The European Creators Lab, which for years has supported artists from a wide variety of fields in developing their immersive projects, is back for 2024. The new call to participate in next April’s Development Lab is now open, and you have until March 1 to apply.
Between April 8 and 12, the first 2024 workshop organized by EUCL will take place in Lyon. The Development Lab will again this year be a time devoted entirely to the fundamental phase in the development of an immersive project: that of ideation.
Participants will have five days to discuss with specialized mentors and their peers how to turn their innovative ideas into more concrete concepts and will have the opportunity to approach the world of immersiveness in its many different forms. And this is precisely one of the most interesting aspects of the workshop: its openness to participants from a wide variety of disciplines and able to bring to the field of immersiveness new and sometimes surprising insights taken directly from their own backgrounds.
We talked about the LAB and its structure with Mads Damsbo, Head of Studies at EUCL since 2023. Here’s what he told us.
The European Creators’ Lab is an inspiring sandbox for creative minds and visionary artists to explore the possibilities that prepare the soil for future narratives. During the labs we explore spatial creation, immersive storytelling and UX design, the stories of the future and innovative technologies that help us tell them. Since 2017 European Creators Lab has hosted around 400 participants from 36 different nationalities, guided by 60 experienced mentors with a proven track record in the XR industry. Our mission is to help creative talents and artists to develop new immersive projects, find teams and co-production partners, and offer events for XR professionals to network and connect.
About European Creators Lab (EUCL)

For more details on how to apply visit the EUCL website
Structure of the European Creators Lab
MADS DAMSBO – In general, the workshop has three parts: the first is the Development Lab, a kind of sandbox scenario where we bring in talent who want to work with immersive storytelling. They do not need to have a project or specific experience in the field. What matters is that they are willing to learn and develop ideas together. It is therefore a kind of first journey… a first step into the unknown.
The second step of the workshop is the Residency in Luxembourg, where we delve into real projects and find out what the participants need individually and how we can put them in a good position to further develop their works and bring them to life.
The final phase is the Prototyping Lab, where we expect the projects to come together: we match our participants with creative technologists who do not have a project of their own and together they try to make a prototype that validates a part of the idea being developed.
From this point of view, the workshops almost represent a full cycle of project development. Of course, we do not expect all participants to participate in all the workshops, but we give them the opportunity to go from one to the other. That way, you can start with an idea and get to a finished prototype within a year. We have projects that have done that. It’s really nice.

Participants and mentors in conversation
M. D. – The first phase of EUCL is an open lab and so most people who sign up have a high chance of participating-taking into account of course the number of available spots and that of international vs. European participants we can have. You can be completely new to the field, maybe come from the music industry or purely film field and have a background that has little to do with immersive technologies, it doesn’t matter.
The second and third workshops are a little different. We have a small jury, of which I am also a member, that reviews the projects to see if they are suitable to participate in the residency and if they have a trained team ready to work on them.
On the other side, the Lab has a long history of great mentors. Of course, it’s always a bit of a puzzle to find the right people, but fortunately everyone loves to take part in the Lab, because in many ways it’s also a space to discuss with your peers: you get to hang out for a week with four other high-level mentors who have been working in the industry for many years already, and it’s a rare thing for professionals to have this opportunity and get paid at the same time.
But I have to say that it’s also a bit shocking for them to find out how complicated the work can be (laughs) Sometimes you have to go back and try to describe to someone who has no experience at all in the field a concept that to the mentors themselves is instead very natural, of which they have a strong embodied experience and which they think is almost obvious or logical. You always have to make sure that even someone who is totally new to the thing can understand the message you are trying to convey.

There is also some classic mentoring, which is about making sure that the participants really know what they are trying to say, what story they are interested in: this awareness can be clouded by a desire for forma or aesthetics or even destinations, and it’s about digging down to the core of the issue and figuring out what it is actually that we want to say.
This is true for all three of our workshops, but particularly for the residency, during which we literally challenge our participants to get to the core of their idea, which then comes in handy, of course, in the prototyping workshop as well, where the decision about what to prototype is crucial. Do you know what you are trying to show us and what is basically going to be the core experience of your project? This is part of the hard work that our mentors have to do.
The role of prototyping
M. D. – One thing we sometimes forget is how much can be created, practically, in four or five days. However, it is not only our prototyping lab that addresses this topic, but the two previous workshops also work in this regard, to facilitate the conception and development of projects.
For example, in the Development Lab, we do immersive presentations, where instead of giving a simple keynote, participants are asked to try to put their keynote into a game engine and then show it in a 360-degree projection room so that the audience can get an idea of what an immersive story might look like.
Even if it’s not the final prototype, this pre-version still has that urgency that you feel when you have to show something to an audience or the rest of the group. So prototypes can be really fun in that sense, because sometimes they end up failing- and that’s also good- but sometimes there can also be these magical moments where suddenly everyone understands what the experience should be like.

A successful 2023 edition
M. D. – 2023 was the first year I was Head of Studies at EUCL. It was also the first time we experimented with the idea of the three-lab rotation cycle, and it went very well. My first concern was whether changing the design and structure of the labs would affect their effectiveness, but I must say that even individually the labs worked well.
There were projects that took part in multiple phases. Some came to the Development Lab that came back for the residency, some we saw for the first time at the residency and then found again at the prototyping lab. One project that participated in the first phase came back for the third. One went through all three phases, from development to residency to prototyping. There was a lot of interesting overlap.
A couple of projects developed during the 2023 edition and with a prototype ready to be shown will be at the Luxembourg Film Festival this year: they are not part of the exhibition itself, but will be presented in their most recent state of development and I think they are worth discovering. I can’t say what the projects are yet, but I will be doing a panel during the event to present them-they are definitely works to keep an eye on!

Challenging participants’ expectations
M. D. – The first thing we do with our participants at the Development Lab is to break down expectations of what immersive productions should look like.
They learn quite quickly that there are a lot of levels of storytelling in immersive experiences, and we expose them to so many examples ourselves-we use the Diversion Cinema catalog, for example, to show them different experiences.
So for the first couple of days participants find themselves in a whole new world, full of possibilities: they have seen so much and are very inspired in regard to everything they can do. But then reality hits, particularly when mentors explain the things they need to consider or know in order to move in a certain direction, and sometimes this can be daunting. For this reason we try to keep things simple for participants, so that we don’t get too carried away with the classic problem that anything is possible in XR and try to set dogmas and limitations that still allow us to work with them creatively.

Our mentors spend a lot of time opening participants’ horizons to what an immersive experience can also potentially be. We reflect on the body as a phenomenological vessel of sensory experiences in many different ways: extended reality is a way of talking about it as a medium for storytelling and it is a reflection to which we give ample space.
Another thing that can be noted, then, is that the group that is created determines the direction that the project will take. The flavor of the projects and their style are strongly influenced by the nature of the people who are discussing them, whether they are performers or have a musical background or come from cinema. We want to make sure that they ask themselves the fundamental question: why does this need to be an immersive project? Why couldn’t it just be a film or a play or a book or a piece of music? I think we’re doing a good job of making sure that participants always keep that question in mind. Because in the end the answer is what makes a project really engaging.
Looking to the future: EUCL in 2024
M. D. – We learned a lot from the labs of our 2023 edition. This first year has been really positive, but of course there are many details that we can optimize to make the lab a better experience. I think one of the main issues is to make the labs visible to all the different sectors that we are interested in inviting. The cultural creative field in Europe is huge, and so the question is really how to reach the widest possible pool. Many people might be interested in participating, but they don’t know that the opportunity exists.

In my opinion, the main issue for us is to let people know that there is a great place where they can find a lot of talent and where they can grow and mentors who can help them do that. That’s something we’re already working on a lot, whether it’s with new communication strategies, a new web page, new videos explaining how things work, mentor involvement, or promotion.
The call for the first workshop is now open. The residency will then be at the end of September so the call should go out in the summer, and following that we will have the prototyping workshop, roughly at the end of October.
Immersive stories, immersive technology: state of the art
M. D. – I think we are in an interesting space and time, with so many great people producing amazing works all over the world. And let’s not forget the festivals, not least the one in Venice, and how good they’ve been at picking up these projects and showcasing them and paying tribute to them. We have been able to see an ecosystem grow. And now we are at an interesting junction, Apple Vision Pro finally here and a number of people talking about spatial entertainment, something that is worth considering since it is becoming more and more mainstream.
In my opinion, we witnessed a classic cycle of adoption: the early explorers and everyone who follows represent the great first adoption, one that at some point collapses. That leaves only the most avid users and the most avid creators. Then, slowly, it moves to mass adoption. It’s a slow but very steady path. I think the market and the distribution possibilities for these kinds of stories will grow year by year, slowly but surely, and there will be more and more complexity and more and more players. What we might have expected to see eight years ago, when this all started, is actually only now beginning to happen, and that, I think, is good sign for immersive storytelling.

I also see this nice conversion where people are starting to think more, in general, about games, storytelling and digital storytelling as one artistic container, and they don’t make as many distinctions anymore. It’s getting easier and easier to come up with something that is a VR experience, but maybe has elements of film, theater, and gaming too. It’s something that people are getting used to, and I honestly think it’s a good sign. My hope is to see more ambitious projects that can combine all these different fields.
We are also seeing the emergence of more and more workshops and laboratories. EUCL has been around for more than 6 years now and was really the progenitor of these kinds of labs, but now there are more and more of them and I think it’s a very good thing that the talent pool of creators is being helped around the world rather than in one place. That’s also why we are expanding and inviting new people from different backgrounds to participate in our activities: it is precisely where it becomes possible to mix different talents that the games become even more interesting!
Registration for the Development Lab will remain open until March 1. You can visit the EUCL website to learn more about how to join.
Follow the European Creators Lab on Instagram and LinkedIn to stay on top of upcoming dates and events.
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