vision of the ‘real world metaverse’, using the cutting edge features of their new platform, Lightship.

Of the three challenges on offer, we chose to apply for ‘Retail and the Future of the High Street’, a fascinating and complex opportunity to drive real change for one of the sectors that needs it the most.

A challenging six weeks lie ahead, in which we will hone and polish – and potentially tear apart – our concept before pitching to a panel from Digital Catapult and Niantic in late August. The prize on offer is the funding for a demonstrator experience, and the chance to collaborate with some of the leading players in the global AR landscape.

Wish us luck!

Concept art for Niantic Lightship

Arcade part of team selected for FestivalUK*2022

Arcade is thrilled to announce that our submission to FestivalUK*2022 has been successful! We have been selected as one of 30 creative teams, out of the 299 teams who applied, for the research and development phase of the Festival that culminates in pitching our idea to the Festival panel.

FestivalUK*2022 is a programme created to celebrate the best of UK STEAM, ultimately commissioning ten large scale public engagement projects that will showcase the UK’s creativity and innovation to the world, and we join an incredibly exciting team now competing for one of those ten commissions:

  • London Marathon Events (Hugh Brasher and Penny Dain, Lead Organisation)
  • Imperial War Museums (Ellie Head and Michael Hoeschen)
  • National Physical Laboratory (Sundeep Bhandari)
  • Welsh National Opera (Emma Flatley and Tianyi Lu)
  • NTS Live (Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura)
  • Dr Rashmi Becker
  • Kinjal Dave
  • and, of course, Arcade (Jon Meggitt and Alex Book)
The full set of teams can be found here: https://www.festival2022.uk/the-r-d-the-30-creative-teams  

Alex Book, Arcade Chief Strategy Officer, said: “We could not be more proud that the FestivalUK*2022 team have looked at this incredible collaboration of creative talents, and selected us as one of just 30 teams tasked with thinking big and coming up something truly spectacular. We are so privileged to be a part of this process, and so excited to see what we come up with.”

Hugh Brasher, Event Director of team lead London Marathon Events, said: “We’re hugely excited by this amazing team and working together on a vision for engaging with millions of people in Great Britain and around the world. This is a wonderful opportunity to create a truly innovative project that will live long in people’s memories.”

The full FestivalUK*2022 press release can be found here: https://www.festival2022.uk/press-area