Creative Economy Champion - Media Arts

The UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council is hiring a Creative Economy Champion to steer roughly £100 million of past and future investments into a coherent strategy for the arts and creative industries. This matters because the creative economy—from film and gaming to design and advertising—lacks a clear, coordinated narrative linking academic research to real-world business models and entrepreneurial growth. The AHRC has spent heavily in this area but needs a single leader to map existing projects, spot gaps, and broker partnerships across universities, funding bodies, and the creative sector itself. If the Champion succeeds, the UK’s creative industries could gain more targeted support for new ideas and practices, stronger collaborations between researchers and businesses, and a clearer route from humanities scholarship to commercial or cultural impact. The role is about building infrastructure for knowledge exchange—connecting people and money more effectively, rather than producing new research directly. This is a strategic coordination project, not a fundamental science investigation. Its success would mean a more efficient, better-connected creative economy, but the concrete outcomes will depend on the partnerships the Champion builds over the next three years.