Creative Industries Entrepreneurship

The UK’s creative industries are the subject of increasing attention from policymakers and economic development bodies charged with promoting growth and prosperity at national, regional, and city levels. This is nothing new of course; it is a trend that has been in play for more than two decades. More recently, at a time of prolonged economic austerity and continued decline in public funding for the Arts and Culture, the creative industries – identified as one of the key sectors highlighted in the UK government’s 2017 Industrial Strategy – are looked to for their capacity to spur innovation, generate employment, boost productivity, while remaining relatively immune from the threat of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They ‘contribute nearly £90 billion to the economy and employ more than two million people’ (Business Secretary, Greg Clark, 2017, cited in HM Government, 2017b), represent ‘5.3% of the UK economy and between 2010 and 2015 grew by 34% – faster than any other sector’ (Bazalgette, 2017: 11), and are ‘the third most valuable creative sector behind the US and China.’ (Ed Vaizey, ex-Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, 2019, cited in Adamson et al., 2019: 3), – in short, the creative industries are an ‘economic powerhouse’ (Karen Bradley, Culture Secretary, 2017, cited in HM Government, 2017b). At the same time, we know that the ‘creative industries’ is a highly contested term, one which for some has ‘no specific cultural content at all’ (Galloway and Dunlop, 2007: 29) and for others is little more than an unhelpful political ‘slogan’ (Garnham, 2005).

We find versions of a creative industries narrative framing publicly-funded projects such as the recently-completed Creative Fuse North East (CFNE) which presented ‘the opportunity to explore possibilities, connect creativity, and propel the North East CDIT sector into a period of sustainable growth’ (Vaizey, 2017, cited in Butt et al., 2017: 3)’ and involved a collaboration between five regional universities in the North East of England. Arguably, such projects bring long overdue attention to a region of the UK that continues to feel overshadowed by London and the South East, especially in the context of its’ creative economy.

What such projects also bring with them is the opportunity to better understand the implications of a creative industries narrative for those who constitute creative sectors that are characterised by immense diversity, both in terms of function – from film-making to game development to heritage to crafts – and form – from transnational conglomerates to freelancers – and therefore where the applicability of such a narrative is bound to be uneven. CFNE has sought not only to generate knowledge about the sector’s geography and economic performance, but actively to engage with the sector through innovation pilots and a range of business support activities that brought creative economy workers together with academics from multiple disciplines. In this regard, CFNE represents a bold and novel undertaking, bringing both communities into unfamiliar spaces of activity. While the motivation for CFNE incorporated a now-familiar economic development agenda, it should be noted that it did acknowledge a plurality of outcomes associated with a region’s creative economy: ‘Investing in culture and the creative sector as a driver of social development can also lead to results that contribute to the overall wellbeing of communities, individual self-esteem and quality of life, dialogue and cohesion’ (Adamson et al., 2019: 5).

When the creative industries remains a comparatively under-researched part of the economy for management and organisation scholars (Chaston and Sadler-Smith, 2012), and in particular when the impact of business support programmes on creative enterprises is under-investigated (Magee, 2016), this paper seeks to add some much-needed qualitative texture to our understanding of how significant interventions like CFNE are interpreted by the creative economy workers who, within the animating policy narrative, are re-framed as innovators and entrepreneurs.

As such, the paper will make both an empirical and conceptual contribution at the intersection of those debates concerned with: the growth and performance of the creative industries (Adamson et al., 2019; Garcia et al., 2018; NESTA, 2017; Sapsed et al., 2013, 2015); business support and developmental activities in the creative economy (Jayne, 2005; Magee, 2016; NESTA, 2017); creative work and entrepreneurship (Banks and Hesmondhalgh, 2009; 2018; Couslon, 2012; Eikhof and Haunschild, 2006; Lingo and Tepper, 2013; McRobbie, 2016; Menger, 1999; Rae, 2004); and the shifting cultural policy landscape (Foord, 2008; Galloway and Dunlop 2007; Garnham, 2005; Oakley, 2004). We aim for the findings to be of value to policymakers as well as scholars.

Underpinning data are derived from a set of open-ended interviews with creative workers who participated in business development activities (under the wider CFNE project) facilitated by a small team of business school academics and creative sector consultants in a university business school setting. The workshops involved freelancers and small enterprises from various creative sub-sectors, postgraduate students pursuing entrepreneurship programmes, and managers from a range of sectors (within and beyond the creative industries). The workshop activities were designed to strengthen leadership, management, and general business skills among creative workers, in a bid to develop opportunities for growth in the regional creative economy. Importantly, the research participants included creative workers from sub-sectors that tend not to feature in proclamations about the success of the creative industries, where film, TV, video games, and software development tend to dominate.

There is much research on the purported impact of business support activity on the self-employed and SMEs in general, but far less about how they intersect with creative economy workers specifically. The report disseminating findings from the forerunner to CFNE, Brighton Fuse, recommended that ‘the implications of policies for the self- employed should be increasingly considered…[including] health and welfare, social security, business support and innovation and entrepreneurship policy instruments’ (Sapsed et al., 2015: 63). More concretely, our study builds on the learning from other recent examples of experimental interventions such as the Digital Arts and Culture Accelerator (DACA) programme sponsored by NESTA and Arts Council England. The DACA was designed on the basis of a ‘mainstream accelerator process’, providing participants with the ‘opportunity to explore and test commercial business models and language and to push the boundaries of organisational practice’ (NESTA, 2017: 6). NESTA reported that none of the participants achieved new commercial investment. All participants questioned ‘whether the model worked for their specific needs;...for some it was at times contrary to the mission and values of the organisation, with growth outcomes overpowering discussions on social outcomes, resilience and a more nuanced approach to diversifying revenue’ (NESTA, 2017: 7). While the process enabled participants to find more of a balance in how they plan for an uncertain future, ‘it did not set out a clear growth proposition to investors – largely because none of the organisations could pivot to the point where it was just about growth’ (NESTA, 2017: 8).

More than a decade ago, Jayne (2005) characterised the creative industries developmental agenda at a regional level as ‘at best patchy’. At the time, Jayne critiqued creative industries thinking for failing to ‘elaborate fully how the creative industries operate, what workers do and think about during the creation of goods and services, [and] what the social relations of production and the economic position of workers are’ (2005: 554). Arguably, much of this criticism stands today. Our study will provide insight into how contemporary efforts are leaning on universities to play a much greater role in this space. A more nuanced understanding of what kinds of support the diverse strains of our creative industries require is of growing importance at a time when the proportion of public funding arts and cultural organisations will receive is only decreasing (NESTA, 2017).

Our study confronts question such as: To what extent do developmental programmes like CFNE differentiate between the support needs of those who make up the heterogenous creative economy? How do they accommodate and articulate the range of attitudes towards concepts such as entrepreneurship and innovation, when we know from Coulson’s (2012) study of musicians in the North East of England that they may display entrepreneurial skills but eschew dominant notions of entrepreneurship? How do they account for the precarity that characterises certain areas of freelance creative practice while recognising that other creative workers, such as the CDIT freelancers studied in the Brighton Fuse project were found to be ‘highly entrepreneurial individuals’ who are ‘able to achieve good results in terms of earnings and growth rates, in differentiating their revenues, [and] in innovating and actively promoting themselves’ (Sapsed et al., 2015: 37)? Our research setting, which sees creative workers brought into direct contact with the tools and language of entrepreneurship and innovation, presents an ideal opportunity to tackle these questions.

References

Adamson, M., Brown, A., Clay, R., Cockshut, L., Cross, E., Hall, L., Lampitt Adey, K., Murray, S., Paterson, S., Sapsed, J., Stewart, P. and Wood, L. (2019) Creative Fuse North East: Project Report 2019. Available at: http://www.creativefusene.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Creative-Fuse-Project-Report-2019-final.pdf (Accessed: 2 May 2019)

Banks, M. and Hesmondhalgh, D. (2009) Looking for work in creative industries policy, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 15 (4): 415-430

Bazalgette, P. (2017) Independent Review of the Creative Industries. Available at: https://www.theculturediary.com/sites/default/files/creative_industries_review_sept_2017.pdf (Accessed: 6 May 2019)

Butt, M., Cross, E., Holliman, N., Kempton, L., Legget, J., Mackenzie, E., Ross, H., Sapsed, J., Swords, J., Vallance, P, and Whitehurst, F. (2017) Creative Fuse North East: Initial Report June 2017. Available at: http://www.creativefusene.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Creative-Fuse-North-East-Initial-Report-22062017.pdf (Accessed: 5 May 2019)

Chaston, I. and Sadler-Smith, E. (2012) Entrepreneurial Cognition, Entrepreneurial Orientation and Firm Capability in the Creative Industries. British Journal of Management 23 (3): 415-432

Coulson, S. (2012) Collaborating in a competitive world: musicians’ working lives and understandings of entrepreneurship, Work, Employment and Society 26(2): 246–261

Eikhof, D.R. and Haunschild, A. (2006) Lifestyle Meets Market: Bohemian Entrepreneurs in Creative Industries. Creativity and Innovation Management, 15(3): 234-241

Foord, J. (2009) Strategies for creative industries: an international review, Creative Industries Journal, 1(2): 91-113

Galloway, S. and Dunlop, S. (2007) A Critique of Definitions of the Cultural and Creative Industries in Public Policy, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 13(1): 17-31

Garcia, J.M., Klinger, J. and Stathoulopoulos, K. (2018) Creative Nation: How the creative industries are powering the UK’s nations and regions. Available at: https://media.nesta.org.uk/documents/creative_nation-2018.pdf (Accessed: 2 May 2019).

Garnham, N. (2005) From cultural to creative industries, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 11(1): 15-29

HM Government (2017a) Industrial Strategy: Building a Britain fit for the future. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/664563/industrial-strategy-white-paper-web-ready-version.pdf (Accessed: 9 May 2019).

HM Government (2017b) Press release: Bazalgette review sets recommendations for continued growth of UK’s Creative Industries. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bazalgette-review-sets-recommendations-for-continued-growth-of-uks-creative-industries (Accessed: 9 May 2019)

Jayne, M. (2005). Creative Industries: The Regional Dimension? Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 23(4): 537–556

Lingo, E.L. and Tepper, S. J. (2013) Looking Back, Looking Forward: Arts-Based Careers and Creative Work. Work and Occupations 40(4): 337–363

Magee, F. (2016) ‘Positive Impact of Business Support Programme on the Financial Performance of Microbusinesses in the Creative Industries’, Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship 2016, Paris, France 27-28 October

McRobbie, A. (2016) Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press

Menger, P. (1999) Artistic Labor Markets and Careers, Annual Review of Sociology, 25: 541-574

NESTA (2017) The Digital Arts and Culture Accelerator: An evaluation. Available at: https://media.nesta.org.uk/documents/the_digital_arts_and_cultural_accelerator.pdf (Accessed: 15 April 2019)

Oakley, K. (2004) Not so cool Britannia: The role of the creative industries in economic development, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1): 67–77

Rae, D. (2004) Entrepreneurial learning: a practical model from the creative industries, Education and Training, 46(8/9): 492-500

Sapsed, J., Camerani, R., Masucci, M., Rajguru, M. and Petermann, M. (2015) Brighton Fuse 2: Freelancers in the Creative Digital IT Economy. Available at: http://www.brightonfuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/brighton_fuse2_online.pdf (Accessed: 2 April 2019)

Topic

The creative industries play a key role for the economy as an engine for growth (DCMS, 2001; 2016; 2017; Leadbeater and Oakley, 1999), innovation (Giles and O’Dwyer, 2016), aesthetic values for customers (Peltoniemi, 2014), symbolic meaning (Jones et al., 2016). entrepreneurship (Carey, 2015; Henry 2007; Penaluna and Penaluna, 2008), and organizational studies scholars (Nathan, Pratt, & Rincon-Azner, 2015; Jones, Svejenova, Strandgaard Pedersen and Townley, 2016) all of which have stimulated interest in studying the field.

There are two significant factors that make the creative industries highly valuable: innovation and human talent. Innovation is generated by a supply of novelty from different types of creators (Storr, 1985) and their ‘effort to break open an avant-garde frontier’ (Caves, 2000, p. 204); driven by demand from consumers for new experiences (Lampel et al., 2000) and creative expression (Martindale, 1990). As Caves (2000, p. 202) denoted ‘those creative efforts that strike the market as unusually distinctive, satisfying, and/or productive in opening new ground’ (Caves, 2000, p. 202) highlighting the various types of innovation that can be generated by the creative industries. 

The human element is the second distinctive element of these industries. Human creation into the process as the essential key source of creativity. Individuals create novelty and novel meaning (Zanoni et al, 2017) or produce organizational creativity in a collective engagement (Woodman et al, 1993) and via interactions (Harrington, 1990).  Consequently, it is possible to identify different types of actors: consumers, producers, and agents. 

Although entrepreneurship research (Carey, 2015; Henry, 2007; Penaluna and Penaluna, 2008), organizational research (Nathan et al., 2015; Jones et al, 2016) and policies makers (DCMS, 2001; 2016;2017) have demonstrated an increasing interest in analyzing the contribution of creative industries to the economy limited research has been conducted into investigating: the use of innovative research methodologies used by researchers studying this field; their research identities in producing academic endeavor related to the field of creative industries entrepreneurship and the key lesson learnt from publishing in the entrepreneurship and creative industries fields (Carey, and Romano, 2017). 

In a fast changing HE landscape, research is linked to various academic co-dependent relationships: institutions, groups, metrics and managerial practices that might encourage or de-motivate researchers to pursue their research identities. For instance, Clark et al. (2012) highlighted the change of academic identities due to transformation of managerialist practices of audit, league tables, and other metrics to measure academic performance. In addition, space can play a key role into the relationships. As Beyes and Steyaert (2012: 54) suggested that organizational space can experiment ‘with the aesthetics and embodiment of research itself’.

Aim

This paper investigates the stories of researchers in the field of creative industries entrepreneurship to map researcher identities, research methodologies and how these map to evaluating their academic performance in uncertain times. Stories narrate organizational symbols by verbal expression or written language (Marti et al, 1983; Trice and Beyer, 1993). Generally, they have three basic elements: ‘a narrative subject in search of an object, a destinator (an extratextual force, the source of the subjects’ ideology), and a set of forces that either help or hinder the subject in acquiring the desired object’ (Fiol, 1989: 279). Following this pattern, the paper is structured as follow. We start by reviewing relevant literature in the field of identity and creative industries research and then discuss the plan for the research methodology and the findings. This is followed by examining the implications of this to this specific research field and entrepreneurship research more widely. 

Creative Industries Researchers and their Academic Identity 

Individuals can experience ‘themselves as initiators of their own behavior’ (Deci & Ryan, 1987: 1025). For example, a wish to be a successful academic or a desire to achieve academic recognition in the academic world. However, a person can change behavior according to the organization space and the changed circumstances. Corlett et al. (2017) in ‘Exploring the Registers of Identity Research’ present a review of identity scholarship and explore the relationship among various levels of identity: individual, group, professional, organisational and societal and review. They have developed a holistic framework to interpret the identity enabling new scholars to create a dialogue with existing identity research scholars. It also helps experienced identity researchers to expand their research outlook.

Suddaby (2010) explains that a clarity about constructs of identity provides ‘richer and deeper understanding in the field’ (p. 274) whilst Knights and Clarke (2017: 341) argue that ‘identities only exist when they are interacting such that the relationship between conceptions of a seemingly discrete ‘self’ and wider ‘society’ is rather an unrelenting, inter and intra-dependent, constituting phenomenon (Barad, 2007). Institutional theoretical approaches have provided scholarly improvement in displaying actions of individuals to generate, keep and disrupt institutional domains (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006: Zilber, 2009); identity research has highlighted the need for comprehending the self in relation to interactions within the social world (Howard-Grenvill et al, 2013; Petriglieri et al, 2018; Pratt et al., 2006). Furthermore, the institutional logic perspective has approached the connection between individual and institutional actors as a tool by which actors can operate agentically (Thornton et al., 2012). Finally, Lok et al, (2017) propose an approach that shifts beyond an individual focus to assess institutional micro-foundations ‘as intersubjective, as residing in transpersonal exchanges that are double embedded in systems of relationships and in institutionalized systems of meaning (p. 46).

This research project analyses how researchers in the field of creative industries entrepreneurship have

1. designed their academic identity, 
2. changed, adapted or kept their research methodology in producing and disseminating knowledge via academic publications and 
3. what they have learnt through the process 

Location, Creative Industries Researchers and the ISBE space 

The UK’s creative economy plays a key role into the economy (Bakhshi, Hargreaves and Mateos-Garcia, 2013). work within the creative economy has shifted from business sectors listed in the original document provided by DCMS (1998) to a technology landscape as the sector has embraced digitization of production and distribution. Creative industries have online presence that enable them to interact with different stakeholders at high speed. Siepel (2019) states that location plays a key factor for the creative industries; they are characterized by high levels of clustering that enable innovation (see the games in Dundee, the film and television in Cardiff, Bristol and Salford, and the Turner Contemporary in Margate). City economy, trade and culture have benefitted from cultural endowments (Chan and Lean, 2018); many cities have capitalized their creative and cultural values to produce competitive advantages (AuthentiCity, 2008) and to promote local economic development (Mommaas, 2004). Leadership, culture, capital markets, and customers are various elements that combined together generate an ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem’ (Isenberg, 2010, pg. 3) that can interact among each other contributing to a co-creation of values (Brown and Filis, 2018) for the place, the economy and the society. Isenberg (2010) also states that it is crucial for a government “to tailor the suit to fit its own local entrepreneurship dimensions, style, and climate”. There is not one rule that fits everything. 

Research Methodology, Context and Sample 

This study investigates the academic identity of researchers in the field of creative industries, their research methodologies and key lesson learnt via the publication process. It identifies how researchers employ their sense of self to create ‘meaning of their experience’ (Bennett and Hennekam, 2018: 1454). We want to ask respondents to tell us the story of their academic identity, research methodologies through their academic publication journeys based on the work of Ibarra (2003), Ibarra and Barbulescu (2010) and Bennett and Hennekam (2018). By using a story-telling approach we will be able to create meaning of various and contradictory experiences (Hoyer and Steyart, 2015). 

The study will be conducted in the United Kingdom and it will be organized into three stages: 

1. A survey questionnaire will be sent to all the members of the Special Interest Group of the Creative Industries Entrepreneurship Researchers at the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Once ethical approvals will be received from the respective universities, creative industries entrepreneurship researchers in the UK will be invited to respond to a survey (Bennett et al, 2014) that will be distributed electronically. Three survey questions will be significant to this research project:
   1. Thinking back in time, what are the most formative events in your publishing career? (adapted from Bennett et al, 2018)
   2. How has your research identity has evolved (Corlett, McInnes, Coupland, and Sheep, 2017) to get published? 
   3. Why have you engaged the publication process? (adapted from Unsworth, 2001) 

1. The second stage of the project is to collect data from a focus group of participants who will attend a research developmental workshop in writing for publication organized in June in the U.K. 2019. 

1. The final stage of the project is to conduct skype and face to face interviews to investigate in more details the stories of the researchers and their narratives related to their research identities 

Plan of the Findings

The three stages will provide sufficient data to use for publications. Initially, the first paper will highlight the academic journeys of researchers in the field of creative industries entrepreneurship to map their research identities and how they have evolved. An initial conference paper will be drafted to report key findings from the questionnaire. 

Secondly, data from the focus group and interviews will be analysed to write a final paper for publications to narrate the research identities and their evolution in the field of creative industries entrepreneurship research. 

References

Ashcraft, K. L. (2017). Submission’ to the Rule of Excellence: Ordinary Affect and Precarious Resistance in the Labor of Organization and Management Studies, Organization.  24(1): 36-58

AuthentiCity (2008). Creative City Planning Framework. A supporting document to the agenda for prosperity: Prospectus for a Great City. Prepared for the City of Toronto, 1-44 (February). Toronto: Canada. 

Bakhshi, H., Hargreaves, I. and Mateos-Garcia, J. (2013). A manifesto for the Creative Economy. Available at https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/a-manifesto-for-the-creative-economy accessed on 25th April 2019

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. London: Duke University Press 

Bennett, D. and Hennekam, S. (2018). Self-authorship and creative industries workers’ career decision-making. Human Relation. 71 (11): 1454 – 1477

Beyes, T. and Steyaert, C. (2012). Spacing Organization: Non-representational Theory and Performing Organizational Space. Organization 19 (1): 45- 61

Brown, J. and Filis, I. (2018). Developing Creative Business & Entrepreneurial Ecosystems to Influence Cultural Policy. Paper presented at the 2018 ISBE Conference, Birmingham 

Carey, C. (2015). The career of fine artists and the embedded creative. Journal of Education and Work. 28 (4): 407 – 421

Chan, J. and Lean, H. H. (2018), Measuring Entrepreneurial Orientation of Firms in the Creative and Cultural Sector. Paper presented at the ISBE conference, Birmingham

Clark, C. Knights, D. and Jarvis, C. (2012). A Labour of Love? Academics in Business School. Scandinavian Journal of Management. 28: 5 - 15

Caves, R. E. (2000). Creative industries: Contracts between art and commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Corlett, McInnes, Coupland and Sheep (2017) ‘Exploring the Registers of Identity Research’ present a 

Deci, E. L. and Ryan, R. M. (1987) The support of autonomy and the control of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 53: 1024 – 1037

Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (2017), Independent Review of the Creative Industries, available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/649980/Independent_Review_of_the_Creative_Industries.pdf 

Department for Culture Media & Sport (DCMS) (2016), DCMS Sectors Economic Estimates, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/544103/DCMS_Sectors_Economic_Estimates_-_August_2016.pdf 

Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) (2001), Creative Industries Mapping Document, Creative Industries Task Force, UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, London.

Fiol, C. M. (1989). A semiotic analysis of corporate language: organizational boundaries and joint venturing. Administrative Science Quarterly. 34: 277 - 303

Giles, C. and O’Dwyer, B. (2016) The role of the a/r/tographer in design for enterprise in Proceedings of the 39^th Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) Conference, Paris, France, 2016

A new mode of working encapsulated in more recent shifts toward the rise of creative industries sees ‘communities’ of innovators co-working to reach a common goal: “community” in this sense no longer describes a closely‐knit social constellation of people but rather testifies to the existence of other people's engaging in similar practices elsewhere” (Schmidt, and Brinks, 2017: 291).  For many, the traditional bounded workplace is no longer deemed ‘fit for purpose’ and collaborative, flexible, creative spaces are rapidly becoming seen as a necessity for ideation.  Fab labs, co-worker spaces, or maker spaces offer both access to a range of materials and tools but most importantly bring social benefits of interactivity and co-creativity (Schmidt, and Brinks, 2017).  Since the early 1990s scholars have discussed the transition from industrial to knowledge economies and the rise of knowledge intensive firms (Starbuck 1992).  What is different here is the dispersed and democratised nature of innovation, the creative lab movement offers individual artists, creators and researchers the opportunity to develop ideas away from an institutional/organisational setting. The Leeds Creative Labs programme (University of Leeds) traces its origins in the Culture Hack movement, founded by Rachel Coldicutt of Caper Ltd as well as drawing inspiration from FutureLab in Linz and Media Lab in Madrid.  These initiatives offered up new modes of innovating and working outside institutional norms to create new collaborations and areas of research.  

The model devised for the Leeds Creative Labs programme is a mechanism to help university academics and their partners innovate their research and their practice by catalysing fruitful collaborations between researchers and the region’s creative and cultural industries. A kind of “engineered serendipity” in a “third space” where inspiration can occur and new ideas generate.  Since the inaugural edition of the Leeds Creative Labs in 2012, the programme has given rise to 35 collaborations across nine editions. The Labs have incubated an astonishing diversity of concepts and prototypes synthesised by an equally diverse array of talents and had a broad range of impacts.  In 2015 an evaluation of the Creative Labs was commissioned in an attempt to build an understanding of what contributed to the success of the Labs how this approach might be replicated in other contexts. In the process we discovered that the Leeds Creative Lab sits amongst a landscape of similar programmes and models for innovating across the north of England and in Europe. 

Through a research project, Lab of Labs, funded by Arts Council England in 2017 a research team worked with a group of Creative Lab founders representing Superposition, Digital Media Lab, National Science and Media Museum, FutureLab, Culture Lab, DoES and FACT. Consensus was found around the values that drive the work resulting in establishing dimensions common to what might be considered a ‘Lab approach’. These dimensions refer to the underlying values, attitudes and functionality driving the Labs (figure 1).

Figure 1: Dimensions of a ‘Lab Approach’

Here ‘values’ refer to the necessity for an underpinning ethos which characterizes and drives the activities of the lab.  ‘Behaviours’ refer to the approach that individual participants need to adopt e.g. generous, receptive, respectful, playful, committed.   The values and behaviours help to shape the lab culture.  Next each lab needs to have a definite ‘process’.  This outlines the way that the lab is managed and is run (E.g. application process; selection; launch; meetings; showcase).  The ‘essential elements’ refer to those tangible efforts which help make the lab work.  The ‘people’ dimension refers to the individual skills and human resources necessary and finally the ‘business model’ dimension ensures financial sustainability.

Conclusions

Collectively we have seen that our Labs produce significant benefits for all participants including new ways of working. All participants experience the value of time out for reflection, play and risk-taking; contact with people from a wide range of disciplines and long-lasting working relationships. This article reports a number of significant outcomes of participation:

Outcomes for artists, makers and creative producers

• New productions and other artistic outputs
• Deeper cross disciplinary exploration of culture
• Access to new funding streams

·Leadership development

·Utilising art as a research structure for cross disciplinary collaborative practice and strategy.

Outcomes for academics for those Labs that worked with researchers

• Academic outputs including publications and conferences
• New approaches to research and teaching
• New areas for research
• New routes to research impact
• A step change in thinking
• Access to larger interdisciplinary grants

References:

Ali, I. and Walton, N. (2016) Leeds Creative Labs, evaluation commissioned by University of Leeds, unpublished.

Schmidt, S. and Brinks, V., 2017. Open creative labs: Spatial settings at the intersection of communities and organizations. Creativity and Innovation Management, 26(3), pp.291-299.

Starbuck, W.H., 1992. Learning by knowledge‐intensive firms. Journal of management Studies, 29(6), pp.713-740.