In February 2026, Glasgow was the first city outside of North America to host the Ocean Science Meeting - a major international meeting of scientists from a wide array of disciplines all relating to the study and understanding of our oceans.
We were approached by Dr Jeanette Davis (Hampton University) and Dr Bob Chen (UMass Boston) who were planning an Art & Science workshop at the conference and wondered if we could find students to collaborate on projects with some Ocean Scientists.
After some initial planning discussions, Jeanette and Bob recruited a small group of scientists who each provided a short description of their work and made themselves available to chat with students. Our own Prof Stuart Jeffrey (with his experience of working with Maritime Heritage and role of art and culture in ocean stewardship) joined this pool of scientists.
Students across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and courses were encouraged to meet with, or seek inspiration from, the different scientists - and build their final Semester 1 projects inspired by the work of the scientists. Across the MSc Serious Games & VR class in 'Interactive Visualisation', and undergraduate elective projects in Virtual WorldBuilding and in Serious Games, some 25 students got involved, submitting 12 different projects in total.
Some of the students were then able to join in a workshop at Ocean Science Meeting, interacting with scientists from across the globe - and many of the scientists (and some others from the conference!) were then able to come and visit us at our studios a few days later for a showcase of the student projects - and some other ocean-related projects from the school.
Activity 1: The Projects
The 12 projects were delivered across three different courses and very distinct briefs. Undergraduate students taking the Virtual World Building class (led by tutor Dr Austin Wolfe) used pre-existing art assets to design and construct rich 3D environments and use virtual cinematics to take us on a journey through these virtual worlds. The underwater scene by Achal (below) is one of five ocean science projects that were submitted for this class.
The other undergraduate course that got involved was "Serious Games" - and groups of students in this class had to create educational board games. There were three educational board games created for this - 'Survival of the Fishest', 'Deep Dive' and 'Mosaic Island'.
Finally, postgraduate students on the MSc Serious Games & VR also got involved - with five small group projects being inspired by the ocean science work.
Activity 2: The Workshop
On Monday 23rd February was the Art/Science workshop itself! "Tides to Storytelling: Co-Creating Ocean Narratives through Art and Science". We had a packed out workshop session, lots of chat and discussion between groups of scientists matched up with students. At the end of the session, students and scientists shared reflections on what they had learned through the workshop.
A highly enjoyable experience for all.
Activity 3: The Showcase
To round off the project, we also extended an invite to anyone attending the conference - including scientists who took part in Activity 1 & 2 - to come along to our department's city centre studios for a range of demos - a chance to see some of the student outputs, play some of the boardgames.
Prof Stuart Jeffrey gave a short talk on Cultural Heritage & the maritime environment. This talk highlighted work with communities in the UK, Africa and the Pacific and the ways in which community concerns over a range of issues, including accessibility, can be surfaced through contemporary arts forms and digital co-design.
Dr Austin Wolfe also provided VR demos of his continuing work on The Journey. Originally created for his MSc in Serious Games & VR some years ago, Austin has continued to develop and expand this - and significantly overhauled and improved the visuals. This immersive cinematic experience is a deeply emotional one - following the story of a whale calf seperated from its pod.
The app also now includes additional education content on marine animal biology.
Where next?
This was a fantastically fun and also at time exhausting project - with so much happening. We'll be continuing our discussion with Jeanette and Bob and looking to expand and extend this work in the future.
We also always welcome suggestions for Masters project briefs - and there is still time for anyone out there to get in touch with us to suggest a project brief for a MSc Serious Games & VR student to undertake this summer! If interested, please just drop a line to Daniel: d.livingstone@gsa.ac.uk
And finally you can also reach out to us, or follow what we've been doing on social media: https://linktr.ee/sit.gsa