Professor Schlesinger awarded major AHRC grant
Published: 2 November 2012
Professor Philip Schlesinger, has been awarded an AHRC grant as part of the collective banner of Creative Economy Knowledge Exchange Projects
Professor Philip Schlesinger, Professor in Cultural Policy, has been awarded an AHRC grant as part of 10 new awards made under the collective banner of Creative Economy Knowledge Exchange (CE KE) Projects.
These 12 month projects, which will run throughout 2013, will take forward innovative knowledge exchange activities developed from a number of high quality proposals to last year’s call for Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy.
Professor Schlesinger's project, on which he will be working with his Centre for Cultural Policy Research colleague, Dr Melanie Selfe, is entitled ‘Supporting Creative Businesses: the cultural enterprise office and its clients’.
The Cultural Enterprise Office (CEO) was established in 2002. It is supported by Creative Scotland, Aberdeen City Council, Dundee City Council, The City of Edinburgh Council and Glasgow City Council and its services are delivered in partnership with the Business Gateway network.
It supports cultural micro-businesses offering services - using specialist advisers - in digital development, equalities, finance, taxation, human resources, legal affairs, press and publicity, property, marketing and retail to a range of creative sectors.
The research team will offer real time analysis of interactions between clients and the CEO's executive and advisory teams to assess areas of success and those that might be improved. The research will therefore constitute an unprecedented analysis of the workings of a cultural support body and how it engages in knowledge exchange in the creative economy. At the same time, because the research will add very significant new analysis to the CEO's knowledge base, it also exemplifies how academics can engage in highly constructive KE with a cultural support body.
This project constitutes an exceptional and timely opportunity to undertake a full-scale case study that scrutinises how contemporary policy is understood and implemented institutionally and organisationally by a publicly funded cultural agency.
Speaking about the award, Prof Schlesinger said: “It's tremendously exciting – and unusual - to have such excellent access to the Cultural Enterprise Office. This research should help us all to really understand how public support for creative businesses works and what implications this has for policy and institutional design.”
First published: 2 November 2012
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