The CoSTAR Screen Lab in will be a Northern Ireland based creative technology research, development and innovation facility located in Studio Ulster, a large scale virtual production studio complex at Belfast Harbour Studios. Driving the CoSTAR Screen Lab are three overarching principles: Place and Potential; EDI & Environmental Sustainability and Open Innovation. These principles will drive four converged themes addressing: Worldbuilding and Asset Creation; Performance, Performers, Interactivity and Virtual Space; Automation, Real Time Processes & Workflows; and Democratisation and Capability. The CoSTAR Screen Lab, led by Ulster University will work with five core partners in Belfast Harbour Studios, Studio Ulster Ltd, Northern Ireland Screen, BBC Northern Ireland, Humain Ltd and a range of collaborative partners including, Dell, BT, Retinize, Clear Angle Studios and DfC/ACNI to deliver world-leading programmes of R&D&I, Talent Capacity Building, Sustainability & EDI. The CoSTAR Screen Lab will operate in partnership with the CoSTAR National Lab and the other networked labs to ensure that expertise is both shared and consolidated through a process of distributed best practice while advancing the understanding of virtual production and real time processes through collaborative learning and training. The CoSTAR Screen Lab will articulate to the CoSTAR National Lab through co-designed Demonstrator challenge calls, national training initiatives and co-funded technology research projects. The CoSTAR Screen Lab will offer local companies the opportunity to apply for developmental support through challenge calls aimed at building future understandings of the virtual production and real time spaces. These calls will be co-funded by Ulster University and partners Studio Ulster Ltd., NI Screen, BBC NI and DfC, CoSTAR Screen Lab will work with all partners to deliver the over-arching and related objectives identified for the CoSTAR project, 'providing a highly capable R&D infrastructure that enables researchers, companies and institutions across the UK to access to the facilities, capabilities and insight necessary to ensure that they can conduct world class R&D in the application of current and future waves of advanced computing technologies to transform the means of production across the screen, performance and allied sectors of the Creative Industries'. While the core business of CoSTAR Screen Lab will be to undertake R&D&I leading to products which advance SME and audience engagement with virtual production, the relationship between the commercial work of Studio Ulster and the more R&D&I focused work of the CoSTAR Screen Lab facilitates the opportunity for more experimental work, delivered in an environment of informed and supported risk. Crucially, the CoSTAR Screen Lab will create opportunities to increase the visibility of virtual production and its potential but also to build the skills pipeline, policy and environmental infrastructure necessary to the long-term sustainability of the project after the funded period. Hence, the CoSTAR Screen Lab will also create targeted training programmes, accredited through the Ulster Screen Academy (USAc) at Ulster University. These training initiatives will be designed to advance the skills base in the region but also to build capacity across the CoSTAR network. Training will be developed and delivered on a partnership basis, ensuring distributed access and high standards of practice to challenge current knowledge and expectation of what is possible in the convergence of technologies in the virtual production and real time spaces. A key aspect of the work of CoSTAR Screen Lab's mission will be to drive innovation in sustainability and EDI approaches and formal Work Packages have been designed to work with key community groups to advance access for disenfranchised groups while adhering to the sustainability benchmarks created by the Albert project and BREEAM accreditation frameworks.

Future Screens NI comprises the two higher education institutions (Ulster University and QUB) and a number of key industrial partners central to the creative economy in the region, including NI Screen, BBC, Belfast City Council, Belfast Harbour, Causeway Enterprise Agency, Digital Catapult, Catalyst Inc., RTE, Games NI, Kainos, Invest NI, Techstart NI, Matrix and Tourism NI. The Northern Ireland Assembly defines the creative industries as 'those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property'. The Partnership has, from this, developed a definition of, and a working model for, the creative industries in NI which is focused on participation, cultural and economic growth, and social and economic regeneration placing the Partnership as a leading developmental catalyst in this NI sector. In the context of Northern Ireland, the creative industries are more than just another key economic sector, generating, according to DCMS figures, £1.01 billion in gross added value of the NI economy, and employing 2.9% of the entire NI workforce. For a region emerging from a period of profound conflict, and social and cultural division and dysfunction, the creative industries sector has continued to offer an alternative and successful paradigm, a new model for cultural expression, personal growth, and economic attainment. The cluster of organisations involved in Future Screens NI may be defined as: (a) audiovisual-led, complemented by the strength of the digital sector and the impact of technology in other more traditional sectors, eg. in tourism, heritage, textiles and crafts; (b) operating across NI as a region, driven by the Belfast travel-to-work-area (add ref to NESTA) but with a region-wide remit linking, in particular, to the North West of the province; c) a spatially defined multi-industry cluster that is distinctive within the UK, shaped by the complexity of cultural space in the aftermath of 20th-century conflict, a plurality of commercial and cultural relationships including across the border with the Republic of Ireland, the role of economic development bodies such as Invest NI and Catalyst Inc., and the significant investment of the HEIs and FE colleges in the creative industries; d) comprising emerging animation, games and immersive technologies industries, which although small by international standards, is one of the fastest growing sectors of the NI economy. The overarching aim of Future Screens NI is to develop a new understanding of the role the creative industries can play in advancing the NI economy both in terms of financial growth and the creation of new employment opportunities. It will do this by researching new technologies and opportunities, developing appropriate educational and training models, placing NI creative businesses in front of international markets, and working with government and other key agencies to ensure sustained growth. The importance of this intervention is that it establishes the creative industries in NI as a neutral space where contemporary and emerging industrial forms can be advanced in secure settings in a transitional period which is still informed by underlying political tensions. The role of the Cluster as a safe space for high-risk creative endeavour in a low-risk innovation environment, one that fosters experiment and cultural opportunity, cannot be overestimated. As Benedict Anderson (1991) has shown, communities interact through concepts of imagined connection and Future Screens NI will actively work as a hub to create new forms of imagined community which advance and normalise political stability while creating real employment and building economic growth.