Rethinking ‘knowledge exchange’: new approaches to collaborative work in the arts and humanities

Simon Moreton

doi:10.1080/10286632.2015.1101081

Abstract

This paper explores approaches to collaborative work between arts and humanities disciplines in UK Higher Education and the creative economy. The paper examines the work of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy established by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). These hubs fund collaborative ‘knowledge exchange’ (KE) projects between creative businesses and academics in the arts and humanities. The paper first outlines the unclear relationship between knowledge exchange activities in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the creative economy. The second step unpacks the approaches to KE that the hubs are developing. The third step considers what the consequences of such projects might be. The paper concludes that such ‘third mission’ activities are never neutral or apolitical spaces. Rather, they are sites where assumptions about collaboration and creativity are being remade, and that this is a space for both opportunity and critique.

Highlights

Leydesdorff 2000), and it is in this context that discussions around the exchange or transfer of knowledge emerge
A report commissioned by the AHRC, ‘Hidden Connections’ (Hughes et al 2011), attempts to quantify and qualify the types of work undertaken by arts and humanities academics in knowledge exchange
The paper first offers an overview of the knowledge exchange hubs and their activities, in an attempt to sketch out the different structures, approaches taken by the hubs, the participants involved and the projects they produce

Summary

Introduction

Leydesdorff 2000), and it is in this context that discussions around the exchange or transfer of knowledge emerge. Much of the critique surrounds the inconsistent or incoherent attempts to define the creative industries as both an emergent economic sector, and as a space for progressive cultural policy presented in these documents (Hesmondhalgh and Pratt 2005, Pratt 2005, Oakley 2006).

Results

Conclusion