Dear all,

AHRC are hosting a showcase in London on 12th March related to the Connected Communities programme. Abigail Gilmore (University of Manchester) & I have been successful in receiving funding to take part to the showcase and have commissioned an artist (Alys Scott-Hawkins) to make a short animated film entitled ' A Love Story', that articulates the tale of two protagonists in an academic and creative partnership - Claudio and Hedda - and their trials, tribulations and successes. The film explores the main themes of the research network through the narrative of love, romance and relationships.

We will also be presenting the outcomes of a twitter debate (tweetchat) where the two protagonist of this Love Story will come alive to discuss the ups and downs of creative collaborations across Higher Education and the creative economy.

If you are around on the 14th of February anytime between 11 and 1pm, it would be great if you could join the discussion with us, and with Claudio and Hedda, and engage via twitter with questions / comments and views about collaborations between academics and creative practitioners.

You can find all the relevant details about the event and joining the chat here:
http://www.creative-campus.org.uk/tweetchat.html

You can follow the discussion via the hashtag #LoveCreate

Thanks for your contribution & support,

Roberta & Abigail

The third research workshop of our seminar series will take place in Birmingham, thanks to our host Birmingham City University on the 6th November 2013. The theme is:  A  third space for creative arts & creative industries? The role of Higher  education in creative platforms, spaces and  networks The workshop will focus on the collaborations, networks and spaces shared by  creative industries (including creative practitioners, artists and freelancers)  and higher education. It will look at both formal arrangements and practices (such as residencies, workspaces and teaching) as well as informal  networks and shared activities.  It will consider issues of sustainability
and ask how benefits are equally shared by the partners involved. It will also
examine the role played by institutions, geographies  and policy frameworks
that influence the development of these shared initiatives.
The call for contributions to the workshop is now OPEN, the deadline to send abstracts has been extended till 10th of September 2013.

The workshop will be opened by an international keynote speaker: Sebastian Olma from Serendipity Lab; you can read his biography below.

Sebastian Olma, PhD (Goldsmiths, University of London) is an international scholar and expert working at the interface between creativity and business. He was trained as a philosopher and organisational economist in Germany, New York, London. Sebastian has a track record in connecting governments, companies and organizations
to the innovative potential of social networks.  For instance, he advises several regional German governments on the  creation and implementation of crossover programs between the creative industries and traditional SME's. He has helped a wide range of companies all over Europe to shape their innovation strategies. For the University of Amsterdam he has built the Creative Industries Research Centre whose pioneering research methods have since become standard for the Dutch Research Council (NWO). 

The preliminary programme of our cecond research workshop: Higher education,
communities and cultural regeneration taking place at the University of Brighton on the 10th April 2013 is now available online

The workshop examines how higher education institutions contribute to local socio-cultural and economic  regeneration through processes, initiatives and projects which involve cultural  and creative elements or strategies. It will explore the effects of these partnerships and consider how projects involving higher education institutions  and local cultural and regeneration partners might re-shape local communities  and economies in both positive and negative ways, for example, through  gentrification.   It will explore how local communities are engaged within the  process, the roles they play, and the relationships, tensions and exchanges of knowledge between higher education, local communities and policy makers in the practice of regeneration. It will also look at the impact of higher
education intervention in local regeneration from economic, social and skills
perspectives.  

The Call for Papers for our second workshop hosted by the University  of Brighton on the 10th April 2013 on " Higher  education, communities and cultural regeneration" have been extended!

NEW Deadline to submit your abstract:  6th March 2013

Download the EXTENDED call for papers here

Higher education, communities and cultural regeneration  will be the topic of our next workshop taking place in Brighton (10th April). The workshop will see the contribution of two keynote speakers: Dr Paul Benneworth (from the University of Twente in the Netherlands) & Prof. Kim Yasuda (from Art   Department at University of California, Santa Barbara and Executive  Vice Chair of Imagining America's National Advisory Board)

Dr Paul Benneworth is a senior researcher at the Center for
Higher Education  Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente, the  Netherlands.  His research concerns the relationships between higher  education and society,  and in understanding the ways in which higher education  institutions (HEIs) as  complex institutional forms interact with societal  sub-systems and communities.  His research in this area has been funded by  a range of governments and  research councils, including the OECD, the ESRC, RCUK, the European Commission,  and the Norwegian Research Council.  From  2010-2012 he led the Humanities in  the European Research Area (HERA) ERA-NET funded project “Measuring the public  value of arts and humanities research”  (HERAVALUE) which focused on  understanding the ways in which arts and humanities  research influenced  societal development processes (http://www.heranet.info/heravalue/index).   He is also the editor of the volume Universities’engagement  with excluded communities (Springer, 2013).

Prof. Kim Yasuda is a visual artist and professor of spatial studies in the Art Department at University of California, Santa Barbara. She has served as 
department chair and is currently co-director of the multi-campus research unit, the U.C. Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA). The UCIRA serves as a
major  platform for presenting, discussing and advocating for the arts-centered research across the 10-campus U.C. system. Its expanded mission supports active  and embedded scholarship models that work transitively through multi-agency partnerships and geographic settings outside the conventional  teaching, studio,  gallery, museum or performance contexts.
In the past 5 years, Yasuda has activated university  teaching with her public arts research and creative  administration, developing  initiatives that forge partnerships between academic  environs and the  local/regional communities in which they are situated. She is
co-principal investigator of Imagining America’s Community Knowledge Collaboratory, and serves on the National Advisory Board’s Strategic Planning Committee.

Download the Call for Papers

The workshop examines how higher education institutions contribute to local
socio-cultural and economic regeneration through processes, initiatives and
projects which involve cultural and creative elements or strategies. It will
explore the effects of these partnerships and consider how projects involving
higher education institutions and local cultural and regeneration partners might
re-shape local communities and economies in both positive and negative ways, for
example, through gentrification.   It will explore how local communities
are engaged within the process, the roles they play, and the relationships, tensions and exchanges of knowledge between higher education, local communities and policy makers in the practice of regeneration. It will also look at the impact of higher education intervention in local regeneration from economic, social and skills perspectives.  
  
Contributing to the seminar
As part of the call for papers we are looking for two different kinds of contributions:
  
Research papers
These papers will provide a theoretical perspective or present research outcomes which help us understand the dynamics of interaction between higher education and the arts and cultural sector. Selected speakers will be given 20 minutes to present their research followed by 10 minutes for Q&A
       
Case studies or reflections from practitioners, academics or policy makers 
These shorter presentations (10 minutes) aim to creative opportunities for discussion of best practice, case studies and reflecting on the current relationships and modes of interaction between higher education and the arts and cultural sector. The presentations will be organised in panels and will be followed by group discussions. 
 
 
Download the Call for Papers

Session Title: Creative industries, creative jobs and creative clusters: An evolutionary perspective
 
Organisers: 
Su-Hyun Berg (Dept. of Geography, University of Kiel, Germany)
Roberta Comunian (Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London)
Robert Hassink (Dept. of Geography, University of Kiel, Germany)

Call for abstracts

During the last decades an increasing interest can be observed among urban and economic geographers in creative industries, the creative economy, creative cities, as well as the creative class (Chapain et al. 2012). In addition to this increasing academic
interest, testified by several recent special issues in journals such as Urban
Studies, the Journal of Economic Geography, Regional Studies and the Creative Industries Journal, also policy-makers at several spatial levels (urban, regional, national, as well as supranational) try to find ways how to foster creative industries. Many studies focused both on the economic functions of creative industries, mainly in terms of employment, value-added production, and exports, as well as on their current organizational features. However, evolutionary and history-informed perspectives are often neglected (Rantisi et
al., 2006), as well as explaining differences in dynamics between different creative industries in a regional context. Why is it that some creative industries grow fast in some regions while stagnate in other regions? 
 
The aim of this session is therefore to shed a more evolutionary and dynamic light on creative industries in a local and regional context. In a similar vein as Comunian (2011) recently used complexity theory and complex adaptive systems to explain the development of creative industries in the North East of England, this session particularly welcomes abstracts linking theories used in other fields to shed a new, more dynamic light on creative industries. One potentially fruitful paradigm to draw on, in this context, is evolutionary economic geography (Boschma & Frenken 2011). In contrast to neoclassical theory, this school takes history and geography seriously by recognizing the importance of place-specific elements and processes to explain broader spatial patterns of technology evolution. In this session, therefore, we would like to explore whether notions of evolutionary economic geography, such as path creation, path dependence and co-evolution, can  contribute to analyzing and explaining the spatial dynamics of creative
industries.

We welcome both empirical, theoretical, as well as policy-related abstracts. The focus can be on any  creative industries, such as publishing and literature, performing arts, music,
film, video and photography, broadcasting, design, fashion, visual arts,  advertising and interactive media as well as creative jobs. We also welcome  abstracts that go beyond the narrow focus of creative clusters, namely those  dealing with creative cities, the creative economy, as well as creative class in  relation to creative industries. 

Potential questions include:

1) How do creative industries in cities and regions develop through time?
2) How can we explain differences in dynamics between creative industries in a regional economy?
3) What is the impact of policies at several spatial levels on the dynamics of creative industries and jobs?
4) How can individual talents be fosted in the creative industries?
5) How can firms in creative clusters be fostered?
6) How does the national institutional context affect the development of creative industries in cities and regions through?

References

Chapain, C., Clifton, N., & Comunian, R. (2012) Understanding Creative Regions: Bridging
the Gap between Global Discourses and Regional and National Contexts. Regional
Studies, (ahead-of-print), 1-4.

Comunian, R. (2011) Rethinking the Creative City The Role of Complexity, Networks and
Interactions in the Urban Creative Economy. Urban Studies, 48(6), 1157-1179. 
 
Boschma, R., & Frenken, K. (2011). The  emerging empirics of evolutionary economic geography. Journal of Economic  Geography, 11(2), 295-307.

Rantisi N M, Leslie D, Christopherson S (2006) Placing the creative economy: scale, politics,  and the material. Environment and Planning A 38(10) 1789 – 1797

Abstract Submission:

If you would like to contribute to this session, please send your abstract of not more than 250 words to Su-Hyun Berg (berg@geographie.uni-kiel.de) by Friday, 8th February 2013.

The University of Manchester will host the first workshop of the AHRC network. The workshop will focus on networks of knowledge and interaction between higher education and arts and cultural organisations and institutions. We are particularly keen in gathering a better understanding of the range of partnerships and collaborations that take place between HE and public or third sector organisations in the arts and cultural sphere.
The seminar will consider relationships, practices and knowledge exchange between higher education and the arts infrastructure of the city and the important role played by local arts networks. It will also look at the impact of individuals (and leadership) in shared roles between higher education, public policy and arts and cultural organisations.  Other dimensions include the presence of arts and cultural institutions within higher education institutions, shared spaces and partnerships amongst arts organisations and higher education and collaborative systems for professional, talent and skills development.

Confirmed Keynote speakers: 

Dr. Maria Balshaw, Joint Director of the Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery

Bruno Verbegt, Associate Professor, University of Antwerp, Director, Culture, Sport and Youth, Stad Antwerp


Download the CALL FOR PAPERS now.  
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS EXTENDED TILL 15TH OF SEPTEMBER

The University of Manchester will host the first workshop of the AHRC network. The workshop will focus on networks of knowledge and interaction between higher education and arts and cultural organisations and institutions. We are particularly keen in gathering a better understanding of the range of partnerships and collaborations that take place between HE and public or third sector organisations in the arts and cultural sphere.
The seminar will consider relationships, practices and knowledge exchange between higher education and the arts infrastructure of the city and the important role played by local arts networks. It will also look at the impact of individuals (and leadership) in shared roles between higher education, public policy and arts and cultural organisations.  Other dimensions include the presence of arts and cultural institutions within higher education institutions, shared spaces and partnerships amongst arts organisations and higher education and collaborative systems for professional, talent and skills development.

Confirmed Keynote speakers:

Dr. Maria Balshaw, Joint Director of the Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery

Bruno Verbegt, Associate Professor, University of Antwerp, Director, Culture, Sport and Youth, Stad Antwerp


Download the CALL FOR PAPERS now. 

King's College London (Department for Culture, Media and Creative Industries) and the University of Manchester (Centre for Arts Management and Cultural Policy) have been recently awarded an AHRC research network grant to explore the connections between higher education and the creative economy.

The AHRC research network entitled “Beyond the Campus: Connecting Knowledge and Creative Practice Communities across Higher Education and the Creative Economy” (AH/J005800/1) has been established to enhance understanding of how collaborations, partnerships and exchanges are built and to consider how they can have greater impact on the cultural capacity of different places.

The research network aims through systematic analysis to develop a clearer articulation of the relationship between A&H teaching and research and the creative economy, based on data collected through the project, interviews and seminar presentations. Furthermore, the project will also explore international perspectives on the idea of the ‘creative campus’, and in particular the Australian context, in order to understand different approaches and opportunities coming from outside UK.

As Dr Roberta Comunian (Department for Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King's College London) and Dr Abigail Gilmore (Centre for Arts Management and Cultural Policy , University of Manchester) explain, “The network will provide a platform for academics and practitioners to reflect on their work, practice and the impact of their collaborations”. Network activities will generate a collection of case studies, interviews and other resource materials to be collated in an open access knowledge bank designed to reach a broader range of people becoming a shared point of reference when establishing new collaborations.

Activities start on 5th November 2012 with the first research workshop at University of Manchester. The first call for papers will be opened in July.

The research network will include 6 seminars in all taking place between November 2012 and August 2014. There will be a separate call for papers to ask for contributions from academics as well as practitioners and policy makers around the specific topic addressed by each seminar.

In addition, Dr Comunian and Dr Gilmore will compile a literature review of existing research which aims to address the role of knowledge exchange and collaboration across academia and the creative and cultural sector. Case studies, research papers, links, interviews, working papers and policy briefings and other materials will be shared through the research network website www.creative-campus.org.uk which aims to become an open knowledge platform and point to reference for academics and practitioners working in this area.

Dr Comunian and Dr Gilmore will be supported also by a distinguished steering committee including Professor Geoffrey Crossick (University of London), Richard Russell (Arts Council England), Pablo Rossello (British Council),  Anamaria Wills (CIDA), Simon Dancey (CCSKills), Jeremy Davenport (Creative Industries KTN), Hasan Bakhshi (NESTA Policy & Research Unit) and Sara Selwood  (Independent cultural analyst ).

For further information contact hecreativeconomy@gmail.com