We are pleased to introduce the first Open Issue of the International Journal of Creative Media Research since its relaunch in 2025, an important milestone that reconnects the journal with the ethos on which it was founded.

This edition reaffirms our commitment to openness as both a scholarly principle and a creative orientation: a space where ideas, practices, and forms of enquiry can encounter one another freely, without the constraints of narrow disciplinary expectations.

In bringing this issue together, our aim has been to honour the original IJCMR’s promise to hold open a place for work that is exploratory, reflective, boundary-crossing, and rooted in the diverse realities of creative media today. The contributions gathered here reflect the vitality of a field that continues to evolve in response to emerging technologies, shifting cultural contexts, and the expanding possibilities of practice-based and practice-led research.

Rather than defining a single theme, this Open Issue embraces multiplicity—inviting research that is rigorous in method, imaginative in form, and attentive to the changing conditions of creative production. As we present this edition, we celebrate the writers, makers, and thinkers who continue to expand what creative media research can be, and we renew our commitment to keeping IJCMR an open, independent, and generative space for the field.