Find out more about the first nine projects to be awarded funding via the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts.

Cheltenham Festivals in partnership with I-Dat and Warwick University

Cheltenham Festivals aims to transform the way people think, improve knowledge and stimulate creativity through the creation of vibrant festivals spanning science and the arts.

The Qualia project will create a real-time monitoring system, which will offer a way to evaluate and measure the immediate impact on audiences of live arts and cultural events. It will incorporate new ways to gather, analyse and visualise qualitative data. This will include sentiment analysis, social network feeds and SMS interactions, as well as on-site interactive installations. It is hoped that the techniques developed by Qualia can be used by other arts organisations to broaden the conversation around cultural impact.

Imperial War Museums in partnership with Historypin and University of Edinburgh

Imperial War Museums (IWM) aims to enrich people's understanding of the causes, course and consequences of war and its impact on individuals and society.

In the context of the 2014 centenary commemorations of the Great War, the IWM is partnering with Historypin to invite the public to help curate the content in its First World War paintings collection. Using specially developed metadata crowdsourcing tools, the public will be able to view artworks, locate them on a map; add contextual information and their emotional responses and contribute to online discussion. Public and curatorial voices will be given a platform on www.iwm.org.uk and in an online exhibition on Google Cultural Institute, creating a model of crowdsourced co-curation that others can follow.

Knowledge West Media Centre in partnership with IBM and University of the West of England

Based in South Bristol, Knowledge West Media Centre supports individuals and communities to get the most out of digital technologies, music, media and the arts. It delivers innovative media arts projects that contribute to cultural, social and economic regeneration.

This project will explore how technology can be used within an 'activism and arts' model. It will encourage young people to experiment with live and open data through creative projects that focus on their communities. Along with technology partner IBM it will work to standardise data protocols and develop an easy way to share open data 'toolkits' with others.

Live at LICA in partnership with Transpennine Games Co-operative and Imagination Lancaster

Based at Lancaster University, Live at LICA develops and delivers high-quality professional theatre, dance, music and visual arts for Lancaster and the wider region.

Using digital technology, social media and augmented reality, this project will invite the public to curate personal virtual 'collections', by fusing images of paintings and artefacts from the LICA collections with their own domestic environment. As well as existing in virtual space, the results will also be exhibited at the Peter Scott Gallery.

Script in partnership with Agency Mobile and Dr Rob Toulson

Script is a music and content agency which produces innovative content for brands using music artists and catalogues in collaboration with producers of film, animation, theatre and technology.

A mobile-friendly 'app-album' will be developed with Fránçois and the Atlas Mountains. This project will explore how mobile music apps can change an artist's interaction with their fans and might offer new revenue streams such as subscriptions, merchandising and ticketing.

The Royal Opera House in partnership with Combined Arts and Kings College London

The Royal Opera House aims to enrich people's lives through opera and ballet, staging performances of the highest international standards as well as developing the artforms and promoting them to people of all ages and backgrounds.

This project will develop an alternative and sustainable way of creating mobile apps that will encourage new audiences to enjoy rich media content about ballet and opera. It aims to explore innovative, location-based ways of engaging with the public, increasing revenues and broadening reach, particularly amongst younger audiences.

Pavilion Dance in partnership with Mobile Pie and Dr Seth Giddings, Digital Cultures Research Centre, UWE

Pavilion Dance was established in 2003 as a dance development agency for South West England. Since 2010 it has worked in partnership with Bournemouth Borough Council to run a small-scale national dance house and support dance across the whole region.

DanceTag, a location-based gaming app, will reach new audiences for dance by encouraging the public to upload to a website, and geo-tag, films of themselves dancing. Users will be able to view, share and rate other films; challenge other users; or re-tag locations. The website will also provide the dance sector with information about local dance providers, dancers, companies and venues and allow users to receive messages about events local to them.

The Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP) in partnership with Adaptive Technologies and University of Brighton

The Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP) is the UK's leading centre for the study and interpretation of design in plastics.

By placing cultural artefacts in the competitive world of gaming, this project aims to engage new audiences with the arts, build online communities and develop new sources of data. Using a concept based on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted website, this project will encourage the public to hunt down 'missing information' about cultural artefacts. Outcomes will include an open-source platform and best practice guidelines for game-based crowdsourcing in the arts sector, and an intellectual property rights framework with reusable templates for integrating user-generated content into professionally curated collections.

Unlimited Theatre in partnership with Storythings and Jon Rogers and Product Research Studio at the University of Dundee

Unlimited regularly produces work with many of the UK's leading theatres. Its work has toured extensively in the UK and been presented at international festivals and venues.

This project will deliver a new platform for storytelling on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. It will explore the impact of digital theatre on audiences via digital versions of Unlimited's new show, The Noise, a collaboration with Northern Stage, Newcastle.