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The Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries

The Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (CCCI) works across both academia and industry, supporting and amplifying research and practice across multiple sectors.

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About CCCI

The Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (CCCI) is a strategic research centre, drawing together academics and practitioners, both within Bath Spa University, as well as facing outward, engaging our city, our region, and our world.

Since first established by Professor Kate Pullinger in 2017, CCCI has served as a focal point for interdisciplinary research that engages arts, culture, humanities, science, and technology.

BSU is a creative university where traditional subjects sit alongside a strong culture of creative practice research. As a result, CCCI is profoundly engaged with making and makers, writing and writers, painting and pixels, the hand-made and the automated.

_{Illustration: Alex Williamson}

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In this section:

Our projects

Through our array of interdisciplinary projects, public engagement events and research publications, we seek to challenge and redefine what it means to be creative.

The Value of Artists

Culture West

City of Imagination

Forest of Imagination

MIX Conference

Ambient Literature

Our people

Since 2023, CCCI has been co-directed by Professor Kate Pullinger and Dr Ruth Farrar. They are joined by our CCCI Research Fellows who have some or all of their work week allocated to collaborating with the Centre and its associated projects.

Penny Hay

Professor of Imagination

Kate Pullinger

Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media, and Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries

Ruth Farrar

Reader in Creative Media and Enterprise, and Co-Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries

Coral Manton

Research Fellow in Creative Computing

Natasha Kidd

Associate Vice Provost: Creative Engagement

Tanvir Bush

Research Fellow in Creative Writing and Disability Studies

Research grants

Since its inception, CCCI has been awarded three large-scale multi-partner research grants. These programmes have enabled multiple colleagues from BSU to participate in cutting-edge collaborative research and this, in turn, has benefitted their ability to teach and innovate in their chosen fields. Since teaching and learning are at the absolute core of everything the university does, this relationship between research and curriculum development is vital.

South West Creative Technology Network

The South West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN) brought together four South West universities and two cultural organisations across the themes of Immersion, Automation, and Data, enabling cross-disciplinary research and funding a series of creative industries prototypes.

SWCTN received £6.5m of funding from Research England’s Connecting Capabilities Fund and ran from 2018-2021. Seven BSU academics were awarded Fellowships worth between £12-15k through this programme, from across theatre, creative writing, visual arts, creative computing, biology, and music, and several academics worked on the prototyping projects SWCTN supported.

Bristol and Bath Creative Research and Development

The Bristol and Bath Creative Research and Development partnership (B+B Creative R+D) brought together the four universities in Bristol and Bath with Watershed in Bristol to fund research into new technologies and the creative industries.

This £7.5m Arts and Humanities Research Council funded creative industries cluster partnership programme ran from 2018-2023, enabling research and prototyping on the themes of Digital Placemaking, Expanded Performance, and Amplified Publishing. BSU academics were engaged across this programme, including leading on the development and roll-out of the Amplified Publishing programme.

MyWorld

This £30m UKRI-funded Strength in Places programme brings together the four universities in Bristol and Bath, alongside global and local creative industries companies for cutting-edge research into immersive media.

Running from 2021 through 2026, this programme will enable academic researchers who lead on new forms of narrative, computer vision, motion capture, AI and understanding audiences, to work with the screen and live performance industries to maximise our visual media research and production capabilities across the region.

This project supports students through the MyWorld Scholars programme, and industry partners through industry-focused training opportunities, MyWorld Fellowships and R&D prototyping programmes. MyWorld has brought more than £250,000 of investment into BSU’s film, tv, immersive audio and XR facilities.

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Our impact

One thing these three large-scale projects have in common is that they bring together industry and academia in a manner that ensures that the research taking place within universities can make a difference in the wider world. Historically this has been called 'Technology Transfer', 'Knowledge Transfer', and more recently 'Knowledge Exchange'.

The team behind SWCTN co-wrote a set of Knowledge Exchange principles whose key message is: ‘If knowledge is power, then knowledge exchange is sharing power.’

These projects have a strong commitment to inclusion and diversity, providing research fellowships to a broad range of non-academic participants, enabling our academics to work on industry-focused shared research interests and technology-led prototyping projects.

CCCI works to support BSU colleagues in a number of other ways, including funding multiple fellowships and PhDs, providing funding for events, supporting the development of research bids and running symposia and lectures.

Creative enterprise is also one of our core principles. The success of these research grants has enabled Bath Spa University to open its first town centre innovation hub, The Studio at Palace Yard Mews, where we offer space to researchers and innovators in the creative technology sector.

CCCI is here to foster creative cross-disciplinary conversations, based on the principle that shared research leads to new research, and new research leads to better, more engaging, teaching and learning.

Recent blogs

Unveiling new narratives: Digitising fashion assets

28 May 2025

Team from CAMERA using Artec scanners to scan 1999 Alexander McQueen Dress of the Year, digital twin of the dress in Maya created by CAMERA

Gabby Shiner-Hill discusses unveiling new narratives while digitising fashion assets at the Fashion Museum Bath.

Embodied Voices

26 May 2025

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Dr Kerrie Reading shares her experience of attending the Embodied Voices Conference at the University of Warwick.

Writing Prison Narratives

24 May 2025

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Rosalchen Whitecross reflects on the international Narrative Matters Conference 2025 in Paris.

Intellectual property in video game performance

20 May 2025

A presenter stands in front of a large screen which reads 'Beyond the Screen: A study of IP in video game performance'

Dr Sevra Guzel discusses performers’ rights for video game actors under UK intellectual property law.

Teen Diaries

13 May 2025

Three people sit on chairs at the front of a conference room

Claire Levy presents interactive documentary ‘Teen Diaries’ at the BSA Conference 2025 in Manchester.

Bringing the Body with You

27 March 2025

Two people moving around outdoor furniture

Professor Vicky Hunter outlines her experience at the University of Malta’s annual School of Performing Arts Conference.

The Rural Music Project

21 February 2025

A person stands in front of a dark wall and neon signs to present to a group

Dr Simon Strange discusses The Rural Music Project at the Night Time Economy Summit 2025.

Telling complex historical narratives using immersive technologies

20 February 2025

A leatherbound burgundy diary sits atop a pile of handwritten letters with red wax seals

Rachel Pownall talks immersive storytelling and historically-based narratives.