Projects
Active Minutes
Active Minutes
Taking place in a group exercise studio, ‘Active Minutes’ is designed for 20 participants guided by a performer as Fitness Instructor, exploring how we define our own abilities with reference to the successes and failures of the people around us.
Using a custom smartphone platform we’ll score, sort, group and rank players’ performance on their arms (sometimes unfairly). Participants peer over the shoulders of their neighbours to inform their own decisions in each moment, the tech delivering everything from live exercise data to personal trainer feedback… Even a mystery fart in the warm up stretches.
We recognise the tension mobile phones create in immersive experiences: they are powerful enablers yet can be significant distractions. The setting provides a thematic reason for limited phone access. The experience, lasting around 45 minutes, begins as a traditional workout - players are encouraged to wear gym attire - but transitions into something entirely different.
With support from InnovateUK, we have developed a new app-free smartphone platform for powering immersive experiences; NAIAD. ‘Active Minutes’ will be the first new show created specifically for this platform. EXPERIMENT will support the development of the show’s narrative and interactive elements, and allow us to playtest with diverse audiences.
This project tackles the accessibility of both immersive live experiences and of group exercise itself. We want to build best-practice examples of how immersive work can be developed alongside diverse audiences, in particular how inclusion can happen in-universe, using creative technical tools for high-quality onboarding and offboarding outside of the live event.
Experiment
£20,000
Aims of the Project
By the end of the EXPERIMENT phase, we aim to have a fully realised version of ‘Active Minutes’ ready to be shared with audiences as well as a promo pack and tech rider to promote future touring of the show.
The project will act as a key demonstrator for the NAIAD platform, which we hope to release as a toolkit for other artists later in 2025. Ongoing success will be evident in a growing ecosystem of projects stemming from this initiative that set new standards for how inclusion can be woven into immersive experiences.
The wider impact of ‘Active Minutes’ for audiences and communities lies in its potential to redefine accessibility in both immersive live experiences and fitness spaces, demonstrating how creative technology can create inclusive, engaging environments for diverse audiences. Collaboration with access advocacy groups and inclusive design specialists will help evaluate the success of onboarding and offboarding processes.
We will take a wide-reaching definition of increased access for this project, to include factors that support engagement from disabled / neurodivergent participants, but also from other groups that don’t frequently engage with the arts. As well as technical and creative means, we also aim to explore the role of non-arts spaces in engaging participation. Traditional group fitness spaces can feel intimidating or inaccessible. By recontextualizing exercise as playful, collaborative, and narrative-driven, we aim to inspire gyms to consider new, inclusive approaches to fitness programming and we aim to inspire current gym goers to engage audiences who might not see themselves as “arts participants,” using a familiar and approachable setting to draw them in.
Meet the artists
Dom Breadmore
Lead artist
he/him
As Artistic Director of Ludic Rooms, Dom has spent more than two decades using technology to help uncover the stories behind people and places through short film, photography, video installation, interactive and new media. He has worked extensively with galleries and museums, local authorities, schools and communities.
Ludic Rooms are an arts and technology non-profit founded in Coventry in 2009 that make playful immersive and interactive experiences for unusual spaces. Play is central to what we do. We use tech, but our work is ultimately human-centred and invites people to imagine their place in the present alongside imaginary pasts and futures. We use play-based methodologies to develop, prototype, and test ideas alongside professional and community co-creators. We have a strong track record for collaboration, bringing together innovative cross-sector partnerships to create new work as well as events and activities for artist development, discussion and knowledge exchange.
John Sear
John is a Creative Technologist and Game Designer with 20 years’ experience in the games industry, specializing in creating real-world games that blend technology, theatre, and interactive storytelling. Notable works include political spy thriller “A Moment of Madness,” immersing audiences in a live car park stake-out, and “Rainbow for Amala,” a smartphone interactive storybook addressing the climate crisis.
Ludic Rooms are an arts and technology non-profit founded in Coventry in 2009 that make playful immersive and interactive experiences for unusual spaces. Play is central to what we do. We use tech, but our work is ultimately human-centred and invites people to imagine their place in the present alongside imaginary pasts and futures. We use play-based methodologies to develop, prototype, and test ideas alongside professional and community co-creators. We have a strong track record for collaboration, bringing together innovative cross-sector partnerships to create new work as well as events and activities for artist development, discussion and knowledge exchange.
