Live to your Living Room has been awarded £10,000 from the CreaTech Frontiers programme, the inclusive innovation cluster for the West Midlands, to develop a pioneering, plug-and-play remote vision-mixing system — an innovation set to transform how grassroots venues and independent artists deliver high-quality live-streamed performances.
Live to your Living Room already sends audio equipment to artists and mixes sound remotely — a model that has enabled disabled artists, rural performers, and those with caring responsibilities to deliver professional-quality shows from home. By designing the production process around accessibility from the outset, the organisation is proving that high-quality cultural experiences can be created in ways that genuinely include everyone. With CreaTech support, the organisation will now explore how to achieve the same flexible, accessible model for visuals.
Lamberto Coccioli, Professor at Birmingham City University and Director of CreaTech Frontiers, said: “These initial grants will give freelancers and small companies access to capital and to the research expertise and resources of CreaTech Frontiers to bring to life their most innovative ideas.”
CreaTech Frontiers, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and led by Birmingham City University, is a five-year programme designed to grow the creative technology sector across the West Midlands through targeted grants, research partnerships, and access to specialist facilities.
By developing a remote vision-mixing solution that doesn’t require a producer or camera crew on site, the project aims to deliver:
- Higher-quality broadcasts for venues with limited budgets
- Lower carbon impact, with fewer people travelling to events
- More opportunities for disabled and house-bound artists to perform professionally
- A scalable, cost-effective system that grassroots venues can adopt without specialist expertise
Pete Ord, Technical Director at Live to your Living Room, said: “Not only will this benefit how we put on gigs and significantly improve the customer experience, but there’s also potential for it to help the wider arts sector in the long term, revolutionising audio-visual practices.
Grassroots venues will be able to put on high-quality broadcasts regardless of budget, and independent artists, particularly those with disabilities, will be able to deliver professional-quality shows from their own homes.”
This innovation will also support Live to your Living Room’s wider mission to increase equity of access for audiences. The organisation’s ONEAudience Method™ — developed with support from Arts Council England — guides venues to create hybrid events that are accessible from the ground up. Data from hundreds of events shows significantly higher engagement from disabled people, carers, and remote audiences when hybrid is designed intentionally.
By combining Createch-funded R&D with its established expertise in inclusive hybrid performance, Live to your Living Room aims to set a new standard for low-cost, environmentally responsible, and truly accessible live-streamed culture.
