WBS  ·  University of Westminster  ·  Opening September 2026

Immersive
Experience
Lab

From learning about to learning within.

Welcome to the IEL — a new lab, a new medium, a new kind of learning, pioneered at Westminster Business School. You will soon have access to the UK's most advanced immersive learning facility, built to be used by WBS students and colleagues from day one. The IEL is the difference between studying something and experiencing it, offering new opportunities for authentic, personalised, transformative learning. Find out all about the IEL in this short introduction and learn how you can start using it straightaway with our easy-to-use immersive Apps.

01
Part One
The IEL
1.1

Not a classroom.
Not a cinema.

The Immersive Experience Lab is a new type of teaching space, unlike any other in the UK. Not a lecture theatre with better screens, nor a cinema playing 2D video. It is something entirely new: a spatial computing platform designed from the ground up for immersive experience — and for a new medium for us to invent together.

The IEL continues a long tradition of pioneering new technologies at Westminster. The Lumière brothers in 1896 hosted the first public cinema screening in the UK at our University, introducing a new medium to the world. The IEL is the next chapter of that history: a new medium, pioneered in the same place, by the same institution.

In the IEL, content does not sit on a screen in front of you. It surrounds you — a continuous visual field up to thirty metres wide, curving around the room, extending overhead, accompanied by sound that moves through three-dimensional space to complete the immersion. The boundaries between display and room dissolve — the architecture becomes the technology, and the technology the architecture. You are not looking at something. You are somewhere.

That distinction produces a different kind of learning. Being inside a corporate crisis is not the same as reading a case study about one. Navigating a city-scale dataset at thirty metres wide is not the same as analysing it in a spreadsheet. Experiencing the consequences of your design choices within your real estate model is different from viewing them on a screen. The IEL makes the difference between studying something and experiencing it — and that difference, consistently, changes what academics can teach and students can do with what they know.

1.2

Built on
Experience

The IEL offers a breakthrough in both technology and our approach to using it. We have the most advanced immersive technology in UK higher education, combined with a proven approach to making it easily accessible, built on more than a decade of expertise in user-centred creative and advanced technologies. Unlike most facilities of this kind, we have the knowledge and experience of immersive technologies to ensure the IEL is accessible and useful from day one.

The IEL was initiated by a bold vision: to bring the world-class immersive technologies of Outernet to Westminster. Inspired by this brief and benefiting from newer technology, we now have immersive spaces that are not as big as Outernet, but in many ways technically superior. See the IEL by Numbers below.

The Outernet model takes the IEL well beyond the usual room- or tent-based immersive facilities common in academia and corporations. These typically offer three to seven projectors and, at best, simple Dolby surround audio. The IEL offers three far more sophisticated spaces at this scale, in addition to the centrepiece immersive LED wall and ceiling. Just like Outernet, all these spaces operate as a single visual canvas, combined with an 83-channel spatial audio soundscape, all underpinned by custom software developed in-house by the Lab team. More importantly, we have also developed the easy-to-use, custom immersive Apps presented in this introduction so that everyone can easily access and use this advanced technology.

Technology is only as strong as the model behind it. Many immersive facilities remain largely unused — not because the technology fails, but because the gap between the technology, its users, and learning never closes. Technician-mediated spaces, disconnected from content, booking, and learning infrastructure, rarely deliver. The IEL is built on a decade of operational expertise developed in the CAT LAB, designed from the ground up to close that gap: the platform that manages your booking also hosts your content, templates, and tutorials; the team that built the IEL and made it easy to use, and are the same people that keep it running.

We are not starting from scratch. The infrastructure, the skills, and the operational model are already in place. The IEL is designed to be useful from the start — and to become more so every year.

IEL by Numbers and UK firsts
  • Largest LED volume in UK higher education — 30 metres wide by 3 metres high
  • First acoustically transparent LED ceiling in the UK
  • First fully transformable immersive pods in a UK university
  • 751 individually energy-managed LED panels, arranged as 18 direct-view surfaces
  • 23 4K projectors, with eight static and five dynamic projection surfaces
  • 83 channels of immersive audio across the Theatre and three Pods
  • 30 environmental sensor nodes and custom Building Management System monitoring and controlling conditions and minimising energy use throughout the Lab
1.3

The spaces

The IEL provides four bookable immersive spaces and a sibling Virtual Production Studio at P1 level, for use by WBS students and colleagues. All spaces are bookable through the Lab web platform, Monday to Friday, 10:00–13:00 and 14:00–17:00. The Immersive Theatre is prioritised for larger group teaching. The Pods are reconfigurable, combining into larger spaces as needed, with spatial audio automatically adapting to keep you immersed.

Immersive Theatre
The centrepiece of the IEL. A continuous curved LED wall thirty metres wide and three metres high, extending into an LED ceiling overhead — a single visual field at a resolution and scale available nowhere else in the UK. Forty-three channels of spatial audio allow object-based sound to be positioned with pinpoint precision anywhere in three-dimensional space.
Capacity 36 people
Display 17K × 2K LED wall + ceiling
Audio 43-channel spatial audio, 70 speakers
Booking Request form
Single Pod
Intimate and focused — ideal for individual and small group work, design reviews, and VR sessions. Pods can be used as safe areas for VR headsets, allowing you to experience a virtual environment while standing and moving freely.
Pod diagram — coming soon
Capacity 3 people
Display 4× 4K walls + 2K floor
Audio 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos
Booking Lab web platform
Double Pod
Two pods combined into a versatile group space — well-suited to seminars, workshops, collaborative sessions, and field trip debriefs. The reconfigured spatial audio adapts automatically to the larger footprint, keeping the experience fully immersive.
Pod diagram — coming soon
Capacity 7 people
Display 5× 4K walls + 4K floor
Audio 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos
Booking Lab web platform
Triple Pod
Three pods combined — the largest pod configuration and a natural seminar environment. Structured group activity and collaborative project work all suit this space.
Pod diagram — coming soon
Capacity 15 people
Display 7× 4K walls + 6K floor
Audio 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos
Booking Lab web platform
VP Studio sibling space
A separate immersive space at P1 level, configured for film and media production, immersive reviews, and virtual production workflows.
Capacity 20 people
Display 4K LED wall
Booking Request form
VR Headsets standalone immersive
Virtual reality headsets expand the IEL beyond fixed screens — bringing individual immersive experience to any space in the Lab or beyond. Use them within the Pods as safe areas for solo or small-group VR, or deploy them via trolleys for larger group sessions in the Theatre or elsewhere in the University.
Capacity From 1 to 40
Display Quest 3 and Pico
Booking Lab web platform
02
Part Two
The Immersive Learning Suite
2.1

How the Apps work

The Immersive Learning Suite is the key to making the IEL immediately accessible to everyone, regardless of your previous technical skills or experience. Each App takes a familiar type of content — images, slides, data, 360° video, 3D models — and delivers it to the immersive space at the correct resolution, geometry, and scale, handling all the technical complexity invisibly. The result is not a conventional format on a bigger screen, but something tailor-made for immersive scale — without the usual complexity, and without the usual friction.

The Lab web platform is the spine that makes all of this work. Register once, upload your content from your own device before your session, and it will be waiting for you when you arrive — correctly formatted, at the right resolution, ready to display. No unfamiliar operating systems. No USB sticks, adapters, or last-minute technical problems. No need to wait for the Lab team to deal with routine session setup. The platform handles everything between your content and the wall, so that when you walk into the space, your only job is to teach.

The Apps are organised by accessibility — from the simplest, which you can use in your first session without any prior experience, to those that reward deeper investment and more ambitious content. All are self-service. Each comes with a Quick Start Guide — a short, step-by-step resource that gets you to your first session in under thirty minutes. As your confidence grows, each App develops through a series of UpSkills — structured capability extensions that you pick up in your own time, at your own pace, building from simple to sophisticated without ever having to start over.

For ideas that go further — experiences that require specialist support to design and build them — there is a separate, equally straightforward Commissioning process, described in full in Part Three.

Every App launches in its simplest form and develops over time, shaped by use. If you find a better way to use an App than anything described here, tell us. We will share it with others, credit you for it, and build it into what the App becomes.

2.2

Every App works the same way

Learn the controls once, and you already know them in every App. The same tools, the same interaction, the same progression — regardless of whether you are working with images, slides, 360° environments, or data.

Scenes. Every session is a sequence of Scenes — one image gallery, one slide canvas, one 360° environment, one data view. You move between Scenes using transport controls: Previous, Next, and Autoplay. Every App works this way.

Guide and Explore. Every session runs in one of two modes. In Guide mode — the default — Scenes advance in the order you intended, and you are in control. In Explore mode, anyone in the room can navigate independently, revisiting Scenes in any order. The same session serves both a taught class and a self-directed review.

Annotations. Text labels — or richer media — pinned to specific points in a Scene. They are your voice in the space: directing attention, providing context, asking the questions students should be thinking about. Toggle them on and off with a single click.

Hotspots. Points of interest that reward the student who looks closely. A pulsing marker in the scene — click it to reveal information: text, an image, a short video, or an audio file.

Navigation. Arrows placed in a Scene that take you to another Scene when clicked — including Scenes from a different App. At its most sophisticated, it enables branching experiences where students make choices and follow different paths through the material.

Sound. Every Scene can carry an audio file — ambient sound, narration, music — that plays automatically when the Scene is displayed. A persistent sound control is always available.

App 01

Instant Pin-Up

● Available September 2026

Experience all your work at once, at scale.

Instant Pin-Up is the simplest way to bring your work into the immersive space. Students submit their work directly to the Lab platform before the session — the App handles the rest, arranging everything across the full arc of the space automatically, in vivid colour and high resolution. All the work, visible to everyone in the room, at the same time — the difference between presenting work and inhabiting it.

Moving through the space — following a line of argument across the wall, stepping back to take it all in — turns looking into something more active. Select your space from the platform, choose your images, and the App calculates the layout automatically, scaling and arranging everything to fill the wall correctly for the space you have booked. When you are ready for the next collection, a single click replaces everything on the wall, instantly. Labels — student names, project titles, module codes — can be added individually or imported from a spreadsheet. Please share what you discover — we will share it with others and build it into what the App becomes.

  • Poster reviews and competitions — no printing required
  • Business plan and pitch reviews — all proposals visible simultaneously
  • Campaign concept reviews in marketing, PR, and communications
  • Comparative analyses — financial models, policy proposals, design options side by side
  • End-of-year showcases and group project crits
  1. Follow the Quick Start Guide on the Lab web platform
  2. Students submit their work to the platform — files are named and organised automatically
  3. Select your space and choose your images — the App arranges them on the wall
  4. Book your space and walk in
IMMERSIVE THEATRE · 17K × 2K A. PATEL · STRATEGIC DESIGN J. CHEN · MKTG 4102 S. WILLIAMS · BRAND STRATEGY M. OKONKWO · FIN 3201 L. GARCIA · DATA VIZ R. HASSAN · REAL ESTATE 2026 GUIDE EXPLORE
App 02

Super-Slides

● Available September 2026

Envelop your audience with slides 30 metres wide.

Super-Slides is a presentation App built specifically for the IEL — a continuous canvas up to thirty metres wide and three metres high. Design your slides at this scale from the outset, and your audience can move through them, orient themselves within them, and read them at their own pace. At thirty metres wide, a single slide can hold what ten conventional slides cannot.

Super-Slides works best when the format is considered from the beginning, not added at the end. Select your space from the platform — the correct canvas loads automatically, already sized to the exact geometry of your chosen space. No templates to download, no resolution calculations to make. Start with a single canvas at QSG level, and as your confidence grows, build sequences of Scenes, add Annotations and Hotspots, link Scenes with navigation, and combine Super-Slides with other Apps in a single session. The most powerful sessions will be ones where the content was designed to deserve the space — and the space made the content more than it could have been on a conventional screen.

  • Design a strategy session where the competitive landscape, market data, and scenario options are all visible simultaneously across the wall — no scrolling, no switching slides
  • Present a financial model or investment case at a scale where the whole structure is legible at once
  • Create a timeline spanning the full width of the wall — a market's evolution, a project's development, a sector's transformation
  • Display a comparative case study where two or three companies, markets, or policy options sit side by side across the arc
  • Use the full width for a student presentation where the format itself raises the standard of the work
  1. Follow the Quick Start Guide on the Lab web platform
  2. Select your space — the canvas loads at the correct geometry automatically
  3. Build your composition — add images, video, and text using the platform tools
  4. Upload your content and book your space
  5. Walk in
SUPER-SLIDES · IMMERSIVE THEATRE + Add Scene GUIDE EXPLORE
App 03

360 Player

● Available September 2026

Be anywhere. Without leaving the room.

360 Player transforms the IEL into any location on earth — or beyond it. Load a sequence of 360° images or videos, arrange them in order, and the Lab becomes an immersive journey through places that would otherwise be impossible to bring into a teaching session. A market, a construction site, a case study context — experienced rather than described.

Bringing a place into the room changes what students can say about it. A market you have stood inside, a construction site you have moved through, a case study context you have inhabited — these are understood differently from a location described in text or shown in a photograph. The experience of being somewhere, even virtually, leaves a different kind of knowledge.

The Lab's professional 360° library grows continuously — 17K ultra-high resolution, 16K panoramic, 12K anamorphic, Matterport spatial scans, and LiDAR captures. If the location you need isn't there, you can borrow one of our Insta360 cameras and shoot it yourself, or submit a production request for the Lab team to capture it for you.

As you develop your session, you can add Annotations to direct attention, Hotspots to reward curiosity, and navigation arrows to link locations — or to connect your 360° Scenes to other Apps in a single session.

  • Place students inside a retail environment, logistics facility, or construction site before the case study begins — experienced rather than described
  • Bring a market entry context into the room — the street, the store, the city — for a group to inhabit before the analysis starts
  • Take a group on a virtual site visit to a development, a venue, or a location central to the session's content
  • Use 360° footage from a field trip as a shared reference point for the whole cohort — including those who couldn't attend
  • Place students in the context of a real decision — the boardroom, the factory floor, the negotiating table — before exploring what happened there
  1. Follow the Quick Start Guide on the Lab web platform
  2. Choose your content — select from the 360° library, borrow an Insta360 camera, or submit a production request for the Lab team to capture it for you
  3. Arrange your Scenes in sequence on the platform
  4. Upload your content and book your space
  5. Walk in
360 PLAYER · TRIPLE POD RETAIL FRONTAGE Primary entry — 8.4m clearance INTERIOR → ANNOTATIONS COST DATA STREET · 1/4 GUIDE EXPLORE
App 04

Open Canvas

◌ Coming January 2027

Create together, all around the room.

Open Canvas turns every surface in the IEL into a shared digital whiteboard. Begin with a blank canvas and let the session develop organically — or seed it in advance with frameworks, provocations, and reference material for students to respond to. The whole group works simultaneously, anywhere on the wall.

Open Canvas makes group work spatial. A Business Model Canvas, a competitive landscape map, a stakeholder analysis — built collaboratively by the whole group, at the scale of the room, in real time. What typically lives in a slide or a shared document becomes something the group can physically navigate, discuss at its edges, and revise together. The experience of building something at this scale changes how groups engage with the material they are producing.

Open Canvas is in development. Register your interest via the Lab web platform — expressions of interest shape what we build and in what order.

  • Run a live strategy workshop — competitive analysis, SWOT mapping, scenario planning — built collaboratively by the whole group across the wall
  • Use a Business Model Canvas or similar framework at immersive scale, with the whole cohort contributing simultaneously
  • Map a customer journey, a supply chain, or a stakeholder landscape together — spatially, at a scale where the whole system is visible at once
  • Use it as a live ideation space for a consultancy challenge, a pitch preparation session, or a design brief
  • Seed it with a provocation — a dataset, a case, a question — and let the group respond spatially around the room
OPEN CANVAS · IMMERSIVE THEATRE · LIVE SESSION OPPORTUNITIES THREATS STRATEGIC RESPONSE RESOURCES NEEDED PORTER'S FIVE FORCES PARTICIPANTS LIVE
App 05

Immersive Data

◌ Coming January 2027

Stop seeing data, start seeing patterns.

Immersive Data renders datasets across the full display surface of any IEL space — financial models, market analyses, urban data, environmental metrics — at a scale that changes what you can see. Relationships invisible in a spreadsheet become legible when they span the room. Patterns emerge that sustained analysis alone might never surface.

This is not data visualisation in the conventional sense. It is data at architectural scale — an environment you move through and read spatially rather than a chart you interpret from a distance. Insight that previously required sustained analytical effort becomes immediate. The understanding you develop from standing in front of a dataset that fills your entire field of vision differs from the understanding you build from a screen.

Immersive Data is in development. Register your interest via the Lab web platform — expressions of interest shape what we build and in what order.

  • Render a financial model or portfolio analysis across the full wall — multiple datasets visible simultaneously for cohort discussion
  • Display macroeconomic indicators across time and geography — trends, correlations, and anomalies that reward spatial reading
  • Bring an environmental or sustainability dataset to life at a scale that makes the argument without words
  • Use live or near-live data feeds — market prices, sensor readings, operational metrics — as the basis for a real-time group analysis
  • Map the complexity of a supply chain, an organisation, or a sector in a way that only makes sense when the whole system is visible at once
IMMERSIVE DATA · DOUBLE POD · LIVE FEED 25 50 75 MARKET INDEX 98.4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 FTSE Index Portfolio A Portfolio B PORTFOLIO RETURN +14.2% YTD · LIVE FEED SECTOR EXPOSURE TECH FIN ENERGY PROP GUIDE EXPLORE
App 06

3D Explorer

◌ Coming 2027

Bring people inside your models, at habitable scale.

3D Explorer brings three-dimensional models into the IEL at the scale they were designed to inhabit. A building, a product, an urban development — loaded into the App — becomes an environment your group can move through, discuss, and critique together. At architectural scale, what was a representation becomes a place.

At architectural scale, the conversation around a model changes. Details easy to overlook on a screen become impossible to miss. Proportions that look right in a drawing reveal themselves differently at the scale of the real thing. The understanding you take away from the room differs from the understanding you brought in.

3D Explorer is in development. You can bring your own model, choose from the Lab's growing Model Library, or submit a production request for the Lab team to build one for you. Register your interest via the Lab web platform — expressions of interest shape what we build and in what order.

  • Walk a group through a development site, a building proposal, or a spatial design at the scale it will actually exist — before it is built
  • Use a city-scale urban model as the context for a planning, policy, or investment discussion — navigated together as a group
  • Review a construction or infrastructure project at a scale where structural relationships and spatial consequences are immediately legible
  • Bring a product design or prototype into the space at full scale for a group critique before manufacture
  • Explore a heritage building, a landscape, or a site of professional interest that would otherwise be inaccessible
3D EXPLORER · SINGLE POD · MODEL LIBRARY GLAZING SPECIFICATION Triple-glaze · U-value 0.8 W/m²K FIRST FLOOR → GROUND FLOOR FIRST FLOOR ROOF TERRACE RETAIL UNIT · 1/3 GUIDE EXPLORE
03
Part Three
Commissions
3.1

When you need
something more

The Immersive Learning Suite is designed to give you everything you need to create powerful immersive sessions independently — and as your confidence and ambition grow, the Apps themselves develop with you. For the great majority of teaching needs, the Apps are enough. Commissions are for a small number of special cases: experiences that genuinely require specialist skills to build — a fully authored business case study, a real-time branching scenario, a custom environment built around a specific research question. The process exists not to create a queue, but to direct the decision where it belongs: to the budget-holder who can resource it properly. The Lab team will always tell you honestly whether a Commission is the right route, or whether an App can achieve the same outcome.

3.2

Types of Commission

Spatial Narrative
A sequenced, authored immersive experience combining 360° content, spatial audio, data, and game engine elements into a coherent journey through a subject, a place, or a set of ideas. The primary application is the custom business case study — placing students inside the context of a decision rather than reading about it afterwards. At its best, a Spatial Narrative makes the difference between learning about something and learning within it.
Immersive Simulation
A decision-based environment in which participants make choices and experience consequences in real time. They are not watching a scenario unfold — they are inside it, and what happens next depends on what they do. This is the form of immersive experience with the strongest and most established pedagogical case. The evidence that active, consequential decision-making in a simulated environment produces different and deeper learning than passive observation is substantial.
Authored Experience
A fully produced immersive environment built to research or professional standard, with a bespoke development pipeline and a specific purpose. INSEAD's VR-based business simulations are a useful reference point for the ambition of this form. Our role is to create equivalent — and more powerful — experiences for use by groups in our immersive spaces, rather than individuals in headsets. Every Authored Experience joins the permanent Experience Library.

These are illustrations, not a menu. If your idea goes beyond them, please propose it.

3.3

Route to Production

01
Expression of Interest
A short form on the Lab web platform. Tell us what you want students to experience — not a technical specification, but a clear statement of the learning outcome. What should students be able to do, understand, or decide differently as a result? All expressions of interest are logged and acknowledged, whether or not they proceed immediately to development.
02
Scoping
The Lab team reviews your expression of interest and, where the idea is feasible and appropriate, arranges a scoping conversation. We explore what the Commission requires, what it will take to build, and what it will cost in Lab team time. We produce a brief scoping note — a clear, jargon-free summary — that you can take to your budget holder with confidence.
03
Budget Approval
The scoping note goes to the relevant budget holder for a resourcing decision. The Lab team provides the information and the cost; those with the budget decide what gets built. We are transparent about what things cost and why. If a Commission cannot be resourced immediately, it joins the queue and we will return to it.
04
Development Agreement
A brief agreement confirming the scope, the timeline, the Lab team's responsibilities, and the academic's responsibilities at the Integration stage. Work begins when the agreement is signed. The academic's role does not end at commissioning — integration into the curriculum is always the academic's responsibility.

All expressions of interest are logged — approved, in progress, or pending. This helps us understand where demand is strongest, sequence our development work accordingly, and build the evidence base for what the IEL needs to grow. You will receive an acknowledgement on submission.

04
Part Four
Getting Started
4.1

Before September —
the pre-opening programme

You do not have to wait for September to begin. A structured programme runs from July through to the formal opening, designed so that colleagues arrive at opening day already familiar with the Apps, with content prepared, and with a clear sense of what the space can do for their teaching.

July — 360 Video Production and App Support
The first sessions focus on content creation. In dedicated workshops, the Lab team introduces you to shooting 360 video on Insta360 cameras — what makes good 360 content for the IEL, how to shoot it, and how to bring it into the App. Alongside the workshops, App Support sessions run through July and August so you can begin building and annotating your content using the Preview Apps at your own pace, on your own device, before you set foot in the Lab.
End of August — Soft Opening for Colleagues
The Lab opens for colleagues before students arrive. This is the moment the preparation becomes real. Bring the footage you have shot and the content you have built in the Apps — and see how it looks on the actual immersive spaces. Adjust your 360 environments. Review your annotations at scale on the wall. Refine your session until it is ready. Colleagues who come through the Soft Opening arrive at the start of teaching not just aware of the IEL, but already working in it.

Session dates and booking are available on the Lab web platform.

4.2

From idea
to experience

Immersive learning is genuinely new territory, and there are some things worth bearing in mind about immersive content. It is important to have a clear sense of what students should experience, not just what they should learn; content needs to be created at the right level of ambition for the time available, and it requires careful integration into the curriculum so that the experience has somewhere meaningful to land.

Ideation
The most open and creative part of the process — and the one where everyone has something to contribute. The question to start with is not what content you want to cover, but what you want students to experience.

What should they be able to do, understand, or decide differently as a result? The Lab web platform provides worked examples, use case suggestions, and Quick Start Guides to help ground ideas in what is actually possible. All ideas are welcome. We are inventing the content for this medium together, and the most powerful ideas will come from people who know their subject deeply and bring that expertise to bear on what immersive learning can do within it. Your subject knowledge is the essential ingredient — the medium is new territory for all of us.

Creation
Where the idea becomes an experience. For Apps, creation is self-service — you build your content using the platform tools, and the App handles the immersive formatting.

A Lab Assistant will be on hand for your first session if you need support. For Commissions, the Lab team leads the creative and technical development — game engine work, immersive audio design, real-time rendering, 360° production — with the academic providing the subject matter expertise and learning outcomes that give the experience its purpose.

Integration
Immersive sessions introduce some practical considerations worth thinking through in advance. Group sizes, timetabling, student preparation, and the relationship to assessment all benefit from a little more planning than a conventional session.

Students who know what they are about to experience — and why — tend to get more from it. Sessions that connect explicitly to what comes before and after in the module tend to land more deeply. None of this is complicated, but it is worth building in from the start.

4.3

The Lab web platform

Everything begins with the Lab web platform. Register once, and you have access to everything — Quick Start Guides, templates, content libraries, booking, and the expression of interest process for Commissions. Upload your content before your session, book your space, and it will be waiting for you when you arrive. Getting started takes minutes. What you do with it is up to you.

Register
Create your Lab account before your first session. Registration gives you access to everything on the platform — Quick Start Guides, templates, content libraries, booking, and the expression of interest process. It takes a few minutes and only needs to be done once.
Quick Start Guides
The fastest route to your first session. Each App has its own Quick Start Guide — a short, step-by-step resource covering everything you need to prepare and run your session. Start here, every time.
Templates
Space-specific starting points for every App, formatted correctly for each configuration — Single Pod, Double Pod, Triple Pod, and Immersive Theatre. Select your space and the platform loads the correct canvas automatically — no downloads required.
Content Libraries
The Lab's growing collection of professional 360° content — 17K ultra-high resolution, 16K panoramic, 12K anamorphic, Matterport spatial scans, and LiDAR captures — alongside the Model Library for 3D Explorer. High-quality immersive material available from day one.
Expressions of Interest
The starting point for Commissions, production requests, and feature requests — all through the same simple form. Every submission is logged and acknowledged. The expressions of interest we receive shape what we build, what we capture, and what we develop next.
Booking
Book any immersive space through the platform, Monday to Friday, 10:00–13:00 and 14:00–17:00. Check availability, manage your sessions, and plan ahead. The Immersive Theatre is prioritised for larger group teaching — book early.
4.4

Availability roadmap

What is available at opening and how the offer develops. Use this to plan your involvement.

CategoryJuly – August 2026September 2026Early 20272027 onwards
AppsPreview Apps available: 360 Player, Instant Pin-Up, Super-Slides. Release Apps from 26 August.Instant Pin-Up, 360 Player, Super-SlidesOpen Canvas, Immersive Data3D Explorer; all Apps developing through regular releases
Training & Support360 Video Production workshops (July). App Support sessions (July – August).App Support sessions continue
Soft OpeningLab open for colleagues from late August — test and refine your content before teaching begins.
CommissionsExpression of Interest process openFirst Commissions in developmentExperience Library growing
Libraries360° content catalogue availableModel Library in developmentBoth libraries expanding continuously
VRHeadsets available in Pods and via trolleys
4.5

A note on
this Introduction

This Introduction is the start of something, not a final product — it will grow as the medium grows. The best uses of the IEL haven't been discovered yet — and when you find one, please tell us, so we can share it with others. What this facility becomes is up to everyone who uses it. We look forward to exploring it with you.

If you are reading this ahead of September, Part Four outlines the pre-opening programme — the workshops, App Support sessions, and Soft Opening that are the first steps in the journey.

Advance Preview

Try the apps
now

Three apps are available to explore as Preview releases — 360 Player, Instant Pin-Up, and Super-Slides. These are working previews for testing and learning, not final products. Try them, experiment with the controls, and tell us what you think. Preview Apps are available from 26 June 2026. Full release is planned for September 2026.