What is the CCD?

The Digital Creativity Center (CCD), acknowledged as one of the anchor projects of the Creative Industry Cluster in Northern Portugal, is a center of competence and creative excellence with an infrastructure equipped with cutting edge technology in the areas of Digital and Interactive Arts, Computer Music, Sound Design, Audiovisual and Cinematic Arts, Computer Animation.

The CCD integrates and promotes the following activities: Artistic Production, Research, Specialized Training, Business Incubation and Events Organization. The implementation of project?s first phase was accomplished in 2012, with the support of the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) and a starting investment of around 1 million euros in: a Motion Capture Lab, an Interactive Art Lab, a Sound Surround Mixing Studio, and Outdoor Video Projection and Production equipment.

How it is organized?

The CCD activity is focused on the following vectors:

1. Centre of Creative Expertise and Excellence:
   Including a production facility, using cutting-edge technology in Audiovisuals and Digital Arts. Articulated with the Research Center for Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR), it providing the infrastructure that enables the development of the PhD Program on Science and Technology of the Arts (starting its 6th edition, with a total of 38 students enrolled and 23 already graduated).
2. Business Incubation
   This project is a result of the creative incubation programme ARTSpin, which allows the development of innovative technological and creative business projects, and involves teachers, students and former students (even from outside of the UCP), as well as an innovative training partnership with the agency ADDICT, centered in the Master in Management for the Creative Industries.
3. Interdisciplinary Space for Creative Meeting and Convergence
   The CCD provides the resources to develop public events, namely outdoor large-scale video-mapped projection on buildings, as well as interactive multimedia installations. These public events, catalyze the inherent creativity in contemporary programs of arts and culture. In addition, it is included in this vector the organization of large impact events such as the audiovisual festival Black & White.

By means of a new paradigm of multi-disciplinary production, the CCD paves the way to the promotion of productivity and competitiveness, pushing forward the development of the creative industries in the region and in the country, while at the same time fostering the wellbeing of the community.
The CCD presents itself as high impact initiative for the development of the Creative Industries Cluster, leveraging the existing experience and the synergies that result from the cooperation with the main agents in this sector, both nationally and internationally, with a special focus on the Northern Region of Portugal.