Jack Lowe

Background

About Jack Lowe

I am a cultural geographer and narrative designer whose research and creative practice explores how people engage with place through playful, site-specific, experimental and/or immersive media forms. My recently-completed practice-based PhD project involved independently making and testing location-based games in East Kent in the UK. This method sought to understand the potential of location-based game development and play for discovering, sharing and engaging purposefully with the wide-ranging narratives through which this area is imagined, lived, performed and contested today. Creative works have included The Timekeeper's Return, a mixed-reality treasure hunt in Canterbury's Cathedral Quarter played using QR codes; Canterbury in 3 Words, a participatory storytelling platform and location-based treasure hunt played using the what3words app; and The Gates to Dreamland, a locative audiowalk game based around Margate's Dreamland amusement park, made as part of A Different LENS (a collaborative story-mapping project funded by Arts Council England, Kent County Council and Margate NOW). Alongside my research responsibilities, I have taught as a visiting lecturer on the Digital Storytelling core module for first-year BA Digital Media Communications and BA Videogame Art and Design students at Royal Holloway, University of London. This involved designing a bespoke lecture series on location-based games. I have also had further teaching roles at RHUL as a workshop leader on Digital Methods and Ethnography for Masters students on the GG5020: Methods and Techniques course, and as a teaching assistant on Geographical Techniques for Geography undergraduates. During my PhD, I passed RHUL's Programme in Skills of Teaching to Inspire Learning (inSTIL) programme with a commendation, conferring Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. As part of my interdisciplinary activities at RHUL, I have been part of the StoryFutures Creative Cluster network, acting as a consultant for SMEs on game design, place and environment in digital narrative experiences. This notably led to my involvement as a writer, narrative designer and consultant for Interrobang, a theatre-meets-online gaming experience developed by immersive theatre company Gideon Reeling. Prior professional and academic experience in this area includes working with four times BAFTA-nominated interactive arts organisation Blast Theory, and presenting research on the narrative environments of 'walking simulator' and location-based games at international conferences on several occasions.