OU contributes to major Government ‘CreaTech’ report

Posted on 13 February 2025 • Arts and social sciences, Science, maths, computing and technology

The Open University (OU) has contributed to a major new government report, The Coronation Challenge: CreaTech Report, by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and the Royal Anniversary Trust.

The Report explores how the combination of creativity and emerging technologies, known as CreaTech, can drive innovation, create jobs, and position the UK as a global leader in the creative industries.

The year-long research initiative, supported by think-tank Erskine Analysis, highlights the opportunities presented by CreaTech. The findings show that this blend of creativity and technology could add £18 billion to the UK economy over the next decade and create 160,000 new jobs.

The OU was invited to participate in this initiative after receiving the prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize for its OpenSTEM Labs, in 2023. The university joined representatives of a select group of 22 other leading educational institutions and industry experts contributing to the research.

As part of its contribution to the report, the OU’s Maze Reality (mazereality.com) project called ‘Heal/R’ is featured as an example of CreaTech innovation in education. The project demonstrates innovative use of immersive technologies to transform mental health care.

Developed with clinical psychologists and academic experts, it combines virtual and augmented reality (AR) environments with AI-driven therapy to support the treatment of trauma, anxiety, and phobias.  Read more about Maze Reality in the report on page 70.

Key findings from the Report

The Report makes a number of policy recommendations aimed at driving a CreaTech skills revolution, including improvements to UK Research and Development and launching a CreaTech Catapult.

Most critically, perhaps, the Report recommends that policymakers and other key stakeholders develop a CreaTech skills pipeline that takes a lifelong learning perspective, with continuity through school, Further Education and Higher Education.

CreaTech at the OU

The OU has long been at the forefront of advancing CreaTech education. Its Open XR Studios use augmented and virtual reality technologies to expand teaching and learning. The Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) offers sixteen undergraduate degrees in Computing and IT and a Bachelor of Design degree that applies critical design thinking to societal and technological challenges.

The newly established School of Creative Industries in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) is expanding the OU’s creative sector curriculum, with plans to offer a new undergraduate degree in Film and Media alongside courses from the Open College of the Arts, with more to come in due course.

Additionally, the Open Degree gives learners excellent options to combine modules, free from the restriction of a subject-specific specialism, into degrees mapping onto CreaTech pathways.

Professor James Blake, Head of the School of Creative Industries at the Open University, said: 

“There are real and exciting opportunities here for our emerging School of Creative Industries to work with STEM and other partners in the OU, and we’re already exploring how we can join and collaborate around the Open XR Studio, on virtual production in particular.  

“Createch as an area is shifting rapidly and we need to keep pace with those developments. There are exciting opportunities here, around curriculum design, attracting new students, and our Film and Media students, in particular, will need to understand this ecosytem as it’s changing the face of the creative industries and beyond. That’s an exciting but also challenging prospect.”