Doctoral Training Centre in Digital Music and Media for the Creative Economy

The aim of this Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) is to undertake a concerted activity in the training of highly skilled researchers in Digital Media technologies, including Digital Music, Multimedia and The Digital Media Creative Industries in the UK covers a diverse range of application sectors spanning arts and antiques, architecture, advertising, computer games, crafts, performing arts, TV & radio, film and video, designer fashion, software, music, design and publishing. The Creative Industries are unlike almost every other industry, with a small number of large players complemented by a very large number of small businesses, micro-businesses, and individuals. In total, over two million people are employed in creative jobs and the sector contributes 60 billion a year (7.3 per cent) to the British economy, similar in size to the financial services industry. Over the past decade, the creative sector has grown at twice the rate of the economy as a whole and is well placed for continued growth as demand for digital creative content grows with video on demand and digital broadcast. Globally, the UK enjoys a leading position across many of the sub sectors, with export of services of nearly 15bn in 2005. According to a recent OECD report the creative industry sector contributes a greater percentage to UK national GDP than any other country.This is a strong position. But there are major challenges ahead over the next decade as the sector faces a rapid change to products, services and business models brought about by digital technologies. Global competition is growing as other countries recognise the economic value of creativity, with emerging economies such as India and China increasing their investment in knowledge skills. To face this, our creative industries need an abundant pool of talented people with the right skills to meet the needs of an expanding creative sector.Vision, Information Retrieval and Interaction, designed for applications in the Creative Industries. This requires an unusually broad multidisciplinary approach combining a range of fields:* Signal and content processing, including audio, image and video information processing;* Semantic Web, social networks, mobile platforms, Digital Rights Management;* Human-computer interaction, engagement, and performance;* Applications in Music, Film & Video, Digital Libraries.As a key part of its remit, the DTC will actively seek interdisciplinary collaboration with users in the creative industry. Examples include: new methods for collaborative creativity, new techniques for exploring databases of images, or enhanced delivery of music and media on mobile phones. In addition to the technologies outlined above, students will be trained in the particular issues facing research in the Creative Industries, and experience working with Creative Industry partners as part of their training programme, drawing on Queen Mary's existing relationships with Creative Industry practitioners.The DTC will be based in the new School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. It will be led by the world-leading Centre for Digital Music (C4DM), in close collaboration with other key complementary groups at Queen Mary (see below), forming a unique combination of research expertise and knowledge of the Creative Industries.The proposal team view the DTC as a means of producing not just better PhDs, but different PhDs, with the right mix of multidisciplinary technical and personal skills to make a real impact on the rapidly evolving Creative Industries sector.