In a recent discussion paper 'The Public Value of Arts and Culture', Mariana Mazzucato calls for vital investment in our cultural ecosystems. Arguing for networks beyond those that safeguard existing institutions, Mazzucato identifies the importance of 'bringing arts to people where they are […] across the entire arts and cultural ecosystem, spanning industries, public programming, and education.'
The AHRC Creative Communities programme's newly announced Community Innovation Practitioner (CIP) Awards offer a model of what this looks like in practice. AHRC Creative Communities is a major research programme funded by the (AHRC) and hosted by Northumbria University, exploring how co-created culture can enhance belonging, address regional inequality, deliver devolution, and break down barriers to opportunity.
The need to break down barriers to participation in R&D underpins the application process for these awards. To enable access, we have made awards at 100% full economic cost, devolving awards upfront in a single sum so the CIP and their team could co-create their budget without relying on university match funding. We also addressed the need for a more inclusive application process, offering for the first time the option of either a short form written application of 1000 words or a video application showing all members of the CIP team in their unique locations. Finally, to ensure parity of opportunity for all four nations, we ringfenced at least one award in each of the three devolved nations - Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales - and at least one in a devolved mayoral area of England.
The 2025-6 CIP Awards are investing nearly £500,000 across six projects in communities spanning all four nations of the UK. Together, they demonstrate how universities, cultural organisations and communities can work together in devolved contexts to address pressing policy opportunities and challenges: from social cohesion and reconciliation, to economic regeneration and cultural democracy.
From Birmingham to Belfast: place-based innovation in action
Unlike traditional academic research roles, CIPs are embedded directly in cross-sector partnerships, acting as the glue between academic research, community needs and devolved policy priorities. Navigating the differing vocabularies of these contexts, the CIPs will work over the coming year with devolved governments, mayoral authorities, third and private sector partners, as well as cultural organisations and communities to co-design, co-create and co-evaluate new approaches to shared opportunities for growth. By investing in the practitioners at the heart of cross-sector cultural partnerships, the CIP Awards provide more power to co-create place-based innovation.
The CIP Awards 2025-6 demonstrate how culture-led knowledge exchange can respond to place-based devolved contexts and policy priorities. In Birmingham, the CIP will head up a cross-sector consortium including private, public and third sector partners to support inclusive cultural regeneration in Digbeth. In Greater Manchester, a CIP will catalyse the region's Co-operative Movement history to explore how craft—specifically banner-making—can promote resilience and belonging in devolved city regions. In Huddersfield, a CIP will shape the creation of a new cultural strategy for devolved policy making by co-creating new approaches to participative democracy, creative health, and place-based innovation.
In Dundee, the CIP will address city centre regeneration by transforming empty retail spaces into creative hubs, working with Creative Dundee and UNESCO City of Design networks to reimagine post-industrial urban spaces. A CIP Award in Belfast will see the National Trust explore how heritage can support the Northern Ireland Government's reconciliation aims, using Mount Stewart estate as a catalyst for community co-creation and social cohesion and connecting the hyper-local to the global. In Wales, a CIP will work with Welsh broadcaster S4C and Creative Wales to explore what local communities need from journalism and storytelling, as well as prototyping solutions in real-world media environments to better connect culture, news and communities.
Together, this suite of awards will co-create new cross-sector solutions to real-world questions facing devolved communities. Importantly, they recognise and give each sector a voice and a role in the UK innovation ecosystem. In recognition of this profile, each CIP will produce a podcast episode, capturing the range of diverse, local voices in each project, as well as an open access case study and devolved policy paper.
Building Communities of Practice
The CIP Awards recognise that effective knowledge exchange isn't just about moving knowledge from universities to communities—it's about creating conditions in which all partners, sectors and communities can learn from each other. For the CIPs, translation becomes a core skill, with CIPs speaking the multiple languages of academia, policy and community, creating spaces where different forms of knowledge are valued equally.
At a UK level, the CIPs will also form a national Community of Practice, building an ecosystem of R&D that connects the unique contexts and places in which they each operate. This networked approach means innovations developed in one region can inform practice elsewhere.
The CIP Awards ensure that research responds to real policy needs by involving devolved governments and combined authorities as partners from inception. From co-design through to evaluation, communities work as research partners with equal expertise—not just as the subjects or beneficiaries of R&D. These changes to how R&D are normally done ensure the community is at the heart of innovation.
Devolution Revolution
As we confront challenges to social cohesion and economic recovery, the CIP model offers evidence that devolution focussed, culture-led, co-created approaches can generate the place-based innovation and cultural capacity we need to grow. The CIP Awards demonstrate in practice Mazzucato's vision of bringing 'arts to people where they are.' They illustrate how innovation—when genuinely opened up to communities, third and private sector partners—can take on the opportunities created by devolution across the whole of the UK.
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You can read more about the work of AHRC Creative Communities on the website.
The Creative Communities podcast is available online CIP Podcast - Creative Communities (and everywhere you’d usually find podcasts, if you’re on Spotify, Apple, etc!). The podcast features the Community Innovation Practitioner 2023-24 cohort and their partner organisations and communities. A further series will be released in 2026 to capture the work of the next cohort of CIPs.