CoSTAR Network has unveiled a new £1million initiative aimed at accelerating the use of AI across the UK’s creative industries, while safeguarding core principles around authorship and intellectual property.
Credit: Yutong Liu & Kingston School of Art / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Entitled ‘AI for Creativity’, the initiative, which runs throughout 2026, offers UK companies research insights, interactive workshops, business support, funding programmes, and access to cutting-edge AI compute and cloud infrastructure.
This new initiative will support companies on their journey to AI adoption, while preserving essential principles around responsible AI, control of IP, and human creativity.
Leveraging CoSTAR Network’s extensive practical and research knowledge, AI for Creativity will showcase and develop relevant research and Development (R&D) focusing on the ethical, successful and sustainable use of AI in and for the creative industries.
AI for Creativity will kick off with a series of workshops and webinars taking place across the UK in May and June, featuring a range of industry and CoSTAR Network experts ‘An Introduction to AI Assisted Pipelines in Motion Capture’, ‘Creative Work in the Age of AI: Tools, Practice and the Road Ahead’, and ‘Directing Generative AI – Control, Realism and Creative Workflow’.
CoSTAR, part of Royal Holloway, University of London, is developing a state-of-the-art AI Compute facility to drive innovation in creativity technology, whilst enabling research and development across academia, startups, SMEs and industry partners.
The pilot cluster is already operational with expansion planned for a full-scale cluster in Summer 2026.
This facility will allow companies and researchers to train and test advanced AI models on the large audio-visual datasets common in film, games and performance production. The system combines powerful GPU servers with ultra-fast storage, providing the capacity needed for data-intensive creative AI research and development.
Find out more about the CoSTAR Network AI Compute infrastructure here.
Industry Access Programmes form a core part of the ‘AI For Creativity’ initiative beginning with CoSTAR Emerge-AI – the next evolution of our successful Ideate and Evolve programmes.
CoSTAR Emerge-AI goes further by placing artificial intelligence at the heart of its offer, bringing together world-leading industry and research expertise with bespoke access to AI Compute and cloud credits.
Designed specifically for early-stage creative technology companies working with AI, this programme offers bespoke business support, product development guidance and commercialisation expertise – all tailored to where your company is in its business growth. Be the first to hear about the programme launch here.
Another announcement is the four companies taking part in CoSTAR National Lab’s Advanced Production Technologies call launched late last year.
The companies will be amongst the first to trial CoSTAR’s AI compute facilities and will be using them as part of the programme, exploring efficiencies within a forward thinking, converged production process for screen audiences.
Becky Gregory-Clarke, Co-Head of Innovation at CoSTAR National Lab & Co-Lead, AI For Creativity, said: “AI innovation is an area of intense and rapid change, and one that creative companies in the UK are finding they need to face head on.
"The challenges are significant, however, and the ‘AI for Creativity’ initiative aims to help companies at different stages of their journey to explore and innovate with the technology, and ultimately work out how it can best serve their creative and business needs, now and in the years to come.”
Professor Frauke Zeller, Chair in Design Informatics, Co-Director, Institute for Design Informatics & Co-Lead for AI For Creativity, said: “Between them, all five Labs across the CoSTAR Network represent an exceptional resource of infrastructure and expertise that support the use of AI for creative production, research and innovation.
"We are excited to see this incredible pool of resources coming together to support innovators from across the creative industries."
To find out more about CoSTAR AI For Creativity, click here. To be the first to hear about upcoming opportunities for AI For Creativity, sign up to the CoSTAR newsletter here.
