Storytelling is central to human activity, one of the ways in which we make sense of the world. The screen industries are the latest in a long line of technologies and cultural practices committed to the creation of stories. Film, TV, video, computer games and other interactive media now tell stories digitally. But digital technologies are changing rapidly, enabling new modes of creation, new approaches to storytelling, new experiences for audiences and users. How can the screen industries keep pace with such change? How can they make the most of the new opportunities available to them? How can they develop the skills necessary to engage with these new technologies? How can they create with those technologies in ways that are exciting, commercially viable and capable of generating significant economic growth? These are some of the questions that Creative Media Labs (CML) seeks to answer, as it enables innovations in screen storytelling in the age of interactivity and immersion. The focus of CML is the considerable cluster of screen industry enterprises in the Yorkshire and Humber (Y&H) region. The partnership aims to enable this regional cluster to become the UK centre of excellence for the next generation of digital storytelling. This is an established creative industries cluster that has been earmarked for significant support through Screen Yorkshire's (SY) Growth Plan, backed by the British Film Institute's (BFI) Creative Clusters Challenge Fund, and showcased in the Creative Industries Sector Deal document as one of five "prominent creative industries cluster projects". SY, the BFI and University of York (UoY) have come together in a collaboration that blends world-leading research on digital storytelling with national strategic vision and unparalleled regional industry nous. Clustering is key to the development of the contemporary screen industries, and clusters come in many shapes and sizes. With key initiatives across its five major cities, the Y&H region saw the fastest rate of screen industry growth in the UK in 2009-2015. It is home to one of only three ITV production centres, producing around 500 hours of TV annually; True North, the biggest factual producer in the North of England, now owned by Sky; Warp Films, probably the most important out-of-London film company in the UK, and winners of multiple BAFTAs; Rockstar, one of the largest games developers in the world; Sumo Digital, one of the fastest growing games companies in the UK with over 300 staff; Revolution Software, developers of the hugely successful Broken Sword series; Viridian FX, one of the largest VFX houses in the North of England; and Church Fenton Yorkshire Studios, a major production facility used by Mammoth Screen for ITV's Victoria. There is also a wealth of micro businesses working in the sector. Creative Media Labs will build a sustainable, collaborative R&D partnership around this regional screen industries cluster, its numerous MSMEs and branches of large creative enterprises. Its core delivery partners are UoY, SY and the BFI; the key local authorities, enterprise partnerships and universities in the region are on board; so too are investors and several leading national trade associations, organisations and creative enterprises. Co-creation and collaborative working will be at the core of what we do. UoY has an excellent track record in multi-disciplinary research, with huge investment in creativity, across the arts, humanities and sciences - a combination reflected in the multi-million pound Digital Creativity Labs. There is an extensive pool of research expertise in digital storytelling, from writing, through media embodiment, to development of underpinning technologies. By identifying industry-led challenges, this expertise will be shared with the Y&H screen industries cluster in ways that will enable us to fulfil our ambition to establish the region as the UK centre of excellence for digital storytelling.

Digital games have extraordinary economic, social and cultural impact. The industry is one of the fastest-growing in the world, larger than film or music, with revenues expected to increase from $138 billion in 2018 to $180 billion by 2021. 2.6 billion people worldwide play digital games (21 million in the UK), with an average age of 35 and equal numbers of females and males. The Wellcome Trust-sponsored game Senua's Sacrifice, made in the UK, won 5 Baftas for its interactive and educational portrayal of psychosis. The UK games industry is a global leader - UK game sales are valued at £4.3bn with 12,000 people directly employed. The games industry is innovative and hungry for innovation - recent research breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have arisen through games research undertaken at Google DeepMind in the UK. Rolls Royce makes better jet engines using 3D technology pioneered in games. Games are leading the "data and AI revolution" of HM Government's 2017 Industrial Strategy. Games have become a massive lever for social good through applied games for health, education, and science. The mobile game Pokémon Go added 144 billion steps to physical activity in the US alone. The Alzheimer's Research-funded Sea Hero Quest game collected data equivalent to 9,400 years of dementia lab data within 6 months. The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) first received funding in 2014, and has since been a huge success: raising the level of research innovation in games, with the highest-possible ratings in our EPSRC mid-term review. The next phase of IGGI will inject 60+ PhD-qualified research leaders and state of the art research advances into the UK games industry. The two core themes of IGGI are: (1) Intelligent Games: increasing the flow of research into games. IGGI PhD research in topics such as AI, data science, and design will empower the UK games industry to create more innovative and entertaining games. IGGI research has already enhanced the experience for millions of game players. IGGI will create engaging AI agents that are enjoyable to interact with, tackling fundamental challenges for the future of work and society that go beyond games. IGGI will spearhead new AI techniques that augment human creativity by automatically 'filling in the details' of human sketches. (2) Game Intelligence: increasing the use of intelligence from games to achieve scientific and social goals. Every action in a digital game can be logged, creating huge data sets for behavioural science. For example, current IGGI students have assessed traits such as IQ, agreeableness, or attention from large game datasets. IGGI students will investigate more intelligent, adaptive games for education and to improve mental health. IGGI will maximize the enormous opportunity for scientific and social impact from games by laying the research groundwork for further data-driven applied games for health, science, and education. IGGI will massively advance these research themes, and train 60+ PhD students to be future research leaders. To accomplish this, our updated training programme and 60+ research supervisors will provide students with rigorous training and hands-on experience in AI, programming, game design, research methods, and data science, with end user and industry engagement from day one. Recruiting and empowering a diverse student cohort to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion through games, IGGI will drive positive culture change in industry and academia. Students will work with leading UK experts to co-create and disseminate standards for responsible games innovation. Directly working with the UK games industry through placements, workshops, game development challenges, and an annual conference, they will advance research knowledge and translate it into social, cultural and economic impact.