Warren Fearn

I undertook a postgraduate course onto a MA Furniture Design at Bucks University. Afterwards, I freelanced for Pentland Centre for a few years working on a new range of female footwear fashion for production across the European market. I eventually became more involved in using 3D graphics and gained a position within Alias Wavefront learning 3D modelling and animation industry software whilst offering client support. After a period of time, I moved to become a Virtual Set Designer in the London BBC VR Studios Department, working alongside production managers, set designers and producers to create interactive 3D virtual environments for television using the latest 3D chroma keying studios. Examples include the first interactive television show Bamzooki, Match of the Day, Ski Sunday, Olympics 200, Harry Potter (The Philosopher’s Stone) etc. Eventually, I transferred into the BBC 3DFX department to concentrate more on 3D graphics and animation for post-production. My work covered programmes such as Horizon, Saturday Show, CBeebies, National Geographical Channel (Poison), etc whilst claiming several Promax awards and being nominated for an Emmy Award at the New York Festival.

After numerous year’s working in the department, I had a career change in helping to establish the DKE (Digital Knowledge Exchange) partnering with EON 3D technologies to explore opportunities for stereoscopic learning. I created education curriculum for digital practices and eventually established two ‘start-up’ companies WAKeducate and WAKStudios. These companies worked on both commercial and educational projects for WWF, SKY, DHL, FELLOWES, NHS and many more. My work helped to bridge the gap between both the industry and education sector by creating and delivering curriculum that embraced industry digital practices for NCFE and OCN accreditation in schools. I became a member of the Autodesk Secondary School Committee and advised on how the younger generation could engage through new 3D technologies. I created online curriculum for both Secondary schools in the US and USA to teach 3D graphics and animation for the Autodesk STEAM Academy website. During this time, my work ventured into using Augmented Reality and researching the potential for learning though such medium.

I joined York St John University and have undertaken roles as Head of Programme and Subject Director for Design for several years. Over the last few years, my focus has been undertaking a PhD at York University researching ‘Augmented Reality’ for teaching and learning. I continue to lecture and am now the programme leader for the Postgraduate programmes. My work continues to centre around ‘How Augmented Reality can help to bridge the gap between the classroom and remote learning’ using a service design methodology approach.