Vector Meldrew

A solarpunk universe about hacking closed systems — owned characters in a city where none of them are as strong as all of us, hand-built in 3D and handed to an audience who took it further than its makers planned.

Over five years it refused to stay in one place — a mint, a novel, a metaverse rave, a live show, a game that funds real Amazon rainforest protection, and finally a game that builds its own levels with generative AI. One community followed the whole way, and pushed it further than its makers planned.

Before social media, a website and a forum built in a bedroom became the first online home of grime, dubstep and UK garage — a room handed to a scene that had nowhere else to go, growing from 20,000 to 850,000 monthly users in its first year, and a culture that formed inside it.

The animation that grew out of it reached television, and a decade later a documentary recorded what had happened there. In 2026 that animation entered the BFI National Archive.