This work package will explore how cultural intermediation connects communities to the creative economy through case studies in Birmingham and Manchester. It aims to understand how intermediation impacts communities and what cultural learning is facilitated. The research will use ethnography including interviews and events to examine how formal cultural intermediation has engaged hard-to-reach communities and supported their involvement in the creative economy. Local community researchers will be trained to help co-create knowledge and benefit from skills development. Planned outputs include academic publications, case studies, engagement guides and events, and online dissemination of lessons learned.

1. WORK PACKAGE FOUR
Communities, Culture and
Creative Economies

2. Academic Lead
 Dr. Paul Long, Co-Investigator, Reader in Media
and Cultural History
 Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural
Research
AHRC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship/Interreg
Creative Metropoles/NESTA/ACE/AHRC R&D
‘Culture Cloud’
 Manchester case study: Paul Heywood
 RF: Site Researcher x 2
 Critical Friend: Phil Jones

3. Aims
 To explore how intermediation connects
communities into the creative economy .
 To explore how these insights can be enhanced
to break down the tension between hard-to-
reach communities and inaccessible cultural
resources.
 To develop means to measure value of
intermediation activities within targeted
communities.

4. How does this element of the project contribute to
the aims of the project as a whole?
 Case studies to emergefrom work undertaken
in WP1 and 3 in order to connect what different
institutions think ishappening to how
intermediation activity is experienced on the
ground.

5. Research questions
 How do cultural intermediations impact upon
communities (how is community conceptualised in
intermediation)?
 In this context, what is cultural learning? How are
memories, behaviour, skills, values or
knowledgedeveloped?
 What ‘good’ is cultural intermediation?
 How have formal processes of cultural
intermediationengaged with different
communities, particularly those that have been
‘hard-to-reach’?
 To what extent have activities served to facilitate
the connection of these communitiesinto the
creative economy?

6. Methods
 Ethnography
 Deployment of shadowing activities
 ~80 walked and conventional interviews, focus
groups and participatory events
 Gathering ‘fruits’ of intermediation.

7. Partners/stakeholders engaged?
 Birmingham/Manchester communities subject
to/objects of cultural intermediation.
 Cultural intermediaries.

8. How does this WP engage with
communities?
 Engaging community researchers attempts to
break down the boundaries between academic
and lay knowledge creation = co-constructors of
knowledge.
 Training community researchers to examine the
ways in which cultural intermediation has
impacted on their lives.
 Producing benefit in terms of
upskilling, confidence building and direct
engagement in developing new modes of
working to improve community engagement in
these activities.

9. What are the planned outputs?
 Journal article on effectiveness of different
intermediary processes; case studies; guide for
communities engaging with creative economy
initiatives; UK conference.
 Seminar and pamphlet series engage
community groups with the practical and
theoretical lessons delivered by the research.
 Blogs.
 Multiplatform presence.
 Methodological innovations.