Creative Informatics is an R&D partnership which will grow Edinburgh's creative industries cluster, by helping it to tap the huge potential of using data to shape, develop and deliver new products and services for public and business customers. Over the past ten years, new data-driven products and services have transformed the way people engage with cultural experiences, conduct transactions, and relate to each other. Our ambition is to enable the sector to succeed in an increasingly competitive market, by addressing key innovation challenges and by developing the R&D capacity and data literacy of companies to ensure they can capitalise on new technology to develop new products and services. The R&D Partnership is hosted by the University of Edinburgh, with Edinburgh Napier University and has two key delivery partners: Creative Edinburgh, a well-connected network of over 3800 members, and CodeBase, the largest technology incubator in the UK and one of the fastest growing in Europe. Creative Informatics will benefit from outstanding infrastructure to support delivery including that provided by the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal which will focus on Data Driven Innovation. We will bring together cultural partners, creative businesses and entrepreneurs with academic expertise in the fields of design, informatics, business, law and cultural heritage, to address four Innovation Challenges: 1. Developing access to and engagement with new audiences and markets 2. Developing new modalities of experience 3. Unlocking value in archives and data sets 4. Revealing new business models for the creative industries These challenges could see Edinburgh's Festivals extending the festival experiences offered both in Edinburgh and overseas. Outputs from projects could lead to new commercial products for home entertainment, new apps, games, new ways to buy products and services by experiencing them first, new ways for advertising agencies to develop campaigns and experiences for clients, and online experiences for remote participation. Museums and Galleries will be able to mine text and images in their archives to create opportunities for new product lines for SMEs and the tools developed along the way can also be licensed and sold. Partnerships across our cluster will include creative teams who understand new transaction technologies (crowd-financing, micro-payments, cryptocurrencies). This will ensure creative entrepreneurs can develop radical new products and services, whilst understanding the opportunities and threats and ensuring that social interests are safeguarded. The development of data-driven solutions for adapting and distributing content will open up new international market opportunities for a range of creative industries sub-sectors including design, advertising, gaming, publishing, film and TV production companies, music/record companies, and fashion. We will support growth of the cluster through six R&D initiatives which have been co-designed with partners to meet their needs. Challenge Projects, Horizon Projects and Creative Informatics Labs (CI Labs) will respond directly to the four innovation challenges. Creative Bridge, a dedicated data-driven business innovation programme; Resident Entrepreneurs; and Connected Innovators will respond to the challenge of developing and retaining talent, entrepreneurs and leaders to fuel the growth of the creative industries cluster in Edinburgh. Edinburgh's creative industries cluster has a vibrant creative and technology culture in a city internationally renowned for both culture and entrepreneurship. Creative Informatics provides the missing 'cog' to allow creative entrepreneurs to connect with world-leading expertise in data science and Edinburgh's tech and start-up culture and fulfil its potential to make the UK an international centre for creative data-driven innovation.

A 2020 survey of creative and cultural organisations across the South West of England, led by Dr. Tarek Virani and funded by the AHRC's Bristol and Bath Creative R + D Clusters programme, showed that between 18% and 22% of organisations were either not affected by, or became more productive than prior to, the pandemic. Further analysis shows a number of shared characteristics across these respondents. The aim of the proposed research is to ask what resilience, and subsequent recovery and rebuilding, might look like for the UK's creative economy. By testing the accuracy of the survey findings across the UK, we will design as well as assess the efficacy of a resilience framework and toolkit for creative micro-businesses (CMBs) across the UK as a way to aid CMBs, policymakers and other stakeholders with respect to sectoral recovery and rebuilding from the Covid 19 crisis.

This project follows on from research funded by the AHRC Cultural Value programme which identified a need for small and medium sized organisations in the creative and cultural industries to have resources enabling them to conduct research to develop their audience, participation and programmes. Current research resources available within the creative industries do not account for the complexities of the value-based decision making involved in meeting the needs of current or potential audiences, consumers and participants. While some online and paper-based training resources for creative organisations are available, these tend to be quantitative and 'hard data'-driven for marketing purposes. Such research tools do not provide the know-how and skills to analyse qualitative research data. Small- and medium-sized creative organisations need research know-how and skills to inform their planning and development, and their funding applications. Our experience is that very often small- and medium- sized creative organisations either do not have the specialist research skills, or do not have the money to employ a specialist research agency to generate and analyse research data. The project will co-create a qualitative research toolkit in the form of a website for audience/consumer/participant research with and for small- and medium-sized creative organisations. This co-creation process will include Creative Scotland, its clients and potential clients, other funders, charities, policymakers and academics. This includes nine named partner organisations who will actively take part in research on their own practices in relation to audience development in order to inform the toolkit. The aim of the project is to develop a 'research habit' among creative organisations, which will enhance their ability to develop meaningful programmes of work to retain existing audiences and attract new audiences, and demonstrate this understanding of their audiences and potential audiences to potential funders and supporters. The research team will use tastemaking and cultural value as an innovative and flexible research framework within which to co-create the toolkit's content. This framework has been tried and tested in the PI's Cultural Value study and the PI's three subsequent studies funded by the University of Edinburgh. The framework allows exploration of co-creators' organisational and artistic practices, assisting understanding of where audience/consumer/participant development fits within the organisation's planning and development process. The framework also allows the research team to explore how audience/consumer/participant development practices are informed by the values and tastes of the different organisations' various stakeholder perspectives. This understanding will underpin the toolkit with a depth of knowledge of creative organisations' audience/consumer/participant development research needs that currently-available resources do not provide.