What if experiencing a story could change its outcome?
Dear friends,
When we launched Agog, we were driven by a simple question: What if immersive media could help us create a more just and sustainable world? In 2024, we began exploring that question in earnest—supporting boundary-pushing projects, convening brilliant minds, and experimenting with new ways to use XR for social good.
But this is just the beginning. As we step into 2025, we’re energized by the incredible potential we’ve glimpsed and the relationships we’ve built. Together, we can turn today’s “what ifs” into tomorrow’s realities.
Read on to discover the highlights of Agog’s first year and see where we’re headed next. We’re excited to keep imagining—and building—the future with you.
Chip Giller
Co-Founder and Executive Director
What if we all spoke the same language?
Let’s start with the basics. What is all this jargon? As with any emerging technology, there isn’t just one way of referring to it. Overall, the early terms in this field describe technologies that are experiential—that work with your senses to make you feel as if you are truly experiencing, in a visceral, full-body way, what you are actually encountering through a series of screens and/or haptic feedback. Here at Agog, we prefer the term immersive media to encompass this set of technologies. Here are some other relevant definitions:
🔎 Virtual Reality (VR): Fully immersive environments that allow users to explore and interact with digital worlds, usually with a headset.
🔎 Augmented Reality (AR): Digital overlays that enhance real-world experiences using a smartphone or headset.
🔎 Mixed Reality (MR): Mixed reality combines VR and AR to allow virtual objects to interact with the real world.
🔎 Extended Reality (XR): An umbrella term for VR, AR, and MR technologies.
And let’s not forget:
What if we tried something new?
Our 2024 Checklist
✔️Experiment
✔️Partner
✔️Learn
Agog began with an ambitious vision: to harness the power of XR for social impact.
We saw an opportunity to use immersive media to inspire action, foster empathy, and create connections in ways traditional media cannot. So we dove headfirst into experimentation—seeking immersive-media experiences designed not only to drive positive change but also blow some minds along the way.
Starting a new organization in an emerging field is thrilling. In 2024, we focused on forging partnerships, piloting programs, and learning from every step. We turned curiosity into action.
What if XR for Good became the standard?
2024 Highlights
Launch
SXSW Debut: We didn’t just launch an organization at SXSW, we launched a new path for XR. Agog announced ourselves to the world at the festival with a dynamic presence that included partnerships with groups like the Immersive Experience Alliance (IXA), engaging events, and favorable media coverage, including features in The Chronicle of Philanthropy and ZDNet.
Spatial Website: As part of our debut, we unveiled Agog’s spatial brand and website—a digital experience that invites exploration in three dimensions. At launch, our website featured a WebXR experience, which progressively adapts to different devices depending on their capabilities. This allows users with XR-ready devices to explore Agog’s vision in 3D, showcasing the potential of web-based XR and our commitment to the immersive media space.
Connect and Convene
From salons and meetups to hackathons and labs, we brought together creators, technologists, and changemakers through nearly a dozen sponsored events to imagine what’s possible with XR.
Agog House, our new VR space, opened to the public offering a new venue for impact-focused experiences and conversations. The number of visits in its first two weeks rivaled those of the most popular virtual destinations.
In December, Agog co-hosted HOME: A Storytelling Lab with The Music Center in Los Angeles. This three-day working session invited XR creators, placemakers, and community leaders to imagine what Downtown LA could look like in 2085. Participants used XR tools to explore accessible public spaces, just food systems, and environmental well-being, envisioning a future that is healthy, equitable, and culturally rich. Stay tuned for a report in 2025, where we’ll share the stories, plans, and insights that emerged from the lab.
Support
In our first year we funded 26 projects, which exemplify XR for good, cultivate a diverse creator community, and introduce XR to new audiences. For example:
Anagram’s “Impulse: Playing with Reality” is a groundbreaking, award-winning MR experience that explores life with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Agog provided support for an impact campaign for “Impulse,” focused on understanding how immersive media can raise mental health awareness and spur advocacy on the issue, particularly among youth.
Electric South’s New Dimensions Lab brings together interdisciplinary artists and creative technologists from across Africa for a seven-day residency to workshop and develop non-fiction XR projects with guidance from global advisors. Agog sponsored the 2024 New Dimensions Lab, with a focus on social XR and impact storytelling.
Kinfolk empowers Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Queer communities to reclaim narratives through immersive, place-based storytelling and innovative technologies like AR. Agog is supporting the launch of a first-of-its-kind Storyteller-in-Residence program that invites talented creators to bring untold histories to life in public spaces and increase representation of historically excluded narratives through cutting-edge technology.
Whose Future? is a pilot program providing hands-on XR training to teens at the Boys and Girls Club in Harlem, New York. With Agog’s support, students participated in a three-month program where they identified personal challenges, explored change-making strategies, developed a technology-based prototype, and shared their journey and outcomes online. We are now funding instructor training to expand the program to additional locations.
OurWorlds is an AR app dedicated to sharing Indigenous narratives, histories, and languages within real-world environments. Agog is helping expand the platform and technical support, making it accessible to a wider range of Indigenous storytellers. We are also supporting the development of new XR experiences featuring primary-source narratives from communities across the United States.
Learn and Share
In a rapidly evolving technological landscape, continuous learning and open sharing of insights help democratize the use of these powerful new communications tools. Agog believes knowledge should be accessible to all, enabling more people to harness XR for social good. By demystifying immersive technology and providing practical resources, we aim to equip creators, organizations, and changemakers with the skills and confidence to integrate XR into their work and drive meaningful impact.
In 2024, we published See Your Brand in 3D, offering all groups—not just the biggest and mightiest—a playbook for spatial branding and website design. This guide provides robust, practical knowledge to help organizations apply XR effectively, particularly in web-based applications. It breaks down WebXR, explaining how immersive 3D elements can be integrated into websites to create engaging and accessible experiences.
What if we didn’t stop there?
Agog’s Plans for 2025—and Beyond
As we step into 2025, Agog is building on the momentum of our first year with a clear view of the transformative future we are working toward. We imagine a world where XR for good is a central part of the XR ecosystem—with content on par with commercial offerings. We imagine a diverse field of impact-focused creators and XR-savvy nonprofits that continues to grow and self-organize, shaping the future of XR and driving meaningful change. We imagine our support will evolve, with new funders joining us to back XR-for-good initiatives.
And our plans for the year ahead reflect these ambitious goals, including:
- Launching a Community Meetup Series: Regular gatherings in VR to connect and inspire XR creators and social changemakers.
- Deepening Grantmaking: Supporting innovative projects and fostering emerging XR talent.
- Embedding with Organizations: Helping nonprofit organizations explore XR with a new initiative that provides resources and technical assistance. Agog is currently piloting the concept with Human Rights Watch by helping it build a powerful XR experience to bring attention to a crucial human-rights challenge and what can be done about it.
- Amplifying XR Content: Ensuring groundbreaking work reaches broader audiences.
- Expanding Our Team: We’re hiring! Help us build the future of XR for social good by exploring our Jobs page.
Yup, this is just the beginning. As we look toward the upcoming year and beyond, we’re setting our sights on a future where XR drives meaningful change, inclusion is the norm, and immersive storytelling helps us reimagine and reshape our world. At the heart of this vision is the power of awe—the ability of XR to inspire wonder, open minds, and spark transformative action. By unlocking this potential, we aim to build a future that feels not only possible but profoundly hopeful.
What if we kept in touch?
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