Creative Fuse North East 2

Creative Fuse North East 2.0 (CFNE 2.0) builds on the existing partnership between Newcastle University, Durham University, Northumbria University, University of Sunderland and Teesside University, supporting research-led growth in the Creative-Digital-IT (CDIT) industries of the North East England region. CFNE 2.0 will support CDIT businesses and freelancers, cultural organisations and university researchers to produce innovation and idea development, but from a research viewpoint the project will build on the mapping and development work of the first phase to conduct new research seeking to understand the conditions for creativity and interdisciplinary fusion. The project will go beyond research questions of whether creative fusion is occurring in the region or how much value is created, to understand why and how does it occur in certain projects and settings and why not in other cases? The research will support the creative sector in the NE during a period of significant economic and political change and uncertainty. CFNE 2.0 also aims to generate insights as to how meaningful and effective practice can be enacted in other peripheries with cases of success in spite of challenges.

Beneficiaries: Businesses, Freelancers and Cultural Organisations

The primary beneficiary of the project will be businesses from the creative industries. The core pathways to impact of Creative Fuse comprise:

- Innovation workshops - supporting innovation awareness, adoption, culture change, cross-disciplinary collaboration. These will typically be delivered to small groups of eligible SME beneficiaries and will encourage and facilitate both individual business development and opportunities for collaboration.
- 1-2-1 knowledge exchange and transfer/consultancy - bespoke support to individual and/or small groups of practitioners and SMEs, exploiting/developing creative innovation. These will be a mix of targeted support for eligible businesses and also may flow from some of the aforementioned workshops, where deeper support is warranted and can generate further returns.
- Innovation residencies / Placements - placement of postgraduate students to enable SMEs to develop innovation capacity and new organisational processes and develop new products/services.
- Innovation hacks - collaboration and challenge-focused hack/pitstop events to share cross-disciplinary experience and learning. These activities will in particular generate opportunities for cross sector engagement and awareness raising to develop new capabilities and market knowledge.
- Open Innovation workstreams - open innovation forums to respond to challenge-based propositions and opportunities. These are designed to explore cross-sector challenges where the application of creativity and creative-led collaboration can drive market/business improvements. A focus here is expected to support engagement with larger organisations and corporates where access to, in particular agile and nimble creatives can help drive organisational approaches and behaviours, whilst also impacting on more qualitative and diversified supply and value chains over the future.
- Innovation showcases/events -highlighting innovation best practice, B2B collaborations, knowledge exchange etc. These events will be targeted in particular at generating broad awareness of the Creative Fuse North East programme and are specifically designed to be open and accessible to a wide audience interest and reach.

Beneficiaries: Policy-Makers and Intermediaries

CFNE has privileged links with policy-makers at both national and regional levels, through the project's integral links with the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, led by Nesta, with its national consortium of 10 universities. CFNE also has well-established relationships with the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and Tees Valley Combined Authority, the North of Tyne Combined Authority, The project Advisory Board has an array of the major agencies and intermediaries representing creative industries, such as Arts Council England, Creative England, Creative Industries Federation, the Digital Catapult Centre, Digital Union/Generator, and the National Council for Universities and Business. CFNE will continue with this key area of governance which ensures the project is directly connected to policy makers, helping to maintain concurrency with national and regional developments and providing direct access to inform them of the ongoing experience of the project's on-the-ground applied research.

Beneficiaries: The General Public

Finally, the general public benefit from the results of the project, for example, visiting installations in exhibitions, or using apps and services enabled by the project. The public also browse our social media and attend our CAKE events or Creative Fuse conference from casual curiosity, which may lead to greater involvement.