Foresight Lab

Our work will help to inform financial decision-making for investors and those seeking investment, work with CTOs to shape their R&D priorities, and help creatives understand the technology of tomorrow. Led by Goldsmiths, University of London with partners i2 Media Research and Station 12, this is where strategic foresight, investment awareness, technical expertise, and speculative design meet. We are providing foresight into how the creative industries will evolve in the years and decades to come, integrating multiple perspectives to make sense of change.  

Foresight is an amorphous term used to describe a collection of fields and methods that enhance understanding of plausible and preferred futures. Our approach is rooted in the strategic context of the CoSTAR programme, embedded in industry and the interests of the public.

Our work is supported by the Foresight Board, a diverse group of industry leaders reflecting creative convergence.

Outputs:

• Introduction to Moments

• Certain Uncertainties

Led by the BFI with partners Arup and Julie's Bicycle, the Foresight Lab's Insight work provides insights relating to technology and sector, helping to understand recent and upcoming developments across a breadth of foci.

We will work to understand developments in carbon & sustainability and equality, diversity & inclusion, across the Creative Industries including within the CoSTAR Network.

In collaboration with the Creative Policy & Evidence Centre and Verian, we are commissioning the Creative Business Panel. Conducted in partnership with the Department for Business and Trade and supported by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, it will create a groundbreaking new evidence base over five waves, examining the use of emerging technologies and supporting businesses to adopt digital innovations that enhance their competitiveness, foster diverse and inclusive workforces, and drive profitability and sustainability.

The Foresight Lab’s policy function delivers robust, relevant and valuable policy evidence, insights and recommendations to drive innovation and growth in advanced creative technologies in the UK and internationally. The team is based out of Loughborough University London, working closely with partners across the Foresight Lab and wider CoSTAR Network.

Our work

We deliver a range of research, reports and responses relating to creative technology policy. We do this through:

• Convening and engaging with key stakeholders across the creative technology ecosystem, including via our Creative Technology Policy Forum.

• Hosting policy events including showcases, roundtables and online fora

• Developing briefings, submissions and recommendations directly to government

• Producing new research and reports

• Developing and curating international trends and insights

• Mapping policy trends and signals.

How we work

Our work is shaped by our principles:

• We are agile, responding to our stakeholders and priority areas as they emerge, keeping apace with an emerging and uncertain landscape.

• We are collaborative, working in an open and accessible manner, connecting with networks across the creative and technology ecosystem.

• Our work is future-focussed, embedding long-term, foresight-led thinking into policy development and delivery.

• We are creative-led convenors, creating new spaces to bring together complementary stakeholders from across government, industry and academia with a focus on creative technology.

• We embrace radical ideas, encouraging novel and future-facing thinking to consider how it can be realistically implemented in the short and long term.

Publications:

• Creative Technologies International Scan

Led by the University of Edinburgh with partner Data Thistle, the Foresight Lab's New Forms of Data workstream will capture, analyse and display data and metadata from across the Foresight Lab, the CoSTAR Network and the Creative Industries.

Our work will synthesise data captured from across the CoSTAR Network to provide insights about the network's activities and stakeholders, and sources including the Creative Business Panel to map developments in the wider sector.

This work will feed into the Foresight Lab's Data Dashboard, a resource enabling our stakeholders to engage with data in a visual, accessible and impactful way.

The Foresight Lab is foregrounding an approach to AI that is creative-led, centred around creative innovation in AI, underpinned by ethics, safety, accessibility and responsibility to audiences. Across the Lab's activity is an array of work exploring the innovations, tensions and future possibilities at the intersection of AI, convergent technology and the Creative Industries. Read more in our blog post.

Policy 

The Foresight Lab’s policy team are coordinating with policy and industry stakeholders to develop proposals, responses and engagement to put the creative industries at the forefront of the Government’s AI ambitions. We regularly engage with teams across the UK Government Departments for Business and Trade, Science, Innovation and Technology and Culture, Media & Sport.

With the Foresight Lab's support, the CoSTAR Network has come together to respond to the Industrial Strategy Green Paper, the AI & Copyright consultation, and the House of Lords AI and creative tech committee inquiry. Our response has been cited extensively across the consultation report.

Machine Learning Futures 

Our Introduction to Moments report reflects significant research and engagement with experts on our Foresight Board, establishing areas of complexity in the sector, one of which centres around AI and its new potentials and conflicts. 

The report establishes future scenarios around machine learning, exploring possibilities in application and ownership . Underlying developments include openness of the developer ecosystem, culture and ethics, entrepreneurship, regulation and changing audience attitudes. These  scenarios were shaped by industry insights from our Foresight Board. 

International comparator report 

International Governments and the private sector are simultaneously embracing and investing in the commercial and creative opportunities AI and convergent technologies provide, while also developing legislation to protect and safeguard against current and potential harmful effects AI may cause.   

The first international thematic report, delivered by Olsberg·SPI with the CoSTAR Foresight Lab, focuses on this convergence and tension, in terms of policy, funding and legislation. The report will provide examples of international AI policy and regulation in selected jurisdictions and discusses what the UK can learn from overseas to inform its own approaches. The report will be published in May 2025.

AI in the screen sector 

While much attention has been given to AI’s broader societal and industrial implications, its application in film production, a sector that supports more than 195,000 jobs in the UK and generates more than £1.36 billion in revenue (DCMS 2024), has surprisingly received limited focus. 

Report 

Through research, surveys and interviews with executives, creatives and technologists, we explore current engagements with AI, areas of growth and development, and barriers and concerns – including those around skills, transparency, intellectual property, trust and public perception. Building on an in-depth mapping of the present, the report then focuses attention on the AI futures that the screen sector is preparing for, signposting the steps companies and individuals are taking to build positive and productive partnerships between human creatives and machine intelligence. This report will be published in March 2025. 

Framework  

The Foresight Lab has developed a publicly accessible, live framework which captures the key stages of film production, from script to screen, to understand the contexts in which AI tools are applied. It has been developed for knowledge sharing and understanding judicious use of technologies in production, given the ethical and legal challenges circulating advanced machine learning applications. It identifies the diverse range of AI tools currently available in the market, analysing their core functions and capabilities. It then explores the input-output modalities and underlying technologies that power these tools. Finally, the framework will investigate how these tools are adopted and applied in real-world scenarios. By systematically addressing these aspects, the research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how AI is reshaping the film industry. 

Note: When following the framework link above, the research description may be hidden. To access it place your mouse on the title 'Advanced Machine Learning in Film Production,' and click 'show description'.

Creative Business Panel 

Developed by the CoSTAR Foresight Lab and the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, the Creative Business Panel (CBP) is a landmark survey, supported by the UK government, which will collect comprehensive data from creative businesses over five waves between 2025 and 2028. 

Amongst the topics covered by the survey, respondents will be asked to discuss their company’s approach to technology and innovation. This will involve respondents reporting on their usage (or planned usage) of digital media production technologies, including generative tools and deep learning applications, along with what barriers they face when it comes to adopting new technologies. 

We will also explore the characteristics of those businesses who are (or are not) utilising generative tools by using context derived from the rest of the survey (e.g., their company’s size, region, level of investment in R&D, sustainability practices, etc.). Through this, the CBP will enable us to provide detailed insight into the UK creative sector’s behaviours around artificial intelligence, helping to inform decision makers who are seeking to support digital innovation in UK companies. 

The adoption, use and impact of emergent and convergent technology is key to research across the Foresight Lab. By developing our understanding of how creative businesses are capitalising on new technologies, we will help to inform the R&D taking place across the CoSTAR network, help policymakers to develop approaches to regulation, and help the sector make the best use of innovations in hardware and software.

The technologies we are exploring span:

Established technologies

• Assistive design, moving image, and media software

• Fixed asset, environmental and movement capture

• Real-time rendering

• In-camera VFX

• LED screens

• Immersive formats

• High-res digital and video cameras

• Audio software

• 3D printing

• Lighting

Nascent technologies

• Generative tools

• Deep learning applications with transformative potential

• Immersive distribution formats

• Cloud-based and virtual workflows

• Hardware enabling on-device and edge computing

• Open standard formats for interoperability and collaboration

• Volumetric 3D cameras

• Advanced LEDs and screen technology

Relevant work across the Lab includes:

• Working with the Foresight Board to predict technological developments in the decades to come

• Tracking the use, impact and barriers of technologies and media distribution channels for hundreds of businesses via the Creative Business Panel

• Mapping relevant technological facilities across the UK

• Mapping international developments relating to R&D, technology adoption and legislation

With the climate crisis one of the most pressing issues of today, the pertinent questions for the Foresight Lab relate to creative industries’ understanding of the sustainability and carbon implications of new technologies and workflows.

There is optimism that new technologies such as virtual production will reduce the carbon footprint of the creative industries, such as through reduced dependence on-location filming which generates substantial fuel consumption and use of materials. However, more work is needed to understand the sustainability implications of increasingly cloud-based workflows which depend on energy-hungry and water-intensive data centres.

Our work in this area will help to increase understanding and leadership in relation to sustainability. We have explored environmental concerns as part of our foresight work, as detailed in the report Certain Uncertainties. We will be analysing the environmental efforts of the CoSTAR Network and businesses engaged in the Creative Business Panel, as well as tracking relevant policy developments on a national and international scale.