Live Research

Convened by Dr Heidi Ashton and Professor Pietari Kaapa, University of Warwick.

This network explores sustainability and the green transition in media, screen, and digital production. These mediums shape environmental awareness yet are embedded within complex social, economic and political systems. The network will examine tensions in policy and practice, identify knowledge gaps, and inform future research aimed at fostering a sustainable and equitable industry.

Funded by a Creative PEC Small Network Grant. Intended completion by March 2026.

Convened by Dr Graeme Evans and Dr Patrycja Kaszynska, University of the Arts London.

This network will suggest new research and policy agendas by looking at the relationship between Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) and innovation through a place-based lens. Specifically, the Network will investigate the notions of scales, as applied to places, dataset construction, research analysis and policy interventions; and configurations, as implied in spatial/extended/infrastructural research and policy constructs (e.g., clusters and corridors, cultural districts and creative zones, intermediaries and anchors, and more).  These themes will be considered in the context of research on the relationship between CCIs and innovation. This will prompt new research questions and identify barriers/blind spots and evidence gaps in current research and policymaking, leading to recommendations for how these can be addressed. 

Funded by a Creative PEC Small Network Grant.

Convened by Dr Tom Fleming and Francisca Patrício, TF Consultancy (TFCC).

This new pilot network will seek to understand how local authorities and wider place-based partnerships support approaches to culture and creative practice as a foundation for sustainable development. The network will involve a sample of five place-based partnerships from across the UK – to help identify a set of tools and indicators as a basis for a prototype civic creativity index for place-based development. This project will:

• Develop knowledge and ‘civic creativity literacy’ for participating local authorities and their partners.
• Shine a light on good practice and build a micro community of good practice with room for growth.
• Inform a more nuanced relationship between intrinsic cultural and creative activities and socio- economic development.
• Contribute to policy dialogue on the role of culture in place-making and sustainable development, touching on topics such as partnership and funding models. 

Funded by a Creative PEC Small Network Grant. The project will commence in September 2025 and be completed by April 2026. 

Convened by Professor Joanna Woronkowicz and Professor Doug Noonan, Indiana University.

This network convenes global experts to strengthen research and policy at the intersection of AI and the creative industries. Through a series of collaborative activities, the network will develop the infrastructure needed to support this emerging field—including shared data resources, empirical evidence, and frameworks to guide future work. Key outcomes include an open-access wiki and actionable recommendations for advancing research on AI and the creative economy. Running through April 2026, the project aims to ensure AI’s role in the sector is shaped by rigorous, evidence-based inquiry.

Funded by a Creative PEC Small Network Grant.

Project Partner: A research co-commission funded by Creative PEC and DCMS, being delivered by Ipsos Mori.

To provide insight and information on the creative education landscape for 14–19 year olds, including whether specialist education providers maximise opportunities for students, as well as meeting the skills needs of both creative industries businesses and businesses outside the creative industries that feature creative occupations, compared to non-specialist providers.

For further information please contact Dr Tom Cahill-Jones at tom.cahill-jones@pec.ac.uk.

Project Partners: Department for Culture, Media & Sport

This research involves an assessment and critique of standard productivity measures of cultural subsectors (with a focus on Museums & Galleries and Heritage), and will be primarily focused on GVA and its underpinning components (using data from the Annual Business Survey).

Project Partners: Melbourne University and Sussex University

This project will study how Generative AI (GenAI) Tools affect the creative workforce. Those in creative roles are a major contributor to the UK and US economies, accounting for roughly 6% and 4% of all employment respectively, and are particularly likely to be affected by the deployment of GenAI tools, which have acquired near-human capabilities in multimedia content creation and analysis. Whether these tools have the potential to augment human creativity or are likely to lead to the displacement of workers in these sectors is a crucial topic, both for scholars of the future of work and for policymakers seeking to develop appropriate responses. Accordingly, we will ask three main research questions: 

1. What creative workforce skills are associated with GenAI? 
2. Which creative occupations are most being/ will be impacted by GenAI?  
3. In which creative industries sub-sectors are these occupations found?  

Research Team: Hasan Bakhshi, Aniket Baksy and Josh Siepel  

Project Partner: Creative UK

Designed to fill the evidence gap by looking at the knowledge networks generated by public funding in creative research and innovation. Specifically, using the entire UK Research and Innovation dataset of funded projects over a period of fifteen years, classifying them into creative and non-creative based on their creative intensity and then analyse collaborations between public and private organisations using a social network analysis approach. This allows us to map the knowledge networks (public, private or public-private) generated by each project.