2024
Understanding Membership Data in the Creative Industries: The Creative Edinburgh Data Project
In October 2023, the teams of Creative Edinburgh and Creative Informatics joined forces to spearhead an innovative project exploring the power of data for the creative sector, called Creative Edinburgh & Creative Informatics Data Project. The overall goal of this innovative project was threefold: (1) to conduct a case study project into exploring the power of data for the creative sector, specifically for Creative Edinburgh (CE); (2) to develop concrete recommendations for CE how to improve their existing data collection and membership database approach; and (3) to showcase this project as a potential template for other creative sector organizations regarding the deployment of an ethical and diversity-embracing approach to using data as a powerful tool for the creative industries sector. This report documents the work undertaken and provides a range of key recommendations across three categories: User-Centricity; Equality, Diversity & Inclusion; and Data-Circularity.
2023
FestForward: Participatory Design Futuring and World-Building for Equitable Digital Futures in Performing Arts Festivals
FestForward is a fictional, local, cultural magazine, set in 2030, designed to stimulate conversations about equitable and sustainable digital futures in performing arts festivals. This extensive design fiction was developed through a series of participatory workshops, where creative and cultural practitioners responded to various ‘provotypes’ suggesting narrative content for the magazine. In this pictorial, we annotate and unpack the making of FestForward to reflect upon various formats and approaches to design futuring, and to offer a platform for further world-building, research and discussion on equitable digital futures in arts festivals. Elsden, C., Jones, V., Helgason, I., Abernethy, L. and Brown, W., 2023, July. FestForward: Participatory Design Futuring and World-Building for Equitable Digital Futures in Performing Arts Festivals. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 1424-1437). https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563657.3596033
2023
Detecting Dark Matter Data: Data Gaps For Innovation and R&D Activity In The Creative Industries
How can we make data collection, processing & analysis more useful for data consumers (like policymakers and funders) and for data producers (like businesses and individual creatives)? McDonald, C. and Jordan, J., 2023. Detecting Dark Matter Data: data gaps for innovation and R&D activity in the creative industries. https://doi.org./10.5281/zenodo.7418480
2023
Creative Industries: Challenges and Opportunities of Digital Technologies
Generative Artificial Intelligences (GAI) and Machine Learning (ML) offer the potential to generate substitutes for human-created content in all creative industries and may upend existing practices, current knowledge, and potential employment for creatives. This paper looks at how new technologies might shape the creative industries of near future. Jones, C., Askin, N., Godart, F., Harvey, S. and Phillips, D., 2023. Creative industries: Challenges and opportunities of digital technologies. Academy of Management Discoveries. https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/creative-industries-challenges-and-opportunities-of-digital-techn
2023
Evaluating Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Activities Within Creative Industries Clusters
In 2018 UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) created the Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP), which funded nine large-scale Creative Research and Development Partnerships (CRDPs) across the UK, including Creative Informatics. Creative Informatics (2018–2024) focused on supporting the Creative Industries in Edinburgh and the South-East Scotland Region to use data to innovate in the production of goods and services. With a network of over 6000 people, and leading to 352 new and safeguarded jobs, Creative Informatics has had a huge impact on the creative industries in its region. But has this been done in a way that advances Equality, Diversity and Inclusion? This report evaluates the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I) activities (based on data published up to July 2023) of Creative Informatics (CI) in the context of other funding, policy and research organisations also operating in the space of the Creative Industries. Black, S., Anna, O., Osborne, N. and Terras, M., 2023. Evaluating Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion activities within Creative Industries Clusters: A report from Creative Informatics. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8114197
2023
The Quintuple Bottom Line: A Framework for Place-Based Sustainable Enterprise in the Craft Industry
This study proposes to extend the sustainable business framework of the Quadruple Bottom Line into the Quintuple Bottom Line. The five Ps of the Quintuple Bottom Line support purpose-driven businesses to consider economic profitability alongside social responsibility and environmental sustainability, rooted in place (purpose, profit, people, planet and place), and are based on reflections from the craft industry. Panneels, I., 2023. The Quintuple Bottom Line: A Framework for Place-Based Sustainable Enterprise in the Craft Industry. Sustainability, 15(4), p.3791. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043791
2023
From VizBlocks to the Data-Driven Actor: Reimagining An Open-Ended Data Physicalisation Prototype With a Creative Business
In this case study, we document the process of engaging in an initially unplanned and informal knowledge exchange activity between academic researchers and a local performing arts company. This knowledge exchange activity quickly became a fruitful collaboration during which an academic design research prototype was reimagined as a wholly new product. Lechelt, S., Morgan, E., Duffy, C., Murray-Rust, D. and Nissen, B., 2023, April. From VizBlocks to the Data-Driven Actor: Reimagining an open-ended data physicalisation prototype with a creative business. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-7). https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3573847
2023
Coast to Coast
Through the Coast to Coast Project, Dr Michael Smyth Co-Director of Creative Informatics and Frank Delaney from Future Screens Northern Ireland (https://www.futurescreens.org/) created a visual and textual study of creative practitioners, exploring the similarities and differences between the work of artists in two creative industries regional hubs. This publication brings this work together, sharing the practices of creatives in both Edinburgh and South East Scotland, and in and around Belfast. Smyth, M., & Delaney, F. (2023). Coast to Coast 2023. Edinburgh: Boom Saloon. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8099962
2023
How Do you Solve a Problem Like Alexa?
Emotional Artificial Intelligence (EAI) is emerging as a mainstream technology. With the increasing use of EAI in different sectors, novel legal and ethical concerns are being raised. This paper focuses on an entertainment and creative content delivery recommendation system application, namely Amazon Alexa's use of Neural-Text-to-Speech (NTTS) technology to capture and respond to users' perceived emotions based on their voice. It also enables Alexa to play music based on, among other elements, its perception of users' emotions. Given the recognised impact 'music' has on emotions and Alexa's increasing involvement with big music sector actors, we are particularly concerned about how this domain can enable the manipulation of users. We use this example to highlight problems with the approach to AI regulation taken in the proposed EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). Atabey, A., Schafer, B. and Urquhart, L., 2023. How do you solve a problem like Alexa?. Jusletter IT. https://doi.org./10.38023/72720413-36c5-4ee3-ba65-b7d0396fcd82
2023
Future Tense – The Challenge of Imagining Alternative Futures
So why is it so difficult to imagine futures? Not the futures set in galaxies far far away, but the ones connected to the present that lie tantalisingly just beyond the horizon. Futures still tethered to variants of today’s infrastructure. This essay will consider the role of politics and technology and how they shape and influence the imagination of futures. Smyth, M. (2023). Future Tense - The Challenge of Imagining Alternative Futures. In Designing in Coexistence – Reflections on Systemic Change (77-88). Zagreb, Croatia: Croatian Architects’ Association https://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3495960
