CIIIC Start

CIIIC Start is de kleinschalige, verkennende regeling binnen CIIIC voor praktijkgericht onderzoek naar immersive experiences (IX). Met korte projecten kunnen consortia snel nieuwe onderzoeksrichtingen verkennen, hypotheses testen en samenwerkingen opbouwen, vaak als opstap naar een groter CIIIC Kern-project.

Wat is CIIIC Start?

CIIIC Start maakt het mogelijk om met een beperkte investering en in korte tijd te onderzoeken of een idee of onderzoeksrichting kansrijk is. De regeling is bedoeld om nieuwe vragen te verkennen voordat ze worden opgeschaald naar een langer en grootschaliger traject, en om partijen die nog niet eerder samenwerkten met elkaar in contact te brengen.

Voor wie is CIIIC Start bedoeld?

De regeling richt zich op onderzoekers van hogescholen en universiteiten, immersieve makers en publieke organisaties die samen een eerste, verkennend onderzoek willen uitvoeren. Net als bij CIIIC Kern wordt de aanvraag ingediend door een onderzoeker die verbonden is aan een hoger-onderwijsinstelling.

Wat financiert de regeling?

Per project is een subsidie van €50.000 beschikbaar voor een kortlopend verkennend onderzoek. De eigen bijdrage van de partners bedraagt 25% van de totale projectkosten, lager dan bij CIIIC Kern. Het beschikbare budget en de exacte voorwaarden worden per indieningsronde vastgesteld.

Aanvragen en uitvoering

CIIIC Start kent meerdere indieningsrondes. De regeling wordt uitgevoerd door Regieorgaan SIA; daar vind je de volledige call-tekst, voorwaarden en aanvraagprocedure van de actuele ronde. Bekijk de edities hieronder voor de actuele en eerdere indieningsrondes.

Tijdlijn

Edities van CIIIC Start

Overzicht van alle rondes en hun status.

Start Indieningsronde januari 2026

Afgerond

Opening: 30 september 2025

Deadline: 20 januari 2026

Budget €1.000.000

Per project €50.000

Gehonoreerd 10 projecten

Bekijk gehonoreerde projecten

CIIIC Start 2

Verwacht

Opening: 1 december 2026

Deadline: 1 maart 2027

Meer informatie

CIIIC Start 3

Verwacht

Opening: 1 april 2027

Deadline: 1 november 2027

Meer informatie

Nieuws

Nieuws over CIIIC Start

Verwant

Verwante regelingen

PRO Binnenkort

PRO

Meerjarig praktijkgericht onderzoek gericht op het ontwikkelen van kennis en handelingsperspectieven om toepassingen van IX te verbeteren en uit te breiden.

Regieorgaan SIA €3.500.000

Kern Binnenkort

CIIIC Kern

Vraaggestuurd praktijkgericht onderzoek naar immersive experiences. Consortia van hogescholen en bedrijven werken samen aan onderzoeksvragen uit de praktijk.

Regieorgaan SIA €5.000.000

ADRIE Binnenkort

ADRIE

Artistiek en ontwerpend onderzoek in immersive experiences. Voor kunstenaars, ontwerpers en creatieve professionals die de grenzen van IX verkennen.

Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie €6.750.000

Bekijk alles in Actielijn 1

Gehonoreerde projecten

Projecten via Start

Gehonoreerde projecten binnen deze regeling

Towards a Common Language for Immersive Experiences: a Cross-Sector Exploration of Concepts and Measurement

The immersive industry is rapidly expanding across sectors, formats, and technologies. However, this growth has resulted in a highly diverse and fragmented landscape in which creators, venues, and producers operate with different assumptions and vocabularies. No universally accepted definition of immersion exists, nor is there a clear hierarchy among related concepts such as presence, engagement, and flow that are relevant to immersive experiences. Distinct “use themes” also emerge and overlap across sector without a coherent theoretical or terminological foundation. This fragmentation complicates collaboration, slows innovation, and limits the transfer of insights and technologies across domains, which dampens the potential to scale existing use cases to realize their full impact potential. The National Growth Fund programme CIIIC positions immersive experiences (IX) as a catalyst for innovation and societal value creation. Achieving this ambition requires a shared language and conceptual foundation . This project addresses this need by exploring and synthesising existing knowledge, infrastructure and use cases across domains to constitute a common cross-sectoral conceptual understanding and framework of IX. To ensure meaningful comparison, the project focuses on domains where IX function as intentional experiential interventions rather than purely technical demonstrations. The project consists of three components: (1) mapping how IX are defined, applied, and studied across fields through exploratory interviews; (2) conducting co-creation sessions with creators, academics, contextual partners and societal stakeholders to identify shared terminology and develop a conceptual framework; and (3) exploring suitable methods for measuring IX quality and societal impact, including conditions for responsible use. The project will deliver a shared conceptual framework, guidelines for responsible IX evaluation, and an incubator for establishing a sustainable IX stakeholder network. These outcomes will strengthen the Dutch IX ecosystem and lay the foundation that aims to shift resources from largely small-scale fragmented exploratory initiatives towards scaling IX interventions for societal impact.

Enhancing Authentic Learning in Primary Care: Real-Time Immersive Experiences in Family Medicine Clerkships

Primary care in the Netherlands faces a growing mismatch between demand and workforce capacity: while the need for Family Medicine (FM) is rising due to population growth and ageing, fewer graduates choose FM and many current practitioners are reducing or ending their practice. In 2024, about 60% of FM practices stopped accepting new patients, and around 1 in 20 people are seeking or changing family physicians, with shortages expected to worsen (Rekenkamer, 2025). This also limits the availability of FM training placements, threatening the future workforce (Van Dijk, 2011; Onderzoeksrapport Extramurale capaciteit, 2025). This project introduces IX by applying Virtual Clinical Experiences (VCE™) into Dutch FM clerkships; an approach that has shown strong results in the UK but has not yet been implemented in Dutch medical education. VCE™ allows students to participate in real patient consultations live via secure audiovisual technology, enabling multiple learners to be supervised simultaneously without increasing workload for individual practices (Gomez, 2024, 2025). We will use design-based research to develop, test, and improve this new IX training model in close collaboration with students, educators, and FM practices, by learning what works and what does not, and refining it while systematically measuring educational quality, feasibility, and supervision load. The novelty of this project lies in being the first to adapt and embed IX within Dutch Family Medicine undergraduate training, creating a new form of digitally supported workplace learning that fits the Dutch healthcare context. By expanding training capacity without increasing pressure on practices, the project aims to improve learning outcomes and increase students’ interest in FM as a career. If successful, this scalable model can also be applied to other clerkships and specialty training programmes, contributing to a more sustainable primary-care workforce in the Netherlands.

GausScape: Evaluating 3D Gaussian Splatting for Spatial Understanding in Greenhouse Environments

Commercial greenhouses are spatially complex systems of systems, that integrate technical infrastructure, with strict operational constraints in terms of access, safety, and/or maintenance. Thus, accurate spatial understanding is essential for tasks such as navigation and technical inspection. In practice, growers, engineers, and sellers frequently rely on photographs or videos when accessing greenhouse information remotely. Prior research shows that such 2D representations often fail to convey depth, and scale, leading to misinterpretations of layouts and operational constraints. Recent advances in 3D reconstruction offer potential alternatives. In particular, 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), which generates photorealistic, view-dependent 3D representations from multi-view photographs. Compared to conventional mesh-based reconstructions, 3DGS preserves visual detail to a greater extent. As a result, 3DGS is being increasingly adopted for 3D representation-applications for practical uses. Yet, its actual contribution to users’ spatial understanding has not yet been empirically validated. This lack of empirical evidence creates a knowledge gap relating to the responsible use of immersive technologies in horticulture, specifically when assessing how 3D representations support spatial understanding of greenhouse systems compared to 2D representations (e.g., videos or photos). Accordingly, this project treats immersive realism as a variable to be critically examined rather than a goal in itself. To ensure methodological independence and avoid technology self-validation, the study is structured around a clear separation of roles. Splatto Works contributes real-world greenhouse cases and 3D representations. The experimental design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation are led by the Social Creative Technologies Lab at Wageningen University. Aryzon provides virtual world building expertise, enabling the creation of consistent high-quality 3DGS datasets. This separation ensures that findings are evidence-driven, and reproducible in other domains.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Exploring the Potential of VR for Decolonial Storytelling

This project investigates how scenario writers can responsibly create cinematic Virtual Reality (VR) stories about colonial histories and their contemporary impact, with the aim of contributing to societal reflection, historical awareness, and more inclusive understandings of shared pasts. VR offers powerful opportunities for engaging broad audiences with difficult topics, such as injustice and oppression (e.g. Dunivan, et al., 2024). Next to this, it also carries significant ethical risks: experiences can slip into exposing, appropriation or voyeurism, overwhelm users emotionally, place audiences in positions of unintended complicity. Within this context the complexity of working with VR is both in its technical possibilities and complexity, and in accountable and responsible writing. The project therefore opens up the world of cinematic VR by developing knowledge and tools that help writers navigate both technical and storytelling challenges while safeguarding values such as inclusivity, accessibility, emotional safety, cultural sensitivity, and agency. Using Participatory Action Research (PAR), the project brings together writers, VR creators, heritage institutions, cultural organizations, and researchers in a collaborative workshop series about decolonial storytelling. These sessions act as creative research laboratories in which narrative ideas are tested, ethical tensions surface, and participants collectively reflect on how immersive stories influence perception, embodiment, and audience positioning. By centring writers’ dilemmas rather than user outcomes, the project addresses a crucial yet underexplored stage of immersive production: narrative decisions that determine whether public values are upheld or compromised. Partners— Stichting SKLNE, Stichting West, KB Nationale Bibliotheek, Nationaal Archief, Studio Biarritz—ensure that the project integrates diverse professional perspectives on cultural heritage, decolonial practices, artistic innovation, and responsible technology use. Their involvement guarantees that public values are examined not only theoretically but through real-world creative processes. The project culminates in a publicly accessible toolkit for writers and writing rooms offering narrative principles, ethical guidelines, and practical strategies.

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