IWM North, part of Imperial War Museums.

The team – consisting of Dr Gaynor Bagnall, Dr Garry Crawford and Dr Victoria Gosling from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Professor Ben Light from the College of Arts and Social Science – successfully beat off tough competition from 75 other research groups to land two grants from the Digital Research and Development Fund for Arts and Culture, which is being funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts, and The Arts Council.

The first project will involve working with London Symphony Orchestra and their partners, the Aurora Orchestra and mobile solutions company KODIME Ltd, to create and test an end-to-end mobile marketing and ticketing system to target student audiences for classical music in London. Initially focusing on the concerts of two orchestras, the project will take the form of a mobile website, iPhone and Android app and a simple web channel, which will act as a hub for all student-discounted events.

The second will see the University team collaborating with private research company MTM London in researching IWM’s Social Interpretation and Cultural Exchange (SICE) project. Developed in partnership with the University College of London, the scheme aims to give the public better access to, information on and interaction with collection items across their museums through social media.

Dr Garry Crawford said: “This is a really exciting opportunity to work with two nationally important cultural institutions and also three funding bodies who have never previously worked together in this way.”

Furthermore, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has said that this fund provides: “… a huge amount of scope for bringing the innovative use of technology into cultural organisations.”