Creative Innovation Accelerator
The Creative Innovation Accelerator works to make creative impactful interventions that help our stakeholders, partners and communities. It is interdisciplinary, working across all faculties and professional services to maximise expertise from across USW to innovate and provide solutions to challenges that are facing the many partners and industries that we work with.
The economy of Wales is dependent on the success of a workforce that is ideally placed to be highly digitally literate, with USW able to act as a real change enabler for the nation and its future workforce in this domain.
From supporting an innovation ecosystem for a pipeline of new media products and services, to developing curriculum and a Digital Transformation Intensive Learning Academy that will help leaders in health and social care to deliver more effective and efficient services to patients, our experts are at the forefront of creative problem solving and innovation.
We work with many universities, organisations, businesses, and the public sector to generate positive change in a landscape where creativity and innovation are understood as an essential component of business and sector transformation.
Our curriculum
Creative and digital innovation is at the heart of our curriculum at USW. We are able to offer bespoke training solutions for external partners to tap into the expertise on offer at USW.
A new Digital Transformation Intensive Learning Academy will help leaders in health and social care to deliver more effective and efficient services to patients.
Part funded by Welsh Government, the Academy will help health and social care practitioners to deliver transformational projects around digital solutions, exploring new technologies and fostering a culture of curiosity. A range of flexible courses have been developed with Powys Regional Partnership Board, including postgraduate and doctorate level opportunities within Leading Digital Transformation.
This is the result of partnership working across USW, with academics from all three of our faculties working together to implement this solution.
Our Research
The media.cymru Consortium, which includes USW, is a £50m project to develop a world-leading cluster for media innovation in the Cardiff Capital Region.
Media.cymru brings together 24 organisations from across the Cardiff Capital Region and includes partners working in education, broadcasting, technology, media production and local leadership to drive inclusive, sustainable economic growth and an additional £236m in Gross Value Added (GVA) by 2026.
Since 2006, the Region has developed one of the strongest media sector growth rates in the UK, attracting one in eight of all new UK jobs in film/TV, producing global successes on film and TV shows including Sex Education, His Dark Materials, Doctor Who and Dream Horse.
Responding to the advances made in remote and virtual production during the Covid-19 pandemic, media.cymru will invest in the Region’s digital infrastructure, focusing on emerging technologies, increasing small businesses’ capacity for innovation and addressing skills needs.
A series of industry-led challenge areas to be investigated, including sustainability, bilingual production, diversity and inclusion, tourism and technology will position the Region’s media sector as a testbed for new content, approaches and formats.
Researchers from USW and Cardiff University will be lending their expertise to support an innovation ecosystem, which aims to create a pipeline taking 100 companies from initial idea to market-ready new media products and services.
USW is also leading a co-ordinated research-led skills strategy, linking training providers with industry needs and infrastructure, with a focus on talent attraction, development and retention to support emerging formats and technologies.
USW is part of Clwstwr - an ambitious five-year programme to create new products, services and experiences for screen involving universities, Welsh Government, Welsh broadcasters and screen industry businesses. Clwstwr aims to put innovation at the core of media production in South Wales - moving Cardiff’s thriving screen sector from strength to leadership.
With a focus on screen industries – film and television production and their supply chains – academics from Cardiff’s three universities (USW, Cardiff University, and Cardiff Metropolitan University) are collaborating to provide research that can help the already thriving scene in South Wales reach its full potential.
Through a Screen Innovation System (SIS) and a News Innovation Lab (NIL) – the Research and Development (R&D) programme will also allow broadcasters, businesses and freelancers to apply for funding to develop innovative products, services and experiences in a drive to create economic uplift in South Wales.
These R&D initiatives will be designed to respond to changing technologies, shifting patterns of consumption and the benefits of creative fusion and collaboration.
Clwstwr is also creating a platform for independent companies, SMEs, micro-businesses and freelancers to compete with global, highly integrated media companies.
Find out more:
USW has had a significant increase in the amount of world leading research according to the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) outcomes. There has been a 49% improvement in world leading research (categorised as 4*) at USW since the last REF in 2014.
USW is now fourth in Wales for impact (up from eighth in 2014, based on 4* / 3*) with 81% of USW’s research impact being classed as world leading or internationally excellent (4* / 3*). Almost two thirds of the USW researchers submitted to REF 2021 have research that has been categorised as world leading or internationally excellent (4* or 3*).
Our facilities
At our Cardiff campus, we have invested in the latest technology, software and equipment to ensure that students are regularly using and learning in the same facilities that you would within industry and have plenty of dedicated spaces for students to collaborate on projects. It also allows to us to work on innovative research and commercial projects with partners using industry leading equipment.
This includes:
HD FILM STUDIOS
Fully equipped HD film studios complete with lighting rigs, green screen and motion capture facilities, a black box studio, Avid HD and Adobe editing suites, Pro Tools sound editing and dubbing suite, and excellent screening facilities.
VIRTUAL REALITY
Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual reality (VR) expertise and technology.
DESIGN STUDIOS
Our design studios are designed to emulate commercial design studios, from creative collaborative spaces to our industry pitching room, as well as Mac rooms, a wide variety of image capture devices and even Raspberry Pi.
Green Screen Studio
Photography Studio
Podcast Studio
Our partnerships
Audience of the future
USW is helping to create ground-breaking immersive experiences, harnessing augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality technologies.
Working with Tiny Rebel Games and Sugar Creative, as part of a consortium with Potato, they have been awarded a multi-million-pound research and development grant to explore and pioneer cutting-edge immersive experiences, as part of the Audience of the Future programme.
One of these projects has involved working with Aardman on the highly anticipated augmented reality app and experience, Wallace and Gromit in The Big Fixup, which was launched in 2021 with live events around the world. This multi-user augmented reality experience brings the characters alive in an entirely new way, creating a new platform for storytelling.
Creating tomorrow’s film-makers
A unique partnership between USW Film & TV School Wales and Screen Alliance Wales is providing valuable experience to the next generation of film-makers.
USW graduates and students have worked on a variety of leading television productions at Cardiff’s Wolf Studios, including the highly-acclaimed BBC and HBO production of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.
Driving healthcare transformation
A Digital Transformation Intensive Learning Academy will help leaders in health and social care to deliver more effective and efficient services to patients.
Part funded by Welsh Government, the Academy will help health and social care practitioners to deliver transformational projects around digital solutions, exploring new technologies and fostering a culture of curiosity. A range of flexible courses have been developed with Powys Regional Partnership Board, including postgraduate and doctorate level opportunities within Leading Digital Transformation.
Business Services
Connecting Industry to Academia
USW Exchange is the front door for business engagement at the University of South Wales, connecting industry to academia.
From professional development to event support and conferencing services, USW Exchange can help you to explore the numerous ways in which your organisation can work with USW. Whether you have an immediate challenge to overcome or need a long-term business growth strategy, we can help facilitate the connections to make it happen.
Get in touch with our dedicated team of Engagement Managers who are primed to support your organisation by harnessing the talent, expertise and facilities of the University of South Wales.