Brink!

Virtual & Immersive Art

What Should Our City Do?

Brink! will produce a digital and immersive 3D experience for a global audience to engage with, using the derelict Belfast Stories site as a canvas.

Brink! have approached Leica, the global high-end camera company, to be scanning partners, and Studio Ulster, Ulster University’s 'Tier 1' Centre of Excellence in Research, Development and Innovation in Virtual Production to be immersive creative partners in this project, to demonstrate global artistic innovation in this project.

Preparing the digital canvas

What?

Leica scanned the site to produce a 7 billion data point high-resolution map to provide the environment for us to bring into digital tools to create an immersive experience.

Brink! have confirmed the meanwhile tenancy of Belfast City Council’s Belfast Stories site, at the end of Royal Avenue, as a cultural project in the heart of the city. The aim is to produce a multisensory artistic green and grow space, to bring life to an urban desert .. another act of what could or should our city do.

This space is derelict, part of the on-going dereliction in our city centre, and from this scan we will produce a virtual and immersive creative experience that can offer audiences the opportunity to view it locally and internationally.

Where?

The Belfast Stories site is to become a city centre heritage and visitor centre, but over the next year or so Brink! will be taking it on as a meanwhile site. The aim is to produce a multi-sensory green and grow space, where we can learn, share and enjoy our city centre, bringing life to an urban desert.

You can find it in Belfast, where we’ve marked in yellow, opposite the Sunflower bar, along Union Street and North Street.

Entrance will be on the Union Street side.

  • Brink! is a platform for discussion, education, and action around issues of climate change.

    It was set up by artists and innovators Gawain Morrison, Paul Kelly and Neil Beattie in 2023, and our intention is to build Brink! to help empower people to find each other and change how we live in this city through creative thinking and action (play).

  • The Belfast Stories site is to become a city centre heritage and visitor centre to be opened to the public by 2029.

    During 2024 Brink! will take it on as a meanwhile site. The aim is to produce a multi-sensory green and grow space, where we can learn, share and enjoy our city centre, bringing life to an urban desert.

  • We have backgrounds in many creative projects, and believe that cultural output in many formats can engage different audiences, with different impacts. Digital and immersive art has the ability to reach a global audience, and since we’re all on the same starship Earth, we need to be talking & learning together.

  • We’re in the early phase of this project, engaging with potential partners, and coming up with the creative ideas for the experience. This is a super-exciting time, and we’ll keep you posted as we progress to let you know when it will be launched.

  • Of course, and actually the way we phrase it is that we need ‘unlikely partners’ to be able to succeed with dealing with the issues of climate change. So if you are curious about what Brink! will do, or want to see if you can find out some new ways to live your day, or want to find new friends, bring some friends, have a laugh and do something different, then we’d love for you to sign up to hear more & get involved in future projects.

    Just to be clear, we’re at the start of our journey, so it might be quiet for a while, but you can be sure we’ll get noisier over time.