Active Arts, Culture & Design Education & Skills

Creative Communities

Funder AHRC (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation Northumbria University
Funding £3.2M
Period Apr 2022 — Apr 2027

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

The UK’s arts and cultural sector is being redesigned as a tool for regional economic growth and social fairness, not just creative expression. This programme, called Creative Communities, addresses a gap in how arts and humanities research connects to real-world policy. While there is an explosion of collaborative, community-based cultural activity across the UK, its potential to build a stronger, fairer economy remains largely untapped. The programme will fund outward-facing research and engagement work that turns this grassroots creativity into actionable public policy recommendations. If successful, Creative Communities could reshape how government and funding bodies support local culture. Instead of funding isolated projects, they might invest in networks that link artists, community groups, and regional economies. This could change the infrastructure of cultural funding itself—shifting from short-term grants to sustained, place-based strategies that quietly strengthen local economies and social cohesion across the UK’s regions and nations. The programme is designed to deliver benefits even if longer-term resources are not available.

View original technical description
The proposal set out below for a 2 + 1 model investment in a programme of activities which collectively contribute to the AHRC Creative Communities delivery programme. The AHRC Creative Communities programme will develop the potential for arts and humanities in fostering and enabling creative communities. Its mission is to capture the inspiring explosion of collaboration and connectivity that can unlock the full potential of our great arts and culture to create a stronger, fairer economy and society across the regions and nations of the UK. Building on our Boundless Creativity project with DCMS , this new programme will lead significant outward facing research and engagement work to unite the AHRC quartiles of vision in new discovery research to generate impactful public policy recommendations and to inform future funding and organisational strategy. Any longer-term and larger scale interventions within and/or beyond the timeline of the proposal will be subject to ongoing spending developments; however, 2 + 1 programme of activities is phased and is designed to realise benefits whether additional resources are available to pursue extended ambitions.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Katy Shaw (Principal Investigator)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Creativity Greenhouse - Supporting Distributed Group Creativity
Creative Economy Champion Grant Renewal
Communities in history: representing and building the creative power of people to improve health and well-being
"Before The Last Traces Are Gone" - Reconnecting and Renegotiating Lost Heritages: Connected Communities Heritage Network
New Research Processes and Business Models for the Creative Industries

Original classification

Research Grant

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.