Collaborative Arts Triple Helix (CATH)

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The Collaborative Arts Triple Helix (CATH) project will use a voucher scheme and a series of four cross-sector workshops to initiate up to sixteen small-scale projects that enable academics from the University of Birmingham and University of Leicester to work in partnership with an SME and a small cultural organisation (SCO) to explore productive collaborations, some of which will result in the production of prototype digital outputs (e.g. an iPhone app, touch table app, or web tool) that is suitable for release to the public and/or further development. The voucher scheme will principally draw academics from the Arts and Humanities but at least 4 vouchers will be targeted at other disciplines.In parallel, the project team will conduct research relating to the barriers to such collaborative work that stakeholders in each of the three partner sectors (creative SMEs, SCOs, academics) have encountered previously, those encountered by participants during the project, and the ways in which such barriers can be and are overcome. Much of the our research will concentrate on the CATH project itself, involving interviews with participant organisations from all three sectors and observation of the project workshops which will, in part, involve discussions focused on the work of teams developing digital prototypes using CATH vouchers. CATH researchers and project participants will be asking whether 'Triple Helix' collaboration (involving all three sectors working together on projects) has been and is still being impeded by the absence of shared professional vocabularies, and limited knowledge and understanding of other sectors' operational and strategic drivers and parameters (including unfamiliar policy and funding landscapes, and management and governance structures and cultures). Together, we will also be exploring whether small culture organisations face particular barriers to engagement in Triple Helix work, and what has and continues to motivate them, SMEs, and academics to overcome such challenges. Based in part on their own experiences of Triple Helix partnerships, the CATH team begins with the hypothesis that the EU is right to promote such modes of work as key mechanisms for generating academic, social, cultural and economic value. In short, Triple Helix collaboration leads to outputs and outcomes that are more than the sum of their parts. We aim to establish whether the CATH voucher system, when supported by regular workshop forums and on-going support from a project Broker helps to bridge gaps in the 'value chain' that Michael Porter (Harvard Business School), posited as existing between sectors whose collaborative work can be mutually beneficial and beneficial to society. The project's research and practice will inform the production of a 'Best Practice Guide' to Triple Helix collaboration that will be disseminated through the CATH web pages and participants professional networks. The guide will help academics, SMEs, and SCOs collaborate more effectively and offer a case study of the benefits, but also the challenges, afforded by such work, whether or not they employ the CATH voucher/workshops/brokerage model.