UK Extended Reality (XR) Projects 2006-2024

This dataset was created to support the following publication:

Black, S., Carter, S., Inglis, G., Miles, B., Terras, M., & Zeller, F. (2026). 'UK Innovation in Immersive XR Technologies for screen, performance and digital entertainment: industry funding trends and insights (2006–2024)'. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18328671

This dataset contains details of 380 extended reality (XR) projects in the UK between 2006 and 2024, funded by bodies such as national arts councils, local councils, charities, and commercial entities.

It was created by searching data made available by Arts Council England, Arts Council NI, Arts Council Wales, Creative Scotland, National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Space, Wellcome Trust and PressReader’s catalogue of newspapers and magazines.

For each of these sources we searched for any mentions of key search terms within a 2006-2024 time span. Those terms are: ‘augmented reality’ and AR, ‘extended reality’ and XR , ‘game engine’, immersive, ‘mixed reality’, ‘virtual production’ and VP, and ‘virtual reality’ and VR. We then manually assessed the relevance of the search results before extracting data across multiple fields.

The final dataset takes the form of an Excel spreadsheet. For each relevant project identified, we collected data on 10 metrics, where available. These are: Project ID number (assigned by us), Date data collected, URL, Project title, Associated organisations, Description of project, Funding source, Funding amount, Start year, Location. Data was collected between 11 June 2024 and 17 July 2025.

Research ethics approval was obtained from Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. This research is part of the CoSTAR Foresight Lab’s activities, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/Y007433/1).