by Helen Manchester

In early November I had the pleasure of presenting at the national Locality Convention. Locality, one of the Centre’s strategic partners, is a member organisation with over 1500 members, many of them community anchor organisations who work with minoritised communities across the UK.

I had the pleasure of presenting alongside inspiring speakers LaKisha Williams, David Nugent, Afka Ray and Makala Cheung.

Through my research I come in to contact with many community-sector leaders. When I ask them about how they feel about the future they tell me they work in the immediate present, reactive to the communities that they serve in real time, dealing with complex issues immediately – not 6 or even 3 months down the line.

So why do we, in the Centre for Sociodigital Futures, think futures matter? (more…)

In November 2023 we had the pleasure of holding a public event discussing and demonstrating some of the emerging ideas and tech associated with sociodigital futures. Having recently joined the Centre as Senior Communications Officer, I was fascinated to hear how speakers would communicate their sometimes-complex ideas to a public audience. (more…)

by Lisa May Thomas and Debbie Watson

In late October 2023 Lisa May Thomas and Debbie Watson took a VR workshop to the Situated Caring Ecologies conference at Portsmouth University. This was part of a themed section / series of talks, for which the title was ‘sticking with the dance, caring over time’. The two workshops were short, twenty minutes long, with up to eight participants in each.  (more…)

Trove is a physical and digital tool that enables children and young people to be in control of their own life story. It combines a multi-media storying app and bag designed for adding stories to objects. Keeping safe the objects and their connected stories, trove uses simple digital technologies to bring them back to life, time after time. CenSoF Senior Research Associate, Lisa May Thomas, explains how she – together with fellow University of Bristol researcher Dr Stuart Gray – took trove to the Abrechian woodland activity centre in the forest near to Loch Ness and Inverness earlier this year.

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by Mairi Therese Deighan

As the field of Immersive technologies continues to grow at a rapid pace, people from all across the world are starting to wonder what their immersive futures may look like. Will immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) become part of our everyday lives? (more…)