Albow awarded £125,000 to develop This Is On app

Albow have been awarded a £125,000 grant from the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts to research and develop This Is On, an app that seeks to revolutionise how we discover, share, and exchange value around live events.

In collaboration with three technology partners and two academic institutions Albow will develop the new mobile and desktop app over one year.

Production on This Is On began in August this year, and the team are now inviting a limited number of users to join for private beta testing – they will have an exclusive first look at the app, and be able to contribute to how it is developed and used.

Those interested in participating in early testing of This Is On (during December) are invited to email Hannah Nicklin - Hannah@albow.com, to join, or to ask further questions. Initial beta testers will be key to developing a useful and community-driven social network around live events, and also have the opportunity to win prizes, and attend an exclusive launch party.

This Is On is initially aimed at arts producers and audiences, building on Albow’s experience of developing an EU-wide network of sites promoting live performance – most notably Theatre Bristol. The app will seek to make the current experience more mobile, and to draw from revolutions around worth and value being seen in the music industry. As well as a powerful, social, and location-specific listings engine, the app will have a ‘digital hat’ functionality that will allow users to support live events through “money, love and attention”.

Users will be able to tailor the event information they receive by subscribing to friends, curators, companies and venues that interest them. Users will be able to support profiles and events that they enjoy by offering information, time, money, and ‘buzz’, which could be shares, reviews, reposts and more.

Albow are collaborating with UWE (University of the West of England) in Bristol, and University of Exeter, alongside developers Calvium, Isotoma, and Sam Machin and the process will be based at the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol for the duration of its development. The research will investigate how the ‘big data’ tactics of the contemporary web can be used ethically and openly to support recommendation and discovery, how the creation of online communities can help sustain and support arts and live events, and how live events that happen outside of arts buildings can gather information and donations from willing attendees; by offering around their ‘digital hat’.

This digital research and development project will aim to produce a series of iterations of a mobile app and web-based interface that will be evaluated in both closed and open beta testing. Albow is inviting any event-goers, companies or venues interested in helping test such an app to subscribe to a mailing list on www.albow.com The aim is to produce an early-beta of an app that allows individuals anywhere in the UK to list, discover, share, and exchange money, love and attention around live events.