Devolution revolution: Unlocking R&D for creative communities

In her 2024 Labour Conference speech as Culture Minister, Lisa Nandy underlined that “for far too long in communities up and down our country, too many voices have been ignored. Equal opportunity across the nation will help enrich our culture”.

By bringing people closer to opportunity – to gain skills, retrain and retain talent in the regions and nations of the UK – culture is uniquely placed to forge much-needed societal resilience. The challenge is to preserve what we have and create new culture, as well as ensuring that culture is by all, and for all.
The Creative Communities programme

The AHRC Creative Communities programme is a £3.9m investment hosted by Northumbria University generating a new evidence base for the value and return of cross-sector co-created culture-led R&D with communities across devolved contexts in all four nations of the UK.

The programme examines the delivery model of a ‘creative community’ – collaborative cross-sector R&D that brings together diverse actors from community, government, education, arm’s length, third and private sector organisations to deliver new culture and generate economic, social and cultural value.

Over the last two years, our research has explored the potential of co-created culture and R&D to enhance belonging, address regional inequality, deliver devolution and break down barriers to opportunity for communities using the new policy levers available in devolved settings.

Co-creation: A catalyst for inclusive innovation

Community involvement in research is an increasingly important pathway for UK R&D and its funding bodies, yet innovation funding continues to operate in a very centralised system for an increasingly devolved country. The role of communities and non-academic partners in the research ecosystem can challenge traditional understandings of what ‘expert’ knowledge is, and who holds and creates it.

By embracing co-creation with diverse partners, researchers can contribute to more meaningful and impactful research that is truly responsive to the needs of communities, and fully harnesses the potential of their devolved contexts.

The Creative Communities programme approaches this opportunity using co-creation as catalyst to the collaborative ecosystem of R&D between diverse cross-sector partners and communities. Co-creative processes produce more inclusive forms of innovation, and they require diverse – sometimes unlikely – partnerships.

By bringing a variety of perspectives, networks and resources to a research question, the creative community model can tackle contemporary issues which are too large for any single body or organisation to take on in isolation. While the aim of creative communities’ co-creation is innovation and change, it also brings additional benefits, including greater equity, accessibility, mutual benefit and reciprocity between collaborators.

Creative methods

We launched the Community Innovation Practitioner (CIP) Awards in 2023 to explore and capture knowledge about co-creation and partnerships in community-based R&D.

Over the last 12 months the five CIPs have worked with government, private, public, third sector and community partners across the UK, generating new knowledge on how and why engaging such diverse research partners can enhance the quality, resilience and sustainability of our research ecosystem.

Our CIP cohort all came from very different devolved places, but they were united by their embedded relationships with their communities and partners, and the use of creative methods in their research.

These methods ranged from design-led tools, photography, filmmaking and music to heritage conservation. Across the last 12 months, the CIPs have explored:

the use of photography, poetry and drama to empower communities and break cycles of silence around trauma and substance use (Áine Brady, Queens University Belfast)
the role of heritage sites in fostering sustainable development in de-industrialised regions (Alexander Langlands, Swansea University)
the power of music to unite diverse communities in Liverpool (Georgina Aasgaard, University of Liverpool)
collaborative filmmaking with skateboard communities to reignite civic pride and identity in Portrush (Jim Donaghey, Ulster University)
and the use of design-led tools to promote communication between arts and humanities academics and community partners (Gaston Welisch, University of Glasgow)

The programme has released a podcast series, as well as case studies and devolved policy papers for each of the four nations capturing the co-created R&D that our CIP cohort have undertaken over the last year. The outputs provide timely evidence on the value of cross-sector partnership working to deliver cultural innovation and community cohesion in devolved contexts.

The key learning from the investment in these awards is the role creative methods play in fostering inclusivity in our innovation ecosystem. CIPs reported that accessible methods helped to break down barriers between communities and innovation processes and enabled the sharing of lived experiences.

They built greater empathy and understanding between partners, promoted knowledge exchange and enhanced connection. Importantly, they also brought joy and creative approaches into what might otherwise have been difficult areas of discussion.

Shifting practice

Structural changes to organisational models are needed for funders to adapt to the new landscape of devolution. The same is true for the wider R&D ecosystem, where prevailing hierarchies of knowledge might cast doubt on the value of culture, creativity and co-creative practices to elicit rigorous research that can better inform innovation in practice and policy.

The programme research to date shows there is no one way of doing co-creation or predicting its outcomes. Co-creation methods are entirely dependent on context: the people, place and possibilities open to the people that are co-creating.

As Patrycja Kaszynska, Andrew Anzel and Christopher Rolls’ Reasons to Co-Create report argue, “co-creation is never just one thing: it is not so much a single and uniform form of agency as a bundle of networked processes spanning different agents”. This uncertainty can be difficult to integrate into R&D process and structures.

By making space for the CIP in existing collaborative R&D, UK universities and their non-academic partners have been challenged to centre both communities and creative practitioners, empowering communities to use their own knowledge to co-design R&D.

In turn they have created more equitable ways of working between communities, third and private sector partners to drive innovation in the UK, while shifting the dial on the types of knowledge we value.

CIP awards 2025/26

The evidence generated by our first CIP cohort suggests that communities are best positioned to identify their own needs and priorities. By bringing together diverse partners, the CIP awards have fostered inclusive and equitable collaborations addressing complex community challenges.

We are delighted to be able to announce the scale up the Community Innovation Practitioner (CIP) Awards for 2025/2026, doubling the number of opportunities for new CIPs. A call is open until 6th January 2025 for expressions of interest for up to 10 Community Innovation Practitioners with at least one award in each of the four nations.

Creative Communities aims to create a lasting legacy of equitable innovation and positive change, unlocking inclusive growth that helps deliver the new UK government’s mission to “drive opportunity into every region and nation”. By investing in co-creation, we can create a more equitable and sustainable future where communities thrive, innovation flourishes and we build a future that is by all, for all.

*The UKRI Creative Communities programme has been extended by AHRC to 2027 with an additional £1.7 million funding to Northumbria University.