ICC academics participate in AHRC-funded Cities of Culture Research Network
Added on Friday, August 2nd, 2019
The ICC’s Kerry Wilson (Head of Research) and Rafaela Ganga (Research Fellow) were delighted to join colleagues at the University of Hull on Wednesday 31st July, for the inaugural meeting of the Cities of Culture Research Network. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the network is bringing together academics, researchers, consultants and policy makers to enhance understanding and development of the UK City of Culture (UKCoC) programme. The network is led by Professor Franco Bianchini of the University of Hull’s Culture, Place and Policy Institute, and Jonothan Neelands, Professor of Creative Education at the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies, University of Warwick.
Rafaela is a research partner (Co-investigator) on the project and Kerry was invited to the workshop to share reflections on her own AHRC-funded research network dedicated to the UKCoC programme, the Cultural Cities Research Network (2011-12). In her presentation, Kerry shared network highlights including core objectives, activities and outputs, and her reflections as Principal Investigator on the political, pragmatic and ethical dimensions of running a research network dedicated to such a high profile cultural programme.
Throughout the day, network members enjoyed a series of provocations from invited speakers and group discussions, each responding to the core research questions used to design the network project, including for example:
- What are the conditions and procedures through which the findings from Cities of Culture evaluation programmes feed into cultural and urban strategies and what are the challenges and barriers to this?
- What are the roles of Universities, and of specialist research institutes, in the process of turning evaluation into policy development?
- What guidance do policy makers need from researchers and what do researchers need from policy makers for a useful exchange of knowledge?
A dedicated website will be soon be available to share network progress, discussion points and research outputs. In the meantime, you can follow network activities via its Twitter feed @cities_culture #CoCRNetwork
