Modelling and Supporting Recovery of the UK's Experience Economy: Enhancing Audience Resilience and Engagement via Digital Methods

This proposal seeks to reconceptualise consumer value and business resilience in the UK's creative and visitor sectors and their value chain (from VFX companies, theatres and museums to festivals, catering and accommodation providers), collectively referred to as the experience economy. With a value of over £300bn, the health of the experience economy maintains the UK's status as the world's seventh most visited country and producer of quality creative experiences. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many experience economy operators in the creative sector had begun experimenting with online content. Over the course of the pandemic, the range of these offers has expanded, opening up new audiences and sustaining existing ones. For many businesses, the digital or online 'experience' comprises mainly recorded and distributed content, usually provided free. Experiences are heavily dependent on evoking a sense of place. Therefore, at a time when access to physical places is restricted, there is a risk that online material fails to provide an effective proxy for the experience itself. While proving popular during the pandemic (see bibliography), existing products arguably offer limited additional experiential or business benefits. Convening expertise in experience design, post-production technology, games, visitor economy and place-making, this project will: - support experience providers in developing online and digital products which enhance their physical counterparts. - investigate modes of delivery and monetisation, as well as the policy instruments required to maintain adjacent place-based reputations and offers. - produce tools to support experience economy businesses' immediate post-COVID-19 regeneration, including scenario modelling, enabling a robust economic recovery.