Jo Lansdowne Director of Research
on Tue 17 MarchWatershed launches Nurturing Creative Futures report
Posted on Tue 17 March
We are proud to be publishing our new report, Nurturing Creative Futures today, which shares the ways in which Watershed supports research and development – the values we are driven by, the methods we use, and the impact that we have had.
Watershed opened in 1982, the year that Channel 4 began transmission, the Falklands War dominated national politics and on 1 January 1983, ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) created the ‘network of networks’ that would go on to become the internet. As the UK’s first media centre, Watershed sat at the intersection of these forces of culture, society and technology, recognising the fundamental importance of bringing them together - to both understand the world, and to change it.
This year Pervasive Media Studio, the ideas lab that Watershed runs with UWE Bristol and the University of Bristol to explore that premise in practice, turned 18 years old. The Studio foregrounds the power of the imagination to direct technology towards a more inclusive, playful and sustainable world. Current industrial policy in the UK recognises the importance of creative technology as a key driver of economic growth and highlights the importance of place-based support for practitioners at every stage, and from all backgrounds to ensure that this growth is more evenly distributed. As we come of age, the work we do in the Studio has never felt more relevant.
Since the Studio opened, we have worked with companies, cultural organisations, research institutions, local authorities and collectives locally, nationally and internationally. We have leveraged over £72m of funding into programmes that place the needs of practitioners at their heart. We have supported new forms of experience, new products, new jobs and new businesses. We have sustained old practices, long-term relationships, cultivated wisdom and kept going. We have done this while developing a resident community that is rich in its diversity and difference.
This report documents and shares the expertise that Watershed has brought to and developed through that work. We hope that it will be useful to others who are interested in supporting purposeful research and development.
We would like to thank our community and partners who we learn from every day, Dr. Jack Lowe as the report’s author and our valued colleague, and MyWorld whose partnership has made such a difference over the last five years.
If you would like to talk to us please email us at studio@watershed.co.uk or pop in to see what we are all about on Open Studio Friday.
Read the Nurturing Creative Futures Report
The report is funded by MyWorld, which is a creative technology programme in the West of England, funded through UK Research and Innovation Strength in Places fund.