We recently completed another Immersive Arts Bootcamp Showcase! The event is the culmination of 12 weeks of immersive arts workshops where our participants shared their final projects to industry folk, BOM friends and future Bootcampers.
The Bootcamp
Our Bootcamp team teaches participants how to use Unreal Engine to create immersive experiences, often starting from zero skills in Unreal Engine and Blender. Upon completion of the course, they’ll have mastered the skills to be able to develop their own immersive content.
We’re proud that this is a completely free course, made possible through West Midlands Combined Authority, Arts Council and Department of Education. Priority is given to those who are unemployed, underemployed, from a government priority place in the West Midlands, ethnic minority backgrounds or neurodivergent. We’re pleased to say that the most recent alumni was made up of 55% neurodivergent participants and 95% from priority places.
Over the Immersive Arts Bootcamp, the participants pick up new skills each week and they begin to work on their projects. The course is intensive and our participants often make use of the additional drop-in sessions and continue learning in their own time. We find that most of our students can’t help themselves, as building immersive experiences is all-consuming, much like gaming!
We really get to know our participants over the months and we have a great time teaching over plenty of hot drinks and biscuits. We pride ourselves on providing an inviting, friendly and supportive environment to all.
It’s perfectly normal for our students to feel overwhelmed by the skills needed to create an immersive project at first, but by the end of 12 weeks, it’s inspiring to see what they have achieved! By upskilling our participants, we hope that this encourages them to level up in their careers or pursue jobs in the immersive industries.
The Showcase
The April showcase for Immersive Arts Bootcamp: Virtual Production is a testament to the hard work the participants have put into their learning and projects and it was great to see BOM full of people, all excited to check out the immersive worlds created by our participants. Our most recent Bootcampers have been with us from January – April and they did an amazing job showcasing their work. We had participants spread out across the building and some of them could be experienced using VR headsets, providing a super immersive experience.
Not only this, we also heard from two of our alumni from last year, Jessica and Ewan. They both found the experience at BOM invaluable to their career pathways and through the showcase they met Sponge Hammer Games which eventually led to exciting new jobs with the games studio. You should have heard the cheers at BOM when we heard they had secured full-time jobs!
It’s not the last time we’ll see this cohort as we look forward to seeing the participants again as we continue providing support for 6 months. This involves helping them to secure work opportunities in the arts, gaming and immersive industries.
What’s Next
There’s no rest for the wicked as we’re about to onboard our next cohort! Our next group includes five deaf participants and so we’ve been working with artist Maral Mamaghani and her team who have created 200 new British Sign Language words to help navigate the Unreal Engine vocabulary which is taught on the course. We’re thrilled to welcome our new cohort and see what the group will create. Stay tuned as we’ll be sharing more on our socials every week.
Read more about our learning programmes here: Immersive Arts Boot camp.
The Immersive Arts Bootcamp receives funding from the Department of Education, WMCA, and Arts Council.
For more information contact learning@bom.org.uk
