Birmingham Open Media (BOM)

Delivering transformational digital experiences for neurodivergent people

Birmingham Open Media (BOM) is a creative technology organisation delivering socially impactful immersive experiences. Their focus is primarily on how creative innovation can unleash the potential of under-served communities and address environmental challenges.

Originally starting as a summer camp for children, BOM quickly snowballed into an established community, delivering specialised programmes and experiences for neurodivergent people.

But they soon came across a big barrier – getting neurodivergent people to their building. This is because travelling on, or being in, crowded spaces can be extremely overwhelming for those with sensory sensitivity or anxiety.

Their solution? BOM created the ‘Hidden Kingdom’ travel aide – an app that provides soundscapes along your journey. As you get close to the trigger points, it delivers audio content that includes meditation and breathing exercises, to help you arrive at your destination in a state of calm, wherever you’re headed.

Karen, the founder of BOM, hopes that the Innovate UK Inclusive Innovation Award will help them make even more improvements to this app.

“With the Inclusive Innovation grant, we’re able to bring in a data scientist and look at how we can harness machine learning to train the app to pick up on physiological changes in the user, using sensors already contained in mobile phones and smart watches.”