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Department staff:
- Qualifications:BA MA PhD
- Position:Knowledge Exchange Manager
- Department:College of Arts, Technology and Environment
- Email:Jack.Lowe@uwe.ac.uk
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About me
I am a cultural geographer whose research explores how people engage with place through playful, site-specific and digital media forms.
Alongside and as part of my research, I am practising game designer, who specialises in designing interaction and narrative content that creates a sense of place or incorporates physical locations and actions.
I am the creator of Pin the Tale, an online, map-based game about uncovering the stories that shape the world around us. In Pin the Tale, players share stories about places in the UK, and discover those written by other players, via a unique digital map that uses the what3words grid. This project has been funded by ESRC/AHRC SHAPE Catalyst, AHRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) and UKRI Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF).
Other creative works have included The Timekeeper's Return, a mixed-reality treasure hunt in Canterbury's Cathedral Quarter played using QR codes; Interrobang?!, a genre-busting theatre-meets-online gaming experience that draws you into a real-time detective thriller; and The Gates to Dreamland, a locative audiowalk game based around Margate's Dreamland amusement park, which explores how interpreting our surroundings figuratively can connects us to different times, places, stories and circumstances.
This work builds on my practice-based PhD project, Engaging with Place through Location-Based Games (completed in 2022 at Royal Holloway), which unpicked the relations between navigation and narrative that shape how people experience places with these media.
I am based in UWE's Digital Cultures Research Centre, where I currently work as Knowledge Exchange Manager. In this role, I am focusing on maximising impact from the £46 million MyWorld programme, which aims to strengthen the West of England region's capacity for creative technology research and innovation.
This role on MyWorld speaks to a further component of my research in economic geography, where my work has focused on the interaction between creative industries and place-based economic policy. Up to March 2024, I was a core part of the UWE team researching, delivering and evaluating two creative R&D programmes: Bristol+Bath Creative R+D and Grounding Technologies. These programmes aimed to provide an ecosystem for individual creatives and SMEs to create innovative work using creative technologies in a way that is inclusive and sustainable.
I am a resident of the Pervasive Media Studio at Watershed, a digital creativity centre in central Bristol. I am also an active member of the Digital Geographies Research Group (DGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers), where I sit on the committee, and am an Associate Fellow of Advance HE and the RGS-IBG.
Area of expertise
Cultural geography, economic geography, digital geographies, media arts, pervasive media, place, digital games, locative media, practice-based research, qualitative research, creative industries, creative placemaking
Publications
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