National backing for the arts

Watershed is proud to announce that Jo Lansdowne, Director of Research, has been awarded a prestigious £1.5 million UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship. 

This recognition, as part of UKRI’s flagship programme supporting the next generation of research and innovation leaders, is a rare honour for an arts and culture organisation and is a powerful endorsement of Watershed’s track record. For more than 15 years Pervasive Media Studio has supported creative technology entrepreneurs with money, space and community, helping to bring more than £72m of investment into the West of England between 2012 and 2025. The fellowship gives Watershed the resources to build on that foundation.

Jo’s fellowship, A Carrier Bag Theory of Innovation, is a four-year action research project based at Watershed. Rather than expecting all entrepreneurs to adapt to systems that were not designed with them in mind, she will work with them to create new ones. 

"I have a hunch (backed up by our own experience and wider research) that if we ensure our systems work for those most harmed by the way things work now, they will produce change for everyone."  Jo Landsdowne

The UK’s creative industries contribute £125bn to the economy but the benefits have not reached everyone equally. Jo and her team aim to change that. The fellowship will partner with creative technology entrepreneurs whose ideas are too often overlooked - including people who are racialised as Black and Brown, women, transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, agender or of another marginalised gender, disabled people and/or people without a financial safety net.

At the heart of the programme is a Framework for Inclusive Innovation, developed with Pervasive Media Studio residents as co-researchers. It will develop new micro-finance tools, training and ways of measuring the social, cultural and economic value of ideas

The findings will be shared as an open evidence base for funders and policymakers, alongside fairer approaches such as community wealth building, which keeps more of the value created by innovation within local communities.

The fellowship takes its name from Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1986 essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. For Jo it offers a way to move beyond the image of the lone inventor and recognise the relationships, communities and networks that allow ideas to grow. An innovation is a new way of doing something. It is an idea that has been realised and can be repeated in order to create more value for more people. Innovation matters because many of the ways that we do things now are not working well, and so we need to change them. If we recognise that this process doesn’t happen in isolation it means that we pay attention to the health of the whole system knowing that if parts of it are broken, and if some people and their ideas are neglected, then we will all miss out.  

The programme is rooted in Bristol, one of the UK’s top five creative clusters, a thriving city but one with persistent wealth inequalities. It was developed in consultation with the teams behind the West of England’s Growth Strategy at the West of England Combined Authority and those behind Arts Council England’s recent review of inclusive innovation, with support from the University of Bristol and the Brunel Centre. Jo will be joined by Professor Erinma Ochu and Dr Simon Moreton (UWE Bristol), Rachel Coldicutt (Careful Industries) and Simon Johnson and Sam Howey Nunn (Free Ice Cream).

Jo Lansdowne, Director of Research, Watershed, said:

 “I’m thrilled to have been awarded a Future Leaders Fellowship. It’s a huge opportunity to build on the work we’ve been doing at Watershed and in the Pervasive Media Studio and to ask some really important questions about how we support creative innovation. I will lead a wonderful team of people bringing different skills, experiences and opinions to the question of how best to support innovation when it emerges at the margins. I have a hunch (backed up by our own experience and wider research) that if we ensure our systems work for those most harmed by the way things work now, they will produce change for everyone. And if we support those who recognise technology’s transformative potential, we might sustain that change over time. Then we would have the innovations that we really need to carry us towards a better future.” 

Clare Reddington, CEO of Watershed, said: 

“Bristol is full of brilliant creative technologists, but too many are building extraordinary ideas on precarious foundations. Jo’s fellowship asks a question that matters far beyond Bristol: what would our society look like if innovation support worked for everyone?”

Jo has been part of Watershed’s research and development team for more than a decade. She joined in 2012 as a Producer on REACT, a four-year programme connecting creative companies and academic researchers, and has since led a series of large-scale research and development programmes with universities. She is also a Visiting Professor at UWE Bristol’s Digital Cultures Research Centre and a Co-Investigator for Immersive Arts.

With A Carrier Bag Theory of Innovation Jo and Watershed are laying the foundations for a more inclusive, ethical and prosperous future for the UK’s creative technology sector. This is also an open invitation to funders, policymakers and creative entrepreneurs who share that vision to join in shaping it.

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