Seeking Consortium Partners or Consortium of Similar Topic, Immersive XR & Soft Skills Research (HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-HERITAGE-01)

LIVR is an AI and XR immersive experience company founded in 2017, building AI enabled XR experiences at the intersection of live performance, emotionally intelligent technology and audience research. Initially dedicated to VR theatre, we are vertically integrated across capture, post production, encoding, platform delivery and end user distribution. We operate across a range of immersive formats, from live performance capture to AI driven interactive experiences, with live theatre and the performing arts as one of the core application domains. We are seeking consortium partners to codevelop a proposal under HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-HERITAGE-01 ("Artistic Intelligence")

Project Concept Ideation

We propose a transnational research project investigating how immersive XR experiences of live performing arts can serve as a vehicle for developing empathy, creativity and collaborative problem solving; soft skills that are increasingly critical to innovation and social cohesion but difficult to measure or cultivate through conventional means.

The project would combine LIVR's XR delivery platform and AI capability with partners in further XR capabilities, social psychology, education research and cultural institutions to design, deliver and rigorously evaluate immersive arts programmes across several European countries. Outputs would include:

· Scientific evidence on the mechanisms by which immersive arts experiences build these capacities

· A scalable, replicable model for cultural institutions to deploy across Europe

· Policy relevant findings on the role of immersive technology in cultural participation and soft skills development

What LIVR Brings

·       A live deployable XR platform that can function as research infrastructure for running experiments, piloting new formats and collecting audience engagement data at scale without reliance on third party tools

· AI enabled immersive experiences, including emotionally intelligent agent systems capable of responding dynamically to user behaviour, opening possibilities for interactive, adaptive arts experiences that go beyond passive viewing

· Existing peer reviewed research in partnership with the University of Essex Psychology Department on user experience in virtual auditorium settings, including how XR engages current and underserved audiences, a genuine evidence base to build on rather than starting from scratch

· A rich network of performing arts partners, theatres, artists and cultural institutions across the UK and internationally, available as testbed or codesign partners within the project

· As a platform business, the ability to directly distribute any consortium outputs to real audiences immediately - not just at project end

Partners We Are Looking For

We are actively seeking:

·       Academic partners in social psychology, cognitive science, education research, or cultural sociology with experience in quantitative and/or qualitative evaluation of arts interventions or digital experience

· Cultural institutions (theatres, arts centres, festivals, national cultural bodies) in EU member states willing to participate as co-design partners, testbed sites, or dissemination channels

· Technology partners with complementary expertise in human-computer interaction, accessibility and/or immersive media

· A lead academic partner capable of serving as project coordinator, with Horizon Europe consortium management experience

We are a UK based SME with UKRI eligibility under the UK's association to Horizon Europe and are currently registering an office in Ireland.

Deadline context: HORIZON-CL2-2026-01 closes September 2026. We are looking to form a consortium and begin proposal development immediately following the Paris event.