Andy’s Impact with the British Council on Creative Hubs

Andy Pratt has been working on issues associated with ‘creative hubs’ and the cultural economy for some time. Several of the case studies for the AHRC Creative Works London project touched on this issue. Andy has joined with with Jon Dovey , Director of the REACT creative hub, and colleagues  -Tarek Virani (CWL), Janet Merkel (CCI), Simon Moreton, (REACT) and Jo Lansdowne (Watershed projects) – to write a new document for the British Council which consolidates insights gained from the AHRC projects, and applies them to new case study material on cities in the UK. The resultant document will be used by the British Council globally as examples of best practice, and insight into cultural hub governance. The report will be published next month by the British Council.

This work has already been extended and moved on to another stage. Things happen very quickly in the creative field, and you have to be able to be reactive. On the back of this report Andy has been working with the British Council and the Vietnamese Department of Culture to help develop a policy for Creative Hubs in that country, as an articulation of the creative industries policy just issued this autumn by the Vietnamese government. After running some workshops in Vietnam with existing hubs, Andy will forward recommendations to the Department of Culture early next year.

This is an example of how ‘blue skies’ academic work, and research funded by research councils, is codified as knowledge of practice and governance, and then transferred to international policy agencies, and nation states. From then, it becomes part of making a change in the world.