BIMA  (the British Interactive Media Association) held their first in a series of inspirational events to give a wider platform to the BIMA10 Award winners at the Ivy in central London on Wednesday 24^th November.

Richard Coope (Founder of Brightful and Winchester Creatives) and I had the privilege of attending this BIMA event. Our Brightful team was shortlisted as a BIMA10 Finalist for our work in helping to change young creatives lives through our work on the Winchester Creatives ‘Mind the Gap’ campaign. Richard also led the Brightful 2021 BIMA Digital Day at Kings School in Winchester.

The venue was on the top floor of the iconic Ivy building in central London. Glass-stained windows, beautiful art, and the faint undertone of jazzy music trickling through the building built a perfect stage for some of the brightest minds in the digital industry to showcase their talent and share their ideas. Sitting on the top floor of this historic building drinking coffee and nibbling on Michelin star-standard croissants, we heard from three of BIMA’s 10 winners, who each shared a video and their journeys with us.

Richard Coope at the BIMA10 event at the Ivy

This event was masterfully hosted by the wonderful Sonoo Singh, the co-founder of Creative Salon, a business journalist and editor with more than two decades of experience reporting on media and marketing. Sonoo shared that despite the challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic posed how inspiring it was to see digital agencies responding selflessly in helping others. 2021 was clearly the year that changed the world and it was important to recognise the people and agencies that stepped up to meet that moment.

Sonoo Singh, Richard Coope and Imogen Parker at The Ivy

BIMA 10 Award Winner: Deloitte Digital Covid-19 App

We heard from Illico Elia, the head of mobile and Apple Alliance lead at Deloitte Digital, whose team developed the Covid-19 testing app. Illico and his team won the award for their 10 widely applications developed in only four weeks to aid the efficiency of COVID19 testing nationwide. At the peak of the crisis, when queues for testing sites lined the streets and moved slower than the traffic bollards that dotted the now empty roads, the team was set the task by NHS digital to create a programme that eased this bottleneck before the backlog became unending. Illico described the pressures of their need to work quickly and leave no room for error. Since April 2020, the team have worked tirelessly to update all 10 of their applications each week, and their programme has become

Illico Ellica from Deloitte Digital talking about the Covid 19 testing app

BIMA 10 Award Winner: One-shot Immersive VR Experience

Next, George Ioannou and James Gough of Foolproof and Oneshot Immersive respectively spoke about their One-Shot Immersive initiative, which was a virtual reality mass casualty training enterprise. James, a former military doctor, hit upon the issue of improper and ineffective trauma responses when he was wounded in Afghanistan. Not one of his fellow soldiers were immediately able to effectively respond to the trauma and come to his aid, precious minutes that in a more dire condition could have cost him his life.

After leaving his post in the military, James set out to educate as many people as he could on the proper responses to traumatic accidents and reached out to Foolproof to propose his idea for an interactive VR exercise safely exposing users to incidents to test and inform their reactions. Using virtual reality as a tool to immerse users, James and Foolproof developed realistic scenarios like an explosion at a tube station, which was shared at this BIMA10 event, and now hope to make them widely accessible through not only VR sets but on mobile phones. This scalable project has the potential to reach thousands of potential first responders around the world, from shopkeepers in Afghanistan to cab drivers in London. Anyone could find themselves at the scene of a traumatic event and being desensitized to this kind of disaster as well as experienced on how to react could save lives.

James Gough and George Ioannou share the One-Shot Immersive project

BIMA 10 Award Winner: The Big Fix-Up

Lastly, we heard from the leaders of ‘The Big Fix-Up’ project; an app that uses the latest in augmented and mixed reality techniques to delve into the world of Wallace and Gromit. The immersive and interactive narrative follows the iconic characters on their new venture to clean up the city of Bristol. This project was one of the BIMA10 winners as it recognizes the innovation of combining multiple existing technologies like AR, video, CG and gameplay to create an immersive experience that you can drive from your phone. This project, published by Fictioneers, was a joint venture between Sugar Creative, Potato and Tiny Rebel Games. Featuring big names like the OG Ben Whitehead as Wallace and Strictly star Joe Sugg as ‘Big Lad’, ‘The Big Fix-Up’ is a load of fun and a well-deserved prize winner.

The Big Fix Up – a collaboration between Fictioneers, Sugar Creative, Potato and Tiny Rebel Games

After the event, we got to meet Chris Melish (President of BIMA) and Matt Sullivan (Managing Director of BIMA) and other new members of the BIMA team. We shared our experience of running the Brightful BIMA Digital Day.

Overall this event was a celebration of just three of the extraordinary BIMA10 Award-winning projects that represent the best of what the digital industry delivered in 2021. The opportunity to applaud the innovation, creativity and inspiration from all attendees was not wasted. It also fits with our Brightful values of trying to do a little good every day.

We were also grateful to have been invited to the BIMA10 Awards evening event back in November, where we celebrated our award nomination alongside these incredible digital change makers.

Our Brightful team look forward to the next two events at The Ivy in the spring which will include presentations from the remaining top 10. Who knows, we might get the chance to spread the word of our own BIMA10 Finalist Winchester Creatives project!