How can creative practice research inform local policy and create change?

Bath Spa University (BSU) is exploring how creative practice research might inform and impact local policy and affect change in the area.

Creative Policy Forum

This project has grown out of a Policy Forum event that was hosted at the artist-run space FORM(ICA) in Bath in October 2024, supported by an AHRC Impact Accelerator Account and the Centre for Creative and Cultural Industries.

The afternoon brought together creative practice researchers and key local stakeholders working at a policy level across a range of sectors to explore the different ways that creative practice can inform, engage with, question and be integrated into local policy processes.

Each attendee was asked to bring an object of their choice that could provoke a discussion and open up a question in relation to their work. Dr Nicola Simms, a Research Fellow at UWE Bristol and an independent evaluator, reported on the event in a set of field notes that can be found here, illustrated with images from the event taken by BSU alumni Jakub Knapp.

Creative Policy Fellowships

As a result of the Forum, we are developing a Creative Policy Project that will commission and support a cohort of creative practice researchers from the university to be in residence at one of a group of partner organisations.

Working with partners that include Bath and Northeast Somerset council and the Prison Reform Trust, the organisations will host a practice researcher for six months. Each Fellow will commit one day per week to their work with the organisation.

The aim of this project is to provide an experimental space in which creative practitioners might bring new ways of thinking and working to different policy contexts. We are imagining policy to include a wide range of contexts and processes, from organisational strategies to council committees and more.

By supporting a creative practice researcher to be in residence without a specific brief or preconceived outcome we hope to employ methods that are discursive, messy, curious and informal to re-imagine established processes.

Potential outcomes from this project might be:

  • Identify challenges for collaborative future projects
  • Think through organisational structures and processes
  • Explore the opportunities that creative practice approaches might bring to policy issues.

With a spirit of openness and learning together, Fellows will be invited to take part in cohort workshops and practice sharing days. As a culmination of the residency the practice researcher and their partner will share their work and learning with the larger cohort.