Our Round 3 Resident Entrepreneur projects are now underway, with nine exciting companies and individuals receiving up to £12,000 each to develop innovative creative products and services.
Centrline
Centrline is a pioneering new software platform for Scotland’s arts sector, co-founded by Craig Fleming and David Kelly.
Centrline aims to address the operational challenges presented by the transient nature of the theatre industry’s predominantly freelance workforce, by offering tools and resources that enable individuals and organisations to work together more effectively.
Through their Resident Entrepreneur project, Craig and David will develop and test the Centrline platform, bringing together bespoke project planning and management tools with shared resources, to offer an efficient, community focused and equitable product. Find out more at www.centrline.com
Hidden Trax
Hidden Trax produce city podcast adventures, championing local voices, celebrating independent businesses and connecting visitors with locals. Through their mobile phone app and audio platform, they strive to take their users off the beaten track and tell local stories.
Hidden Trax would like to develop a new multi-media product that combines podcast production techniques with photography, videography, audio and text, to create innovative content for culture-curious city residents. They would also like to re-imagine their business model, exploring potential new income streams such as creative advertising, brand partnerships, sponsorship, and local business commissions.
As Resident Entrepreneurs, the Hidden Trax team will conduct extensive research and product development to create a new business model and an enhanced podcast product. Find out more at www.hiddentrax.co
High Tide
High Tide is a creative production company that specialises in creating high end online film and video content. They help brands to engage meaningfully with audiences and are passionate about supporting clients that are new to commissioning content.
Through their Resident Entrepreneur project, High Tide will develop a video toolkit to help their clients better understand the production and commissioning process, enabling them to make informed decisions when commissioning new work.
Developing this toolkit will enhance High Tide’s business model and give their clients confidence in developing video content, both on their own and with external production companies. Find out more at https://www.hightide.media/
Contactless Studios
Contactless Studios merge physical products with creative content to provide new ways for artists to distribute and receive payment for their work.
Founded by Adam Greenberg and Tom Sichel, Contactless-Studios combine Internet of Things and Blockchain technologies to create products such as their Musical Beer – a beer that can send music to any mobile phone wirelessly, with artists receiving money for every beer sold.
Through their Resident Entrepreneur project, Contactless Studio will develop Creative Beacon, a new product that will be used in conjunction with their musical beers at future events, to let audience members know that they can support the artist on stage by buying drinks at the bar. They also hope to use Creative Beacon to aid social distancing at events, via a mobile app that will buzz when audience members get too close to each other. Find out more at https://www.contactless-studios.com/
Jason Morenikeji
Through his Resident Entrepreneur project, Jason will research and develop a data-driven 3D-design and rapid fabrication platform for the giftware market. This new platform will enable users to transform data into tangible, practical and meaningful 3D consumer products.
The ‘Gifted Project’ will allow users to take simple personal data – such as date of birth or name – and give it a unique visual ‘voice’, using generative design tools to create a one of a kind 3D gift. Jason’s project aims to explore a new design methodology through the development of an integrated data collection, generative design and fabrication hub.
Refract Music
Refract Music is on a mission to make collaborative music-making accessible for all. To do this, they have developed a series of weird and wonderful musical interfaces, including trampolines and dancemats, that can be used by people of all musical abilities.
Through their Resident Entrepreneur project, the Refract team are looking to develop HiveTone, a networked musical instrument system that enables users to connect and control a shared audiovisual environment.
They hope to produce a HiveTone toolkit that can be deployed in a variety of contexts, including installations, events and workshops. Find out more at https://refractmusic.com/
Scottie
Scottie is a multi-tenanted content management platform designed for artists, performers, festivals, venues and ticket agents to help them tell their stories online, better understand their audiences and, ultimately, sell more tickets.
In light of current restrictions on mass gatherings due to COVID-19, Scottie have been exploring new ways to continue providing value to artists and producers whilst they were unable to sell tickets to their live events.
Through their Resident Entrepreneur project they have created a new set of products and templates that enable producers to receive online donations straight into their bank account and allows donors to access written and video content as a reward for their support. Their Ludio templates were designed by Andy Johnston of Eido Studio and were first used by Fringe of Colour for their Fringe of Colour Films project in August 2020. Find out more at https://scottie.io/
Tentop
The Tentop team are developing an online cooperative to match sellers and buyers of sustainable products through a platform owned entirely by its users. Every time a sale is made on Tentop, tokens will be distributed to the buyers, sellers and creatives that build and maintain the platform, entitling them to a share of any profit Tentop makes.
Their Resident Entrepreneur project will allow the team to work with developers, designers and illustrators to build the initial version of the Tentop platform. Contributors will be paid an hourly rate for their work and also receive tokens. Data on this token distribution will be collected during the process and used to create a mathematical model to determine how many tokens users should receive.
By the end of their project, the Tentop team would like to have launched the initial version of their platform and developed an algorithm to determine the optimal distribution of user tokens. Find out more at https://join.tentop.com/
Touchlab
Touchlab is an Edinburgh based start up developing sensing technology or electronic skin (e-skin) to allow machines the sense of touch.
They are currently developing a humanoid robot, equipped with a variety of sensing technologies, as part of the ANA Avatar XPrize competition. Their robot will have electronic skin (e-skin), giving it a sense of touch, as well as a RGB-D camera in its head (for identifying objects and its 3D environment), and a smart nose capable of recognising smells.
As Resident Entrepreneurs, Touchlab will work with VR/AR experts to develop the human user experience for controlling their Avatar. This will enable users to receive sensory data collected by the robot (sight, touch, smell) and make decisions on the Avatars behaviour accordingly. Find out more at https://www.touchlab.io/
Applications for Round 4 Resident Entrepreneurs open on the 5th of October 2020. If you would like more information about any of our Round 3 Resident Entrepreneurs, please contact the Creative Informatics team at creativeinformatics@ed.ac.uk.