MyWorld partner Watershed has published Nurturing Creative Futures: a report sharing the ways in which Watershed supports research and development – the values they are driven by, the methods they use, and the impact that they have had in the creative ecosystem.
Watershed opened in 1982. In that year, Channel 4 began transmission, the Falklands War dominated national politics and on Saturday 1st January 1983, ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) created the ‘network of networks’ that would go on to become the internet. As the UK’s first media centre, Watershed sat at the intersection of these forces of culture, society and technology. It understood the fundamental importance of bringing them together – to both understand the world, and to change it.
This year, Pervasive Media Studio, the ideas lab that Watershed runs with UWE Bristol and the University of Bristol to explore that premise in practice, turned 18 years old. The Studio foregrounds the power of the imagination to direct technology towards a more inclusive, playful and sustainable world. Current industrial policy in the UK recognises the importance of creative technology as a key driver of economic growth and highlights the importance of place-based support for practitioners at every stage, and from all backgrounds, to ensure that this growth is more evenly distributed. As they come of age, the work in the Studio has never felt more relevant.
Since the Studio opened, they have worked with companies, cultural organisations, research institutions, local authorities and collectives locally, nationally and internationally. They have leveraged over £72m of funding into programmes that place the needs of practitioners at their heart. They have supported new forms of experience, new products, new jobs and new businesses. They have sustained old practices, long-term relationships, cultivated wisdom and kept going. They have done this while developing a resident community that is rich in its diversity and difference.
This report documents and shares the expertise that Watershed has brought to and developed through that work. They hope that it will be useful to others who are interested in supporting purposeful research and development.
“We would like to thank our community and partners who we learn from every day, Dr. Jack Lowe as the report’s author and our valued colleague, and MyWorld whose partnership has made such a difference over the last five years.”
If you would like to talk to Pervasive Media Studio, please send an email to studio@watershed.co.uk or pop in to see what they are all about on Open Studio Friday.
This report is funded by MyWorld.
Read the Nurturing Creative Futures report, here.