Promoting creative collaboration workshop 19 March 2009

PACT: Promoting Art and creative industries collaboration

We would like to invite you to attend an ‘imagination lab’ on ‘Promoting Art and creative industries collaboration’. The lab is part of the EPSRC Digital Economy funded pilot study PACT ( Promoting Art and creative industries Collaboration), funded by the EPSRC Innovative Media for a Digital Economy cluster.  The aim of the workshop is to generate scenarios for the design of environments and ‘climates’ conducive to collaboration across the boundaries of art, craft, community, industry and the academy and to investigate possible opportunities for further research.

Current debates highlight the value of creative enterprise to the UK economy and culture. Synergy between often intrinsically anarchic, experimental, individualistic, intellectually and aesthetically ambitious publicly funded art, commercially oriented creative industries, and creativity in the academy and in the community, seems critical to developing creativity as the engine of economic growth for towns, cities and regions, but it is ill understood. What is the role of the built environment? What kinds of practices, services, infrastructures - ‘climatic’ and cultural conditions are needed? What is the role of digital social technology systems in this process, and particularly in approaches of leading through practice? How can one design and implement technology for improved synergy?

Researchers at Lancaster University are working with the Storey Gallery in Lancaster to investigate collaboration and synergy between publicly-funded arts organisations, commercial creative businesses, and the wider community.  The development of the new Storey creative industry centre in Lancaster provides an opportunity for an exemplar study of such activities.

The workshop will take place on
on Thursday 19th March 2009, 10:30 – 17:30
Lancaster University
Venue The Storey, Lancaster
http://www.storeygallery.org.uk/
http://www.lancaster.gov.uk/General.asp?id=SX9452-A780B8E5

The workshop is run by the Centre for Mobilities Research, the mobilities.lab and ImaginationLancaster.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/cemore/
http://imagination.lancaster.ac.uk/
and part of the IMDE EPSRC Digital Economy cluster
http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/research/digital-economy

The scenario generation process will be

• facilitated - with tools and methods from social science, art & design 
• inspired – for example, by Douglas and Fremantle’s framework for  ‘Leading through Practice’; technologies and observations of emergent practices in the digital economy; avantgarde art and design approaches
•  ‘grounded’ - through ethnographic video and interview data with practitioners, stakeholders, citizens in, and visitors to a series of ‘creative hubs’ throughout the UK (e.g. Access Space, Sheffield, Spike Island, Bristol, Salford Media City)
• post-disciplinary – the lab is designed to not only bring together people with expertise in everyday practice, engineering, IT, art, design, social science, economics, public policy, urban planning,  and more; but also to create opportunity, incentives, ‘anchors’ and avenues for ‘deep’ collaboration, connections, and creativity

There is only space for 25 participants. We highly value your IMDE participants’ expertise and would be delighted if you could attend. Please could you let us know by 6 March, by replying to
j.southern3@lancaster.ac.uk

with best wishes

The PACT research team
Jen Southern, HyunJoo Lee, Monika Buscher, Daniela Sangiorgi – Lancaster University
John Angus - Storey Gallery, Lancaster