York to set up Digital Creativity Hub for digital games

THE University of York is to receive £4m of public funding for a Digital Creativity Hub, one of six digital economy centres being created nationwide.
The funding is part of a £23m package announced by Chancellor George Osborne as part of the summer Budget, that will be delivered via the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Government support has helped leverage a further £22m in funding.
The EPSRC has today confirmed details of the projects being supported.The York centre will focus on “harnessing the power of digital creativity to provide new technologies for digital games and interactive media and exploiting the space where they converge to benefit science, society, education and culture”.
The five-year project is being led by Prof Peter Cowling, who has previously led several major programmes on intelligent games and economic opportunities for digital games. The Digital Creativity Hub will be housed in the Ron Cooke Hub, alongside the IGGI centre for doctoral training, world-class researchers, and numerous small hi-tech companies.
EPSRC’s chief executive Prof Philip Nelson said: “Building on our previous investments, these new Digital Economy Centres will show how multidisciplinary research in the digital economy can be brought to bear on the big societal challenges we face. Their impacts in the real world will be shown by adoption by policy makers and improvements in services and economic benefits in the public, private and charitable sectors.”
The University of York’s successful application highlighted the strength of the local digital creativity industry, with 4,800 creative digital companies within a 40-mile radius of York.
The other digital economy centres being funded will be housed at universities in London, Swansea, Newcastle, Nottingham and Bath.

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