Inspace is a collaborative hub, commissioning and producing creative activity that engages communities with technology and data in new and unexpected ways, presenting a programme of exhibitions, events and performances from collaborations with artists, designers and researchers. 

Inspace is a unique events and exhibition space, part of the Institute for Design Informatics (IDI), a joint institute between Edinburgh College of Art and the School of Informatics, within the University of Edinburgh. The Institute for Design Informatics fuses design and creative methodologies with data, data science and data-driven technologies. It is this overarching focus that informs and inspires Inspace’s progamme, which seeks to unlock digital and emerging technologies, tools and data for public audiences, exploring their role in society through a creative lens.   

Inspace is a forward-thinking dynamic venue, in the City of Edinburgh, owing to its high-tech specs, flexible design features, clean modern aesthetic, and its unique Inspace City Screens facility; seven large scale, multi-screen, panoramic street facing projections, visible along Potterrow. As a collaborative and interdisciplinary hub, where creative and research communities converge, Inspace commissions and produces a range of activities, bringing practitioners from different fields together to experiment and prototype new ideas that seek to unlock technologies and data for audiences. We bring the outcomes of this work to the local and international communities, inviting and supporting audiences to connect with and better understand and access current challenges and opportunities surrounding technology and data. 

Technologies that are of particular interest to Inspace and reflect ongoing research interests of the Institute include: artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, generative AI, robotics, the internet of things (IoT), and biosensing. ‘Data’ we define broadly to include a wide range of information such as; collections, records, open datasets, and information from texts and images. 

The specific technologies, tools and data driving our creative programme are constantly evolving and shifting in response to rapid advances, know biases and inequalities, associated issues surrounding data rights and control, and the urgent need to progress and embed sustainable approaches in the way we live and work, in the face of the climate emergency.  

Inspace Creative Programme  

Inspace hosts a range of public exhibitions and performances across the year and is a proud collaborator of Edinburgh’s Festival community; having collaborated with Edinburgh Science Festival, Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Edinburgh International Film Festival. Inspace also regularly collaborates with the Festival of Social Science and Being Human Festival, the UK’s national Autumn festivals celebrating humanities research.  

Inspace’s creative programme supports and facilitates creative practitioners to explore and experiment with data and technology, and we are keen to work with creative practitioners that employ data or technology in their practices in novel and experimental ways.  We are particularly interested in projects that materialise and play with data and technology to explore the implications and complexity of these systems and make tangible to audiences the different roles data and technology play in day-to-day life. We also seek out ways to connect creative practitioners to our research community who have expertise in integrated design, computer science, human-computer interaction, critical studies, social science, arts, humanities, and law.  

Alongside this creative programme, Inspace hosts a range of events including talks, Q&A’s, discussion panels, workshops and tours, to complement exhibition and performance programming, and to create more opportunities to welcome a range of audiences to Inspace. We host a regular programme of research seminars led by the Institute for Design Informatics, creating an open environment for anyone to get involved in current research discussion and debate. We also host symposiums and conference activities that seek to convene communities for networking, discourse and knowledge sharing around technology and data. 

Inspace’s programme is designed to be open and welcoming to all individuals and communities and we seek to invite diverse viewpoints, challenge bias and inequalities and broaden access to creativity and research through considered programme design and delivery, fostering space for anyone to explore, learn, debate and create. 

Watch the Inspace Showreel