We applied for the Booster services to develop a structured pathway for the exploitation of research outputs from Isabella’s Flight. We were curious to explore whether our project could have a life beyond the artistic research context, but we weren’t yet sure what that might look like.
Booster supports EU-funded projects across a wide range of fields, helping research results find their way into practical, real-world applications. From health and sustainability to security and digital innovation, Booster helps researchers and their projects go beyond generating knowledge and ideas to making real and tangible impact. This was particularly true for Isabella’s Flight, an innovative research project at UCLouvain that aims to blend traditional puppetry with cutting-edge drone technology. By collaborating with Booster, Isabella's Flight demonstrated that even artistic and performance-based research can identify unique market opportunities and achieve tangible exploitation, inspiring others to explore the potential of their diverse research.
Bridging artistic research and real-world application
Isabella's Flight looks to redefine storytelling by using drones to animate hand-crafted puppets. The project looks at the expressive potential of drones to create characters with distinct personalities, exploring intricate construction, control techniques, and animation principles to make them lifelike and emotionally engaging. Its core narrative, a contemporary take on Commedia dell’arte, explores themes of military violence and civil resistance through the characters of Isabella and El Capitan.
Julia Zamboni explains: “Isabella’s Flight merges art and technology to animate airborne puppets using drones. The central idea is to create embodied, expressive characters in the sky, utilising humour and visual storytelling to explore themes of surveillance, resistance, and freedom.”
While it successfully pushed the boundaries of robotic performance, a crucial question emerged: how could such an innovative artistic project identify and capitalise on its unique exploitation potential?
Booster provided expert guidance, helping the project leadership refine its innovative outcomes and define clear paths for their broader application and impact. Through personalised support, Booster experts worked with the team to strengthen its strategy, ensuring that groundbreaking artistic insights didn’t just captivate audiences on stage but could also inspire new forms of engagement and value creation.
Tailored support for diverse impact
One of the biggest hurdles in EU-funded projects is ensuring research findings lead to meaningful change, especially when the output is not a traditional commercial product. Isabella’s Flight, being an artistic and research-driven production, faced specific challenges in identifying and pursuing its exploitation avenues. Booster stepped in to offer strategic mentoring and tailored recommendations on how to navigate these unique obstacles.
“Our experience with Booster was extremely valuable. The process helped us clarify our goals, reflect on the potential impact of our work, and identify concrete steps for moving forward,” says Zamboni. “We received tailored feedback that helped shape our thinking around sustainability, possible future formats, and how the project might evolve beyond its original scope, whether through further research, creative partnerships, or even new business models.”
The mentoring and strategic feedback provided by Booster experts helped the team look at everything from defining concrete implementation steps for potential new applications to identifying diverse potential users and stakeholders, helping Isabella's Flight move from performance to broader innovation.
Sustaining Isabella's Flight’s impact beyond the project
Isabella's Flight is now in a position to create a sustainable framework for ongoing artistic innovation and technological application. Even after its successful opening performance, the project continues to build on its achievements, ensuring long-term engagement between artistic creators, technologists, and potential new industries.
Zamboni states: “The project proposes a new use case for drone systems outside conventional domains, showcasing their potential for artistic and cultural expression.”
Beyond practical exploitation, the project also serves as an invitation to re-imagine the intersection of creativity and robotics in the context of public engagement and innovation. It exemplifies how EU-funded artistic research can evolve into formats that are sustainable, widely relevant, and technologically experimental.
“Take advantage of the Booster process to explore not only commercial avenues but also alternative models of sustainability and impact,” Julia advises future applicants. “Come prepared with ideas and remain open to refining them through expert feedback. Treat the experts as strategic partners: they will challenge your assumptions, sharpen your thinking, and help define practical next steps.”
Isabella’s Flight’s journey demonstrates the value of Booster’s services, provided free-of-charge, tailored to the specific project’s needs, and by a pool of experts.
About Isabella's Flight
Isabella's Flight is a research project in robotic performance from UCLouvain that combines the art of traditional puppetry with modern drone technology. Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant programme, its mission is to use drones to craft puppets with vivid storytelling capabilities.
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''Booster’s support has been transformative, allowing us to streamline our objectives and proposed solutions as well as align our vision with real-world application and needs. Their expertise in go-to-market strategies has empowered us to turn innovative concepts into actionable, scalable outcomes.''
"The [Booster] services provided invaluable assistance to the consortium by refining KERs, enhancing their applicability and usability, and outlining clear and practical exploitation paths."
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''The collaborative experience with all the involved partners was very fruitful in terms of guiding me on what was expected from Booster services. That was key to deliver a final report that covered their expectations and needs.''