Know-how and Knowledge: a research toolkit for creative organisations

This project follows on from research funded by the AHRC Cultural Value programme which identified a need for small and medium sized organisations in the creative and cultural industries to have resources enabling them to conduct research to develop their audience, participation and programmes.

Current research resources available within the creative industries do not account for the complexities of the value-based decision making involved in meeting the needs of current or potential audiences, consumers and participants. While some online and paper-based training resources for creative organisations are available, these tend to be quantitative and 'hard data'-driven for marketing purposes. Such research tools do not provide the know-how and skills to analyse qualitative research data. Small- and medium-sized creative organisations need research know-how and skills to inform their planning and development, and their funding applications. Our experience is that very often small- and medium- sized creative organisations either do not have the specialist research skills, or do not have the money to employ a specialist research agency to generate and analyse research data.

The project will co-create a qualitative research toolkit in the form of a website for audience/consumer/participant research with and for small- and medium-sized creative organisations. This co-creation process will include Creative Scotland, its clients and potential clients, other funders, charities, policymakers and academics. This includes nine named partner organisations who will actively take part in research on their own practices in relation to audience development in order to inform the toolkit.

The aim of the project is to develop a 'research habit' among creative organisations, which will enhance their ability to develop meaningful programmes of work to retain existing audiences and attract new audiences, and demonstrate this understanding of their audiences and potential audiences to potential funders and supporters.

The research team will use tastemaking and cultural value as an innovative and flexible research framework within which to co-create the toolkit's content. This framework has been tried and tested in the PI's Cultural Value study and the PI's three subsequent studies funded by the University of Edinburgh. The framework allows exploration of co-creators' organisational and artistic practices, assisting understanding of where audience/consumer/participant development fits within the organisation's planning and development process. The framework also allows the research team to explore how audience/consumer/participant development practices are informed by the values and tastes of the different organisations' various stakeholder perspectives. This understanding will underpin the toolkit with a depth of knowledge of creative organisations' audience/consumer/participant development research needs that currently-available resources do not provide.

This Impact Summary addresses two questions: Who might benefit from this research? How might they benefit from this research?

This Follow on Funding proposal is targeted at direct application of research to benefit small and medium sized creative organizations that:

- wish to refine their understanding of their audiences, stakeholders, or participants using qualitative rather than quantitative approaches
- lack financial resource to buy-in specialist research support
- lack in-house expertise in research and wish to develop this area
- wish to complement existing quantitative approaches with more nuanced qualitative data

The creative organisations particularly targeted are in the subsidised rather than the commercial sector and with the inclusion of one collective, and three organisations which rent out multidisciplinary studio space, we encompass all six of Creative Scotland's portfolio industry categories (theatre, dance, music, film, visual arts and literature and publishing). Creative Scotland, as a funder, will also be a beneficiary of this project. The resulting toolkit will be freely available under a Creative Commons license, so both larger creative organisations and those from the commercial sector can also benefit from the proposed outputs.

This proposed project will benefit creative organisations by enabling better informed decision-making leading to creative outputs and activities that will attract and engage new, and further develop existing, audiences/consumers/participants. The ability to undertake useful, precisely targeted and relevant qualitative research in-house will enhance understanding of the values and tastes of an organisation's different stakeholders, and both current and potential audiences/consumers/participants. It could be fundamentally important to organisational development and providing best value for funders.

The proposal will have an impact on organisational development, skills and know-how by (1) engendering in its participants an organisational 'research habit' and practical research know-how; (2) providing access to a set of tools that have been co-created, tested and piloted with different creative organizations, are easily used by non-specialists specially designed to be fit for purpose, flexible and adaptable to different art forms; and (3) providing training in the use of the toolkit including implementation and interpretation of data.

The outcome of organisations' research activity will be collection and informed interpretation of rigorously-collected and nuanced data to inform both organisational and audience/consumer/ participant strategy and development, provide evidence of audience/consumer/participant reach and potential for funders, and broaden the scope of available funding through evidence of appeal to a broader demographic.

While there are numerous online and training resources available, these are mainly quantitatively based, for example MOSAIC profiling or tools that work, for example, with postcode data from box-office returns. Anecdotal evidence from Creative Scotland and small and medium creative organisations (particularly those that are not venue-based), identifies that there is a need for flexible qualitative research tools. In co-creating our toolkit with Creative Scotland, and actual and potential users, we will develop content, that meets a range of sector needs.

The impact of the toolkit will be sustained beyond the life of the project. The research team, together with their creative collaborators, will seek to build a community around research that will make the toolkit self-sustaining in the future.