Written evidence submitted by AHRC Creative Communities (IGR0004)
Introduction
AHRC Creative Communities
Creative Communities is a £4.4m research investment that explores the transformative power of cross-sector collaboration for culture and inclusive innovation in devolved contexts. Funded by the AHRC and hosted by Northumbria University, the programme is developing a new evidence base on how and why culture can address regional inequality, support devolution, enable belonging and break down barriers to opportunity with communities in devolved settings across all 4 nations of the UK.
The programme has placed 5 Creative Innovation Practitioners (CIPs) in each of the 4 nations, hosted a series of UK Policy Labs, and published a national Deep Dive Report that maps for the first time the value of AHRC-funded community, co-creation and partnership working.
Community Innovation Practitioner (CIP) Awards
AHRC Creative Communities funded 5 Community Innovation Practitioners (CIPs) from September 2023 to September 2024. Located across the 4 nations of the UK, the CIPs worked with communities, third and private sector partners with the aim to generate new knowledge on how and why engaging cross-sector partners in research, and communities as research partners, can enhance the quality, resilience, and sustainability of our research ecosystem in devolved contexts.
The CIP research has generated evidence that will inform policy recommendations for funders, central UK Government, devolved administrations and Mayoral Combined Authorities, addressing themes of creative health and wellbeing; environment and just transition; place-based civic identity and belonging; community resilience and recovery; upskilling through co-creation; and place-based community heritage. A series of case studies, devolved policy papers and the Creative Communities podcast series were published in October 2024 to share their research findings.
4 Nation Policy Labs
The Policy Labs were creatively facilitated events with devolved governments, policymakers and communities that explored new ways to use culture and creativity to co-create solutions and innovate within devolved policy contexts.
Across 5 co-designed themes - belonging; civic identity; skills; health and wellbeing; and environment, the labs used culture as a lever to unlock the potential of devolved policy contexts.
Evidence from the labs will inform 4 national Policy Sprints with Mayoral Combined Authorities and nationally devolved governments in Winter 2024-25. In Spring 2025, final recommendations will be shared with UK Government, devolved governments, MCAs, funders and stakeholders.
Question Responses
1. How does the Government drive research and innovation in our regions?
Data Observatory for Devolution
Culture Connect is the first open access data observatory for culture in devolved settings.
It offers advanced place-based visualisations of national and devolved data sets relating to culture spend, participation and engagement in order to inform devolved cultural and creative industries policy making and cultural investment in Mayoral Combined Authorities and Local Authorities.
Culture Connect is funded by DCMS CSA with R&D funds with match funding from the North East Combined Authority (North East CA), and supported by a unique partnership that also involves UKRI, Arts Council England and Northumbria University.
The Culture Connect model is being shared with Bradford 2025 in the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to help the year of culture capture the multiplicity of benefits brought about by hosting City of Culture in a devolved region.
2. How does research and innovation in our regions drive growth and prosperity in those regions?
The AHRC Creative Communities programme develops the potential for culture in fostering and enabling Creative Communities across the 12 Mayoral Combined Authorities and 3 devolved nations of the UK.
The AHRC Creative Communities 2023 Deep Dive Report describes a Creative Community as a place based, cross-sector R&D collaboration that brings together diverse partners with the shared objective to generate economic and social value through the delivery of new culture activity. As a delivery mechanism for R&D, Creative Communities work to build local and regional cooperation networks of exchange, spreading models of partnership working into other professional environments.
Creative Communities with cross-sector collaboration are essential to meaningful RD&I in our regions, to drive growth and prosperity through activity occurring in local spaces like community centres, heritage or arts sites, and through new social, cultural, digital and economic networks between local industries and organisations that share similar interests. Devolved research and innovation, including through the programme’s Community Innovation Practitioners and 4 nations Policy Labs series, has developed a new evidence base, equalising opportunity to access to culture and enhancing community belonging through cross-sector delivery, ensuring locally-relevant place-making agendas.
Georgina Aasgaard, a Liverpool-based Community Innovation Practitioner, shows the vital importance of diverse partners investing in accessible cultural resources, assets, and opportunity at a local level to help address intersecting crises of isolation, mental health and wellbeing, access to opportunity and growth. Aasgaard’s research, funded by AHRC Creative Communities, profiles collaborative cross-sector investment from academia, creative practitioners, cultural institutions and the NHS working with local minoritised communities resulting in significantly enhanced wellbeing, community connectedness, skills development and strengthened social networks. In turn, this reveals potential for place-based inclusive innovation to combat the increasing pressures on local and regional services and resources.
By bringing people closer to opportunity, to gain skills, retrain, and retain talent in the regions and nations of the UK, culture is uniquely placed to generate spill-over benefits.
3. How is research and innovation diffused or supported to drive productivity and growth in the regions, wherever it may come from?
The AHRC Creative Communities programme is a major research programme funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and hosted by Northumbria University, exploring how co-created culture can enhance belonging, address regional inequality, deliver devolution, and break down barriers to opportunity with communities in devolved settings across all 4 nations of the UK.
The AHRC Creative Communities Deep Dive Report profiles for the first time the social, economic and political value of cross-sector AHRC R&D involving local communities as partners in cross-sector research, and identifies new opportunities for growth. The UK regions and nations are uniquely placed to leverage new R&D partnerships and the true potential of people and places, with the 2023 AHRC Creative Communities Deep Dive Report demonstrating that collaborative cross-sector R&D delivers new culture, creates added value and generates economic, social and cultural spill overs for research partners and wider society.
The AHCR Creative Communities programme delivery model focuses on the ways in which engaging communities and third and private sector partners in the entirety of the research cycle can bring new skills, experience, knowledge and networks to R&D and maximise our resource by working more closely together around shared challenges – leading to local growth, civic cohesion, and a more robust inclusive creative economy, driving productivity and growth in the regions. From September 2023 – September 2024, 5 Community Innovation Practitioners (CIPs) were embedded in collaborative cross-sector research, capturing vital new knowledge through case studies, policy papers and podcasts, on the value of cross-sector partnership working to enhance belonging, develop community cohesion, and deliver place-based cultural innovation in devolved contexts.
Research at the AHRC Creative Communities North East Policy Lab on Belonging demonstrated that cross-sector participants valued policy solution suggestions focused on investing devolved spend in social and community infrastructure, as well as innovative uses of Mayoral Combined Authority integrated settlements and devolved funding to enable longer-term investment resilience in culture. These policy suggestions would support greater engagement in civil society, the development of new skills, and lead to improved outcomes across local economics, health and democracy, as well as creating more inclusive and impactful funding landscapes in the regions.
In addition, the Committee welcomes submissions on the following points:
How are funding bodies such as UKRI and ARIA contributing to the UK’s innovation ecosystem and delivering the government’s growth missions?
AHRC Creative Communities is the only Missions-based programme from UKRI, exploring how co-created culture can enhance belonging, address regional inequality, deliver devolution, and break down barriers to opportunity with communities in devolved settings across all 4 nations of the UK.
Through innovative and inclusive funding programmes such as the Community Innovation Practitioner (CIP) Awards, which works across all 4 nations of the UK, AHRC Creative Communities funds CIPs to collaborate with cross-sector partners to capture vital new knowledge about co-creation methodologies and the roles of communities and non-academic partners promoting more inclusive models of innovation. The programme champions accessibility and innovation through video applications, the involvement of cross-sector non-academic partners in bidding, and securing match funding from CIPs.
The Creative Community model directly addresses the UKRI strategic aim to work as a funder across an expanded research ecosystem, with communities as researchers rather than just the subjects of research. The consortia model builds enhanced resilience, mitigates risk, promotes knowledge exchange and transfer and supercharges the capacity of communities to attract inward and outward investment into their cultural ecosystem. There are a variety of delivery models for the Creative Communities research featured in our Deep Dive report.
9 January 2025