Connecting Cinemas is an initiative of Public Art Lab and Neue Kammerspiele, funded by the Europe MEDIA program of the European Commission. The project aims to bring audiences and cinemas together in rural regions across Europe and establish a networked infrastructure to share live events and programmes and develop new knowledge about the position of rural cinemas as cultural centres in the digital age.
The Civic Interaction Design research group at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences along with Public Art Lab in Berlin, KEA European Affairs, Neue Kammerspiele in Kleinmachnow, and four rural European cinemas, will contribute to this project by exploring interactive media experiences that promote audience engagement in public spaces and cinemas. Our goal is to collect and analyse interactive media case studies that have been used or could be used within the cinematic context. We did this to gain a greater understanding of what makes these projects successful in achieving their goals and the steps that were taken to get there. From there, we derived common elements and developed a ‘how-to’ guide to aid future designers and cinema owners in the co-creation process, as well as to manage expectations of the final deliverables.
Additionally, the Civic Interaction Design research group has collaborated with the Master Digital Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences in eight-week research through design experiments in this field. Two student groups in the Master Digital Design worked on gathering research and insights through developing two concepts. A third group took on a 20-week project with the same assignment. Their prototypes and findings further influence the development of the design guide for this project.
To find out more about this project and our contributions, see below the Design Field Guide that we created:
For more information on Connecting Cinemas for Rural Areas, click here.