Creative Economy Champion Grant Renewal

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This project renews the appointment of Andrew Chitty as AHRC Creative Economy Champion (CEC) for a 39 month period (January 2020 - March 2023) to develop stronger, more sustainable and more impactful relationships between the Creative Industries and the academic community both within and beyond the Arts and Humanities. It builds on previous work by Professor Chitty duing an initial 3-year period from 2017-19 (CEC1). During this second period, Professor Chitty will be based at Loughborough University's London campus in Hackney. Its co-location on the Here East site, with an exciting cluster of creative industries, innovators and educational providers, is ideal for partnership working and public engagement. The renewal of the role has been supported by two significant events that occurred during the initial period: the rise of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) as a significant new funding stream for Research and Innovation and the establishment of UK Research and Innovation bringing together the 7 Research Councils, including AHRC, Innovate UK and a new body Research England. ISCF funding enabled the commissioning, development and launch of the two most ambitious Research and Innovation Programmes ever devised for the Creative Industries: the £54m Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP) delivered by AHRC and the £35m Audience of the Future Challenge (AotF), delivered through Innovate UK. These programmes greatly expanded both the scale and scope of the CEC role as Andrew Chitty took on a leadership role in developing each programme, being appointed to the UKRI role of Challenge Director in 2018 (AotF) and 2019 (CICP). The responsibilities of the Challenge Director role have required Professor Chitty to take on a fractional employment contract with UKRI to exercise the financial and management powers within the appropriate governance framework and to manage the efforts of a combined team that now totals 14FTE.The ongoing combination of Challenge Director and AHRC Creative Economy Champion roles presents great opportunities to co-ordinate UKRI's research strategy for the Creative Industries as well as to work with industry bodies (such as the Creative Industries Council) and government departments (DCMS, DIT, BEIS) to ensure that this new field of applied creative research is supported and sustained. However, the complex governance requirements, the differing timescales of the programmes and grants (CEC 2017-19; AotF 2018-2021, CICP 2018-2023) and the potential overlap of activities present both challenges and risks. The objectives of this grant are:- To build on the success of the initial CEC tenure by continuing to work to build innovative, impactful and sustainable relationships between the Creative Industries and Academic researchers.- To enable the CEC to continue to provide thought leadership to the sector and to provide strategic advice to AHRC Senior Management and AHRC Council over current and future strategy and investments relevant to the Creative Industries - To focus and refine the CEC workstreams into specific areas of need for the new period, with an acknowledgement that some areas of previous activity are now sustained by resources available under the CICP and AotF programme. The focus for the grant period will be particularly on developing partnerships with industry bodies for as yet unengaged sectors, developing a conceptual framework for creative research both in the UK and internationally and engagement and outreach to policy makers. Workstreams supported by this CEC2 programme will be completely distinct from activities of CICP and AotF- To ensure strong cross-over and synergy with the activities of the two ISCF Programmes and the continuity in leadership of the Creative Industries Clusters across the years 2021-2023 that is required to ensure that AHRC can maintain its pre-eminent role within UKRI regarding the Creative Industries