About us

Established in 2016, the Creative Economies Lab (formerly Creative Economy Unit) is a research and delivery team within UWE Bristol’s Digital Cultures Research Centre (DCRC).

Our research explores how people, places, organisations and things are connected in order to develop a better, more hopeful future for creative work, underpinned by real-world experimentation and critical conceptual enquiry. Our current research themes are:

• Developing Creative Places and Spaces
• Understanding Cultural Ecologies
• Supporting Resilience in Creative Businesses
• Exploring future economic models for creativity 

Supporting our creative ecology

We also run cohort-led R&D in partnership with long-time partner, Watershed to support innovation in the creative sector. So far we have been awarded over £10m to develop platforms for creative practitioners, businesses, thinkers, artists, and academics to collaborate. We offer creative communities funding for R&D, expanded professional networks, business support, and more.

The projects we fund have explored questions about the role of emerging technologies in our everyday lives and futures – from data, surveillance and control to the promises and problems of Artificial Intelligence, the role of technology in togetherness and performance, to human-centred responses to climate change.

Our approach

We are committed to collaborative working which values different inputs and approaches. We foreground Knowledge Exchange and Creative Production as core parts of our methodological approach.