Creative Industries and Innovation
Welcome to Creative Industries and Innovation. This research theme, led by Dr Claudia E Henninger, covers projects focused on innovative research within the creative industries and beyond.
The Communications and Engagement Coordinator supporting this theme is Nathalie Perl.
The Creative Industries are a sector to which our research excellence contributes significantly, through its interdisciplinary collaborations and its partnerships with public, private and third sector organisations.
We aim to inform creative and cultural policies, and improve the sector, the places it is embedded in and people’s livelihoods through participating in the creative economy.
Part of this research supports the development of policies for the UK’s creative industries, contributing to their continued success, such as through All-Party Parliamentary Group reports and cultural policy documents developed as part of the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre.
Within the theme we are also exploring the transformational impact of digital technologies in the arts, education, community and heritage, under the umbrella term ‘CreaTech’.
Together with partners such as the Turing Innovation Centre Manchester we focus on capacity building of AI-related research and related industries in Manchester.
The following are examples of interdisciplinary projects addressing these issues in innovative ways.
Beyond the Creative City
This international interdisciplinary network examines policy models and practices for creative placemaking.
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CreaTech
Exploring how technologies can transform cultural experiences and reshape the media and creative industries.
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Key people: Dr Claudia Henninger, Professor Robert Field, Jane Wood, Dr Alejandro Gallego Schmid, Dr Laura Pottinger, Dr Jenna Ashton, Dr Christopher Blandford, Dr Songyi Yan, Dr Chris Kinally, Dr Suneel Kunamaneni
Duration: August 2023 - August 2024
Funder: University of Manchester Research Institute
The PREMIER project was an interdisciplinary research project led by Dr Claudia E Henninger, engaging academics from a wide range of Departments and Faculties across the University. The research team was based across the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and the Faculty of Humanities.
PREMIER explored the journey of a football jersey, which was investigated through multiple different lenses. It was a Manchester-centric proposal, focusing on two significant aspects of the city’s heritage (textiles and football), and also fostered interdisciplinary research within The University of Manchester (UoM) by drawing together diverse research from across different departments and faculties.
This research focused on football jerseys, which allowed the research team to further develop and strengthen an already existing relationship with various Manchester based Football Clubs and addresses a wider concern of using plastics as raw materials for sportswear products.
The fashion and textiles industry has been outlined as the 4th largest pressure category for use of primary raw materials and water and the 5th highest for greenhouse gas emissions.
More recently, microfibre pollution has emerged as a key concern of impacting various types of ecosystems (e.g., aquatic, terrestrial), with man-made fibres, including plastics (e.g., polyester) releasing these particles.
The actual consequences and negative impacts these particles may have are currently unknown, however, their presence is widespread (e.g., Arctic ocean, marine animals, soils, human lungs, consumed products).
From a sportswear perspective, jerseys have to be functional (e.g., no ironing, fast drying, durable) and need to be available in all colours. Yet, many dyes used in industrial colouration of textiles are known to be toxic, with potentially harmful implications for both environments and human health.
PREMIER was an ambitious pilot research project that looked at understanding both the material science aspects of a jersey, including its performance properties, but was also concerned with the well-being and environmental sustainability dimensions of sportswear production, by drawing on the expertise within UoM.
Outputs
- PREMIER Project: Journey of a jersey
- Conference presentation at the Academy of Marketing in Cardiff, 2-4th July: Henninger, C.E., Field, R., Wood, J., Gallego-Schmid, A., Pottinger, L., Ashton, J., Kinally, C. Kunamaneni, S. Creating a sustainable story – the case of bio-based material innovations in the fashion context
Key people: Dr Riza Batista Navarro (Principal Investigator), Dr Thomas Flavel (PDRA)
Duration: August 2024 - July 2025
Funder: University of Manchester Research Institute
MediaQuery seeks to build a framework that will provide researchers at UoM with a means for interrogating large media datasets, enabling them to carry out content analysis over the video, audio and subtitle data of thousands of television programmes.
Its overarching aims are:
- the development of an AI-supported platform for searching through media data consisting of structured metadata and unstructured content in the form of multiple modalities: video, audio and subtitles (henceforth referred to as multi-modal data).
- the application of the search platform in conducting mixed-methods content analysis of television programmes, aimed at answering the question of how animosity and inequalities between distinct cultural, ethnic and linguistic (CEL) groups have been portrayed in public service TV broadcasting.
The project team set out the following objectives:
- To enrich the unstructured content of multi-modal data with annotations automatically produced by AI models, and make the enriched data queryable through a search platform;
- To demonstrate how the enriched data can facilitate content analysis of BBC TV programmes, focussing on the portrayal of intercultural conflict over the 2007-2017 period as a case study;
- To develop a grant application around future media research that will build upon AI-enriched datasets.
The MediaQuery project combines the areas of Data Science and AI, and Createch. One of the project team’s aims is the development of a platform for searching through large media datasets.
This platform will be underpinned by video, audio and subtitle data enriched with semantic annotations (labels) that will be extracted using methods in machine learning and AI, specifically drawing from computer vision, speech processing and natural language processing (NLP).
This, in turn, will make such media datasets accessible to researchers, thus enabling the discovery of insights on our cultural heritage through the analysis of TV programmes recorded in the past decades.
Key people: Dr Sophie Everest (Principal Investigator), Dr Roddy Hawkins (Co-Investigator), Tareeq O Jalloh (Research Associate,) Dr Marianna Rolbina, Mat Bancroft, Professor Kieron Flanagan, Dr Roaa Ali, Professor Eithne Quinn, Professor Bridget Byrne, Dr Chloë Alaghband-Zadeh, Dr Jack Webb, Dr Andy Hardman
Duration: August 2024 - July 2025
Funder: University of Manchester Research Institute
In partnership with the British Pop Archive, this project aims to develop an interdisciplinary network of researchers and creative industries partners interested in the collection, study and future uses of archives relating to post-war Black British popular music and creative enterprise.
With enterprise as a focal point, the project responds to the specific challenge (identified by Olusoga here) of how we build collections and research in a way that retains and strengthens knowledge and agency within source communities and creatives.
Challenging the present by rethinking the past, the project aims to:
- trial new interdisciplinary models of research to develop a larger scale future project examining the cultural history of Black British creative enterprise;
- develop research on the Jazzie B archive (founding member of British collective Soul II Soul) and related BPA archives; with a focus on Black British creative entrepreneurship, self-determination, and collective models of creative business;
- digitise audiovisual content from the above archive to increase accessibility for research;
- develop new knowledge exchange partnerships that aim to increase intergenerational and inter-regional understandings of business innovation within historically under-represented sectors of the UK creative industries;
- explore the multimedia potential of these archives to develop future creative models for the co-creation and storytelling of marginalised histories, including documentary film production and exhibition design.
Theme Showcase
In 2024 the Creative and Industries and Innovation research theme presented a series of interdisciplinary networking events, co-organised with Digital Futures Research Platform, building a CreaTech Network in Greater Manchester.
The videos are available to watch back below.
CreaTech Network – Vision: Aftermovie
CreaTech Network – Sound: Aftermovie
CreaTech Network – Fashion: Aftermovie
Past projects
Research Associate, Dr Alicia J Rouverol, led activity on Creative Manchester’s Deep Dive project, a collaborative investigation with the Aspect Network that facilitated partnerships between academia and the creative industries.
Initially, research was conducted to understand and evaluate how the creative industries were engaged with by social science academics to highlight the activity in this area across the North of England (Greater Manchester, and Yorkshire & Humber region).
This produced two reports, which aided the development of a toolkit of practical resources – in the form of guides – to offer guidance on forging mutually beneficial academia-industry partnerships.
These were published as:
- Improving Creative Industries Research Engagement
- Improving Creative Industries-HEI Engagement
- Models and Dynamics of Sector-Engaged Research
Overall, the creative industries report a value in engaging with academics due to mutual interests and benefits.
For further information and to access the reports and resource toolkit, visit the Creative Industries ‘Deep Dives’ project page.
In recent years Creative Manchester partnered with the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC). PEC provides independent research and authoritative recommendations that aid the development of policies for the UK's creative industries.
Culture in Crisis
The ‘Culture in Crisis’ project analysed the impact of the pandemic on the cultural sector and consequently shaped UK cultural policy. Professor of Cultural Policy Abi Gilmore, formed part of the project's research team as a Co-Investigator with the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre.
In February 2022, the project published the report ‘Impacts of Covid-19 on the UK cultural sector and where we go from here,’ one of the world’s largest investigations into the impacts of Covid-19 on the cultural industries and a vital source of insight during the pandemic for civil servants, cultural organisations, and policy makers.
From this report, the Centre for Cultural Value worked with policy partners to test and refine a set of policy recommendations based on the research findings, during a time when the critical importance of the cultural industries in supporting the Government’s Levelling Up agenda is becoming clear.
Immediately evident is the need for national and local governments to communicate clear public health and safety guidance to all cultural organisations at the onset of a future crisis or pandemic.
The study was led by the Centre for Cultural Value, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Covid-19 Emergency Fund and undertaken in partnership with the Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre (PEC) and The Audience Agency (TAA).
Dave O’Brien, Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, is part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, and his current funded projects include work on education, skills, and diversity in the creative workforce; culture and heritage capital; class inequalities in the television industry; and how museums can better use data to understand staff and audiences.
Bruce Tether, Professor of Innovation Management and Strategy, is currently conducting a Creative PEC/IPO funded study on the effectiveness of design protections to encourage design originators in the UK. He is also interested in the geography of the creative industries. His past roles have also included being the research director for Creative PEC during the first five years of its life.
Outputs
- ‘Impacts of Covid-19 on the UK cultural sector and where we go from here’
- Summary video of ‘Impacts of Covid-19 on the UK cultural sector and where we go from here’
- Arts, Culture and Heritage: Audiences and Workforce - Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre
- Policy brief: Audiences and Workforces in Arts Culture and Heritage - Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre
- Professor Bruce Tether Archives - Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre
Key people: Ahu Gumrah Parry
Duration: January 2022 - January 2023
Funder: University of Manchester Research Institute
More information: Colour That Lasts: Nature-Inspired Dynamic Colour Adaptation - Booklet