The EP team recently caught-up with Arcade, an award-winning immersive technology company, and Emily Williams (School of English) who has been completing an internship, arranged through the Employability Points (EP) Scheme.
Emily explained she originally applied for this specific EP reward due to her background in theatre and performance arts and was interested in how Arcade utilise technology, specifically Augmented Reality, to engage audiences.
Reflecting on the internship, Emily explained that ‘I have done so much, it has been so varied!’ For instance, Emily has had the opportunity to attend client meetings, ‘which were amazing as I could put forward creative ideas’, whilst she has also contributed towards the development of the business’ social media strategy, specifically developing their Instagram presence. Emily also gained the chance to attend the Unbound Festival, an event, which aims to bring companies and brands to together to utilise technology to enhance innovation. Here, Emily found herself on stage – in front of thousands of attendees – wearing a VR Headset! Emily also had the chance to report on the Apple Art Walk, which utilised AR to bring art to life throughout London (check out the ArcadeLtd instagram page for a preview of this).
Most significantly, the highlight of Emily’s internship was the chance to write scripts of a forthcoming app to be utilised by a national museum. Emily gained the chance to see how game play was incorporated into scripts and despite finding the task incredibly daunting, she found the responsibility incredibly rewarding.
The internship has had a huge impact on Emily’s career plans:
“I always wanted to be a writer but I now see how writing is changing. As a result, I now want to work in AR script writing. I love the creativity and this is what I really want to do in the future.”
As a result, Emily summed-up the internship as:
“Inspiring, surreal and life changing. I have really taken a different path for my career as a result.”
Jon Meggitt, CEO, also commented:
“With AR being so new, the world is still working out how to generate content for this. Due to Emily having so much creativity, specifically in relation to the theatre, she was able to provide new ideas.”
Simon Hobbs, Co-Founder, added:
“We realised we needed a script writer but did not appreciate how valuable this would be until Emily joined. She has had a real impact on what we will be outputting and also what we now need in the business.”
Thanks must be given to Santander Universities for co-funding this internship through the Santander Universities SME Internship Scheme.