Funding
Are you an artist based in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or England? Apply and expand the limits of your practice through funding, training, research and events.
Immersive Arts is a brand new funding and support programme for UK-based artists, designed to help them develop their art by using immersive technologies. Artists at all levels of experience are invited to apply, to explore, experiment or expand how they work with this exciting field of practice.
With £3.6million available until 2027, we will fund over 200 UK-based artists through three strands:
- Explore £5,000
- Experiment £20,000
- Expand £50,000
Each strand is designed to support artists at different stages in their creative development.
Eligible artists can submit an application to one strand in each round of funding and apply again for subsequent rounds whether or not they were funded through an earlier application.
Applicants should apply for the full amounts available in each strand (i.e. £5,000, £20,000 or £50,000).
Please note you do not require match funding to apply.
Why Apply?
Are you an artist with a curious mind who’d like to push the limits of your practice? We hope that’s why you’re reading this, and why you will apply.
You could use the funding for:
- planning, researching and developing, or delivering, a new immersive arts project
- attending residencies, relevant events and workshops
- accessing training and other forms of support
- buying materials, software licences and other technical tools
- paying artists, technologists and other collaborators
- hiring studio, rehearsal, exhibition or event spaces
- researching and integrating accessibility options for audiences’ access needs
- making audience testing or exhibitions more accessible, diverse and inclusive (by, for eg, paying for BSL interpreters, accessible formats, captioning, etc).
- marketing your project and developing your audience (Expand and Experiment only)
See the Immersive Arts guidelines below for a full breakdown of eligible costs.
Details on application and guidelines for the next funding round will be ready in July 2025.
Eligibility
You are eligible to apply for an Immersive Arts grant if you:
- are an individual artist, creative practitioner or creative technologist
- are an arts-based organisation, small group or collective (10 people or fewer for Experiment and Explore, up to 50 people for Expand)are based in the UK
- are aged 18 or overhave a UK bank account in your own name.
Check back in July 2025 for more details on our eligibility.
How to apply
To apply for a grant, you’ll need to create an account in our online application portal, which will open in July 2025.
When to apply
The first round of funding was open in autumn 2024.
The second round of funding will open in July 2025, sign up to our newsletter for updates coming soon.
What counts as immersive art?
We know the term ‘immersive art’ has many meanings for different people and across many sectors. For this programme, we mean art that uses technology to actively involve the audience.
We are interested in the use of virtual, augmented and extended reality in the creation of artwork that bridges physical and digital spaces, engages multiple senses, and connects people to each other and/ or to their environment. We welcome applications which make the case for using other technologies that enable an audience to be actively involved in the artwork.
The funding programme aims to create inclusive and accessible opportunities by breaking down the barriers for artists of all backgrounds to engage with immersive tools.
Therefore all artforms are eligible as long as the applicant demonstrates a genuine interest in exploring, experimenting with, or expanding their use of immersive technologies in their creative practice. We are also interested in supporting bilingual or multilingual productions.
Examples of immersive technologies
Virtual Reality (VR) – Projects that create digital environments, allowing users to interact within a computer-generated world using devices such as VR headsets and motion controllers.
Augmented Reality (AR) – Initiatives that overlay digital content (usually visual or audio) onto the physical world through devices like smartphones, tablets or AR glasses, enhancing the user’s perception of their environment.
Mixed Reality (MR) – Developments that blend real and virtual worlds to produce new environments where physical and digital objects coexist and interact in real-time, often using headsets with ‘pass-through’ capabilities like the Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro.
Extended Reality (XR) – A collective term that encompasses VR, AR, and MR, referring to all physical-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables.
Spatial computing – Projects that use spatial mapping and perception technologies to create interactive experiences in the physical space, enabling intuitive interactions between the user and digital content.
360-degree video – Utilisation of immersive video technology to create engaging and interactive storytelling experiences, allowing users to look around and explore a scene in every direction.
Spatial audio – Projects that use 3D audio effects to place sound in 360 degrees around a listener.
Binaural sound – Projects that utilise a stereo sound technique that gives audiences a sense of space and distance.
Haptics and sensory feedback – Incorporating tactile feedback and other sensory technologies to enhance the immersive experience, making the digital interactions feel more real and engaging.
Responsive environments – Installations that use technology such as movement, audio, touch or depth sensing to acknowledge and respond to the presence of the audience in creative and imaginative ways.