The Role of Universities in the Regional Creative Economies of the UK: Hidden Protagonists and the Challenge of Knowledge Transfer

Abstract

The Triple Helix model of knowledge-industry-government relationships is one of the most comprehensive attempts to explain the changing institutional frameworks for innovation and growth, especially in the regional and urban contexts. Since the 1970s policies have been developed across Europe to evolve this institutional landscape. Since the late 1990s, regional and urban development strategies have also sought to harness the growth potential of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) to regional and urban economic development. However, whilst the regional and urban planning literature has examined the growth-promoting potential of universities very closely, their possible role in relation to regional and urban creative economic development has received less attention. This paper aims to begin addressing this gap by interrogating the relationship between universities and the regional creative economy using, as a starting point, a model of analysis suggested by the Triple Helix theoretical framework. The paper finds that whilst universities possess often long and hidden associations with regional and urban creative activitiesas hidden protagonists -there are important institutional and professional challenges in the possibility of their developing an explicit and sustainable role as new actors in the regional and urban creative economies. The paper identifies the nature of these challenges with a view to developing a clearer understanding of the system, policy and institutional realities that underpin the often complex dynamics of knowledge creation-practice relationships found in arts and humanities disciplines.

Circular Economy and the Role of Universities in Urban Regeneration: The Case of Ortigia, Syracuse

“…Our case study confirms the results of previous studies that have focused on the role played by universities in improving living conditions of their territories, analysing the development trajectories promoted on settlements and the communities' empowerment relapses. The cultural production and the high-tech spill-over determine repercussions at local or regional scales [46], taking into account both the social and physical contexts where knowledge transfer happens [47]. Knowledge-intensive activities trigger symbiotic cooperation within local communities because they involve new actors in flexible and pro-active cross-sector processes of innovation and cultural hybridization [48].…”

Knowledge Transfer in the Cultural and Creative Sector: Institutional Aspects and Perspectives from Actors in Selected Atlantic Regions

“…Such a factor ties directly to the informal and territorially bounded nature of the CCS in ways similar to other industries, such as manufacturing and high-technology industries (Boschma 2005;Lopes 2001), but with specific consequences on the level of product and service commercialization (Holden 2015). Many of these companies exhibit styles of entrepreneurial management heavily dependent on a "charismatic leader", who guides the company towards a specific "vision", with market sustainability plans being sometimes replaced by mechanisms of demand creation (Comunian et al 2014;Heidemann Lassen et al 2018;Zukauskaite 2012). Such informal ties tend in fact to influence the way that information circulates in such creative millieux, leading symbolic and reputational-based knowledge to play a bigger role than formalized knowledge ).…”

“…Linkages can include not only co-involvement in associations, participation in incubators, spin-offs, collaboration in patents, designs or trademarks, as well as more simple forms of engagement such as co-participation in activities or development of joint projects (Pinto 2012). Furthermore, other forms of connection which can be considered-as they have synergistic effects with the former-include collaboration on the level of shared staff, the existence of CCS workers and participants with higher education degree, amongst others (Comunian et al 2014;Heidemann Lassen et al 2018;Zukauskaite 2012).…”

“…Despite this being true in some specific subsectors (Zukauskaite 2012), for the most part the HEI and CCS have remained relatively distant. Authors such as Roberta Comunian (Comunian et al 2014(Comunian et al , 2015 have proposed that this can stem from both institutional and individual dispositions: lack of engagement of academics in artistic and creative practice, and conversely, the lack of artists and practitioners in teaching, research and support functions in HEI; lack of an understanding within HEI of the above stated specificities of CCS, taking them to be similar to other industries, and providing them with generalist solutions; connected to this, the lack of proper professionalization of students, not providing them with sufficiently realistic understanding of CCS markets; and finally, difficulties in establishing longstanding bonds to promote career opportunities amongst graduates. This has been corroborated and expanded by other authors: questions of the precarity of labour in the creative industries, which make engagement with HEI difficult (Kimpeler and Georgieff 2009), as well as the lack of a clear understanding of the benefits of collaboration (Crossick 2006), further widen the gap between HEI and the CCS.…”

Untitled

“…These policies have built on the rhetoric around increasing economic potential of the CCIs (DCMS, 1998). Whereas knowledge transfer (the process of taking knowledge outside academia) in STEM subjects has been explored and extensively supported through relevant HE policy, knowledge exchange in creative subjects has so far been neglected (Crossick, 2006;Comunian et al 2013). This, as Crossick (2006) points out, is related to the difficulties associated with materialising experimental and skill-based knowledge creation in the creative sector.…”