RISING VR
What is RISING VR?
RISING VR is a 15-week remote learning program, designed to educate and equip students of the African Diaspora with technical and entrepreneurial skills. With a focus on design-thinking, prototyping in mixed reality and business fundamentals, participants are equipped to nurture an idea and pitch it as a market/business opportunity using VR to demo and prototype.
Project
Through RISE Arts & Community Services, we've developed curriculum and program delivery to upskill and introduce performance artists to the world of entrepreneurship by having cohorts prepare a business pitch over the course of the program. This is the fifth official year running the program.
BLM and NBA Foundation's Contribution
In the height of 2020’s Black Lives Matter global protests, Futures and Fringes partnered with R.I.S.E Edutainment to start a sub-initiative to support the technical capacity of Black youth in emerging technologies, alongside the aid of UKAI Projects and Protopia Futures.
This program was designed to empower Afro-Diasporic creators with strategic digital knowledge and capacity in identifying and understanding creative opportunities in virtual reality, leveraging their own lived experiences to support innovation within their own communities.
With partners across Toronto’s not-for-profit and Black-owned organizations and businesses, this program is led and crafted in context of the Black experience and creative practitioner.
In year 5, RISING VR garnered a $200,000 investment from NBA Foundation which supported the basketball-meets-tech curriculum during Raptors30 year in Toronto.
What We Accomplished
As founding partners of RISING VR, the 5-year initiative falls in line with our mission within creator empowerment and artist development. Our end-to-end partnership developed governance design, program and curriculum design, workshop facilitation, brand identity and partnership strategy.