About Limina

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Who Are Limina Immersive?

Limina Immersive offers unparalleled insight into immersive media content and its audience.

Founded by Catherine Allen in 2017, we have become a leading voice on the growth of AR, VR and the metaverse with insights featured in The Sunday Times, BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Bloomberg, Wired Magazine, The Guardian and more.

We have welcomed tens of thousands of people to immersive media through our VR cinemas and workshops across the UK and internationally, building participants’ immersive literacy and an awareness of opportunities that the growing sector presents.

Our work has influenced UK Government policy, university courses, institution’s funding decisions and the broader public understanding of this new medium.

Our fresh approach perceives AR and VR not in isolation, but as part of society and culture. It is based on years of research and running public VR cinemas for mainstream audiences. We attracted over 15,000 in-person audience members to our events through close attention to audience duty of care and obtaining the licenses to screen the work of household names including Cirque du Soleil and David Attenborough.

Partnering with leading universities, we researched our audience members’ responses to a wide range of content, marketing and exhibition styles and have continuously presented this insight back to the sector.

We are now solely focussed on research and sharing our knowledge with the key themes of Immersive Literacy, Duty of Care and Audience Insight.

The team provide insight in a range of formats including seminars, mentoring, bespoke consultancy, research reports and audience studies.

University research partners have included Kings College London, The University of Warwick, Cardiff University, Royal Holloway University, The University of Brighton, Bath Spa University, Monash University, UCL, The University of Bristol, The University of the West of England, Plymouth University and Cardiff Metropolitan University.

“Limina are unique in having lead many of the most influential studies in the immersive space. Their research gave us the confidence to pursue partnerships that are now set to return significant creative and commercial benefits.”

Tim Powell, then Head of R&D at Historic Royal Palaces

Organisations we have worked with include:

CATHERINE ALLEN

Introducing Limina’s BAFTA-winning founder & lead consultant

“A VR pioneer”

British Council

“Immersive industry leader”

Variety Magazine

Catherine Allen is most well known as a UK leading expert in immersive technology and its relationship with the public. Her approach is future-thinking and imaginative, yet heavily audience-centric and grounded in data. After working on the BAFTA-winning iPad app Disney Animated, Catherine led the creation of two of the BBC’s first virtual reality experiences in 2015 – 2016. Finding VR an incredible artistic medium, but with a frustratingly narrow audience, she founded Limina Immersive in late 2016; a VR events and research company dedicated to bringing immersive tech to broader audiences. Limina ran cultural VR events across the world to a total of over 15,000 audience members.

Catherine has continuously shared findings about audience needs back with universities and the sector. She has authored numerous public reports that have influenced policy.

She is due to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Warwick for her work in widening the appeal of immersive tech. Catherine is also on the advisory board of University of the West of England’s Virtual & Extended Realities MA. 

Catherine is one of Creative England’s officially recommended consultants.

 

Emma Hughes

Emma Hughes

Curator and consultant

Emma’s background is in theatre: she has a degree in drama from The University of Bristol and has ran performance workshops with older adults since graduating. Alongside this she has worked for Oxfam’s festival’s team, at their base in Bristol. 

Emma’s highlights at Limina have included managing the VR Diversity Initiative Bootcamp, conducting an in-depth audience research study on immersive genres and formats for a major Digital Catapult report, producing Limina’s VR audience event programme and curating boundary-pushing programmes of immersive content. 

Chris Sizemore

Chris Sizemore

Co-founder and advisor

Chris co-founded Limina with Catherine in 2016 and now supports he company as an advisor. Before Limina, Chris was commissioning editor for digital at the BBC for over a decade. He commissioned numerous award-winning virtual reality, 360, and immersive experiences. His interactive docudrama commission “Footballers United” won the Prix Italia. Chris conceived and commissioned the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World reboot podcast, was the founding editorial lead of BBC iWonder and co-commissioned the BBC Bitesize app. Previously, Chris worked for AOL TimeWarner in New York City as a digital content strategist. A few of Chris’s favourite things: Watership Down, well-appointed shopping malls, and battle royale gameplay mode.

Research partners we have worked with include: