Develop Create XR
A genre-driven immersive script development Lab programme supported by the BFI Creative Challenge Fund
Develop Create XR is a free national cinematic extended narrative writing and world-building development programme. Aimed at genre driven writers looking to develop playable genre fiction for an immersive story. Delivered in partnership with Screen South and Immersive Playable Culture specialists BRiGHTBLACK.
Whether applicants are newcomers to immersive space or seasoned explorers, this is a unique opportunity to share, collaborate and grow alongside fellow creators who bring diverse backgrounds and levels of experience to the table.
What does the Develop Create XR programme involve?
Develop-Create XR is a free 9-month programme where 12 writers are delving into the fascinating realm of XR, encompassing virtual and mixed reality, games, and film to explore new ways of developing cinematic XR concepts and scripts. The goal is to create projects that provide players with immersive experiences beyond the current film and games offerings.
Focusing on genre-driven narratives, participants are exploring different storytelling techniques such as cinematic Point of View, interactive formats driven by player choices, branching narratives tailored for VR headsets and screens, as well as engaging interactions powered by Unity and Unreal game engines.
The programme provides opportunities to deeply explore the worlds participants create, equipping them with a range of XR techniques to push the boundaries of storytelling in the boundless creative world of XR. Through this exploration, they are uncovering new possibilities, experimenting with innovative tools, and ultimately paving the way for groundbreaking storytelling experiences in the ever-expanding world of Extended Reality.
Develop-Create XR gives 12 writers the opportunity to work with leading creatives and production partners from the film, XR, and games industries to develop groundbreaking immersive narratives.
Participants are encouraged to put audiences at the centre of their stories, allowing them to choose whose lens to navigate, resulting in a refreshing new viewpoint on how stories are told. Writers are also supported with industry routes to market.
Our First Cohort
christos hatjoullis
Co-founder & Creative Director of pioneering moving image production company shroomstudio.com & its 5th dimensional evolution vroom-studio.com, Christos is an animation director/producer with a love of electronic arts: independent short films, broadcast, music & live events, and experimental & immersive installation work, often exploring environmental themes. He directed/produced his first VR piece PROMENADE as a commission for StoryFutures in 2022 & fell for the medium 100%.
A keen headset voyager, he aims to fuse his passion for screenwriting, science fiction, animation & electronica into hybrid forms of graphic, playable VR cinema.
hannah kennedy
Hannah Kennedy is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. They were one of the twelve writers on Channel 4’s esteemed 4Screenwriting course in 2024 and won the 2024 BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Competition for their feature film, The Fat Mermaid Club. Selected for the Jed Mercurio & Amazon Mentorship Programme, Hannah is the mentee of writer and producer Steven Moffat OBE. Their play, Godmodders & Metagamers, was selected for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 37 Plays Project, and their commitment to telling queer stories was recognised with their play, When We Die (What Will Become of Us?), winning the prestigious Nancy Dean Lesbian Playwriting Award in 2023.
james spillman
James is an accomplished screenwriter and Visual Effects supervisor with nearly 20 years of industry expertise. His acclaimed short film ‘In Too Deep’ was optioned and directed by Oscar-winning Chris Overton, earning multiple awards, including Best British Short Film at the British Short Film Awards. Beyond filmmaking, James has worked at some of the best post production studios in the world, working with top brands like Nike, MTV, and Sony on award-winning commercials. This unique blend of creative and technical skills elevates his storytelling and how he approaches filmmaking and he looks forward to bringing this skillset into narrative-led games and experiences.
lizzie milton
Lizzie is an award winning writer for theatre and VR based in Manchester. Tackling topics from healthcare to sea monsters, they create playful and thought-provoking work which invites audiences/players to reflect on societal issues. They often work on multi-sensory and interactive experiences, frequently collaborating across different disciplines to bring these projects to life.
Recently, Lizzie was the dramaturg for Concrete Youth’s production Sensory Cinders – the first show for audiences labelled with profound and multiple learning disabilities to be on the West End. They have also had work staged at Soho Theatre, Oldham Coliseum and Minack Theatre.
marcus smith
Marcus is a Bristol-based media creative, filmmaker, and writer. A recent creative practitioner on StoryTrails – the UK’s largest immersive experience – he contributed to a project honoured with a Webby Award and an SXSW nomination. Marcus also produces and presents for BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, and community station BCfm. A recipient of a DYCP grant from Arts Council England, his work explores the relationship between sound and objects in physical and virtual worlds. When he’s not working, Marcus enjoys Thai food, football fan TV, travelling, and redbush tea.
tamsin larby
Tamsin is a scriptwriter with a background in theatre, having also worked as an actor and producer. In 2003 she founded the charity, Tender, which uses the arts to promote healthy relationships and educate about domestic and sexual violence. She’s devised several theatre and film projects with young people, including writing three short films. In 2022, Planet Rising (TV pilot) was optioned for development by The Writers Lab UK & Ireland 2022/23 and her radio play, Angry Bird, was broadcast by Near FM, Ireland, as well as being selected for the UK International Audio Drama Competition in 2023.
tatiana collet apraxine
Tatiana is a French Immersive Artist living in London. She extensively trained and worked as a theatre practitioner before transitioning to the VR/XR world. She is deeply fascinated by the potential of VR and XR to alter our sense of presence, consciousness, and to enhance the impact of the age-old art of telling stories. Her VR short film The Descent won the inaugural Innovate UK immersive Tech award in Creative XR Storytelling category, was longlisted for the Lumen Prize, and featured in various film festivals. She was an artist in residence with Mediale, supported by Jerwood Arts, and Sage Gateshead, exploring the theme of “Truth and Testimony” and a Sheffield Doc Fest Alternate Reality Talent. She is thrilled to be developing her interactive VR experience about grief, as part of the Develop Create XR programme.
nichola bruce
& rebecca marshall
Nichola works with the moving image. Her films include I Could Read The Sky, Moonbug, Axis of Light, The Romance of Bricks, and more recently, Some Things I know About My Mother, as well as continuing her ongoing film diary which informs her larger works. She moves across mediums, integrating elements of performance art, photography, and digital experimentation with an approach to visual storytelling, around the themes of identity, memory, and transformation.
Brad Rumble
Brad Rumble is an artist exploring what it means to be human, focusing on consciousness, identity, and the balance of opposites. His work, spanning immersive experiences and both digital and physical sculpture, is shaped by his own journey with borderline personality disorder. Brad’s process shifts between chaotic experimentation and precise planning, often using sacred geometry and psychological archetypes to tell stories about transformation. With a background in fine arts and mental health support, his award-winning projects invite people to reflect on themselves and their place in the world in a way that feels real and deeply personal.
Erinn Dhesi
Erinn Dhesi is a multidisciplinary artist from the West Midlands whose work focuses on the British Asian experience and the effects of living in the digital age. Her stage work has included playwriting staged for The Young Vic, Tara Theatre and The Belgrade Theatre. Her audio drama QUEENS produced by Tamasha Theatre and Holy Mountain Productions won an OFFIE Award for Best Audio Drama 2022. She has recently completed an R&D at The National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio, was part of the BBC Writers room Coventry Voices scheme and was awarded a Arts Council England DYCP grant to explore her practice as a XR Writer-Director.
Judith Ricketts
Judith is an Artist, Senior Lecturer, and Games Developer with a focus on creating playful, knowledge-led experiences through
augmented reality on mobile phones and immersive real-world settings.
Her work emphasises inclusive co-creative approaches that centre underrepresented voices to encourage storytelling, collaboration, creativity, and creating spaces for participants to explore.
In her practice, she experiments at the intersection of new technologies and archival data with digital media in the built environment.
She works in collaborative teams of creatives and technical developers to develop impactful research-based products designed to engage and inspire audiences. Her aim is to challenge the status by creating meaningful social impact and lasting legacy for underrepresented communities.
Iain Cunningham
Iain is a filmmaker with a background in factual TV and documentary film, and a focus on personal and socially conscious storytelling.
His BFI-supported feature documentary Irene’s Ghost was named one of the year’s best films by The Guardian and nominated for a BIFA award. Through his company, Forward Features, Iain creates work that blends documentary and drama, expanding into games and XR experiences to engage with a wider audience, and centre the viewer or player at the heart of the story.
Lucia Comaschi
Lucia is a multidisciplinary creative with a background in History of Art and English Literature, driven by a passion for crafting immersive story-telling in digital, literary and physical spaces. As an award-winning writer, exhibitor at Tate Modern and Set Designer in Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Lucia has collaborated with diverse arts organisations. Her work focuses on feminist narratives, integrating traditional and digital design to highlight untold stories, engage diverse audiences, and spark thoughtful dialogue.
Who is involved?
Simon Wilkinson
Simon has been making virtual reality experiences and player-centred transmedia culture since 2010. His solo VR works have featured at Tate Modern and toured to 36 nations in the past 15 years. He has been commissioned to make many VR works including for Tour de France, Roundhouse London, Fed Square Melbourne, Mutek Argentina. The worldwide tour of his large-scale VR experience ‘Whilst The Rest Were Sleeping’ (2014 to 2018) saw him reviewed by Cineuropa as “one of the most notable names in Europe to be dealing with VR”. In collaboration with Myra Appannah, as part of BRiGHTBLACK, they created Immersive StoryLab, which has been deployed through 47 editions for cultural institutions worldwide – including South Africa, Western Balkans and Venezuela. Simon’s skillset includes writing for film and theatre, Unity/Unreal engine, software development, music engineering and film.
Myra Appannah
Myra is a BAFTA and Sundance nominated writer and has written for major networks including HBO. They are an artist, musician and Unity/Unreal developer. They were Creative Lead of SOMNAI (2018) – a large-scale story experience with pioneering use of live performance, real-world sets, kinaesthetics, VR, AR, projection mapping and spatialised audio, named by the UK Innovation & Research Council as “One of the most influential British immersive productions of the last 20 years.” Myra co-founded BRiGHTBLACK with Simon Wilkinson to explore playable stories and radical ways of using the technologies behind them. They have toured the world with works and labs, partnering with major institutions such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sydney Opera House, the National Institute of the Dramatic Arts (Australia), British Council and hundreds of grassroots organisations.
Penrose Tackie
Penrose is an interactive content expert and has worked for several years in the entertainment and technology sectors in senior leadership roles.
He is currently a commercial consultant and mentor for a base of seed and post-seed gaming and technology sector business, including an ongoing business mentor role with The Prince’s Trust.
Where are the workshops taking place?
Folkestone
21 - 23 september 2024
- Introduction to Immersive Storytelling
- Understanding the opportunity of the game engines, Watch & Learn – XR experiences & the creative story,
- XR Demo of an idea in development through to delivery.
- Writing narrative for immersive tech, enhancing your craft, branching narratives, writing workshop – how to command attention, techniques for using the whole field of view
- Exploring genre from a first-person perspective
- Over the 3 days each writer will have a 121 to get feedback from the assessment and selection panel and to set an outline for the next 3 months.
Birmingham
17 - 19 january 2025
- Immersive storytelling focuses on engagement. Understanding audience agency, enhance your chosen project and genre area though efficient dialogue and heightened world building.
- Review and develop each project story arc and branching narrative journeys.
- Enhancing tension and leading emotions.
- Audience centered experiences, decentralised story making practices, persistence of audience contribution in the story universe, story as mass problem solving.
- Review and Plan to present your vision.
Brighton
28 - 29 april 2025
- Play testing / white-boxing ideas for your spatial stories, to understand ways to make stronger stories in XR. Presenting your project and understanding your next steps.
- Review and present your projects to your peers for friendly feedback.
London
30 april 2025
Final day presentation to industry guests who can help take teams and projects to the appropriate next stage.
What will the participants achieve?
By the end of the programme, our cohort will achieve the following:
- Outline of the project script, including back bone of the story.
- Clear outline of audience journey.
- Branching narratives/perspectives.
- In-depth character development.
- Visual narrative of world setting.
- Pitch Deck for next stage – further development or production support.
- Presentation pack for next stage investors.
- Marketing position awareness of project.
