This unique consortium draws on the research excellence of interdisciplinary and complementary design innovation labs at three universities - Lancaster University, Newcastle University and the Royal College of Art and connects it with public and private sectors, linking large and small-scale businesses, service providers and citizens. Together, our expertise in developing and applying creative techniques to navigate unexplored challenges includes that of designers, artists, curators, producers, broadcasters, engineers, managers, technologists and writers - and draws on wider expertise from across the partner universities and beyond. The Creative Exchange responds to profound changes in practice in the creative and media-based industries stimulated by the opening of the digital public space, the ability of everyone to access, explore and create in any aspect of the digital space, moving from 'content consumption' to 'content experience'. It explores new forms of engagement and exchange in the broadcast, performing and visual arts, digital media, design and gaming sectors, by focusing on citizen-led content, interactive narrative, radical personalization and new forms of value creation in the context of the 'experience economy'. The primary geographic focus is the Northwest of England centred around the opportunity presented by the growth of MediaCityUK and its surrounding economy. The three universities act as local test beds with field trials in London, Lancaster and Newcastle prior to larger public facing trials in the northwest. This will support the North West regional strategy for growth in digital and creative media industries, whilst generating comparative research and development locally, nationally and internationally. The Creative Exchange has been developed in response to a paradigm shift in content creation and modes of distribution in a digitally connected world, which has profound impact for the arts and humanities. This transformational-change is taking place within the landscape of a growing digital public space that includes archives, data, information and content. How we navigate and experience this space - and how we generate content for and within it - is central to how we create economic, social, cultural and personal value. The Hub draws on new and agile approaches to knowledge exchange for the creative economy that have been previously developed by the partner universities and new ones co-developed with specialist arts organizations, sector organizations and communities of users.

The manifold catastrophes of the 20th century have torn holes in the cultural fabric of Europe. This project's overarching objective is to re-knit certain threads across those gaps by bringing recently rediscovered musical, theatrical and literary works by Jewish artists back to the attention of scholars and the public. Scholarly outputs will include monographs, journal articles and critical editions, and the project will have wider impact through an interactive web resource, educational projects, and performances at five international cultural festivals. Our scholarly work and artistic practice will engage with three types of 'Jewish archives': a) the works themselves, often providing information on the complexities of the context in which they were created; b) traditional archival documentation; c) ethnographic archives (oral history and testimony) providing historical information and illuminating the meaning of events for past and present generations. Rather than privileging any type of archive as 'text' and others as 'context,' we consider all three as co-texts mutually illuminating each other. All are equally valuable aspects of our investigation. Some of these archives are at risk, giving our work special urgency. While new archives open or are discovered in some parts of the world, the fragile memories of elderly survivors are fast disappearing, and family archives are disposed of or deteriorate. Working alongside partner organisations (performers, educators, museums, libraries, archives and policy-makers) in the UK, US, Central Europe, South Africa and Australia, we will follow existing leads to seek out new archives, and help preserve those that have recently come to light. Our multi-disciplinary team brings research expertise allowing us to focus on the period c.1880-c.1950, the most intense period of Jewish displacement in the modern era. Our case studies include recently recovered theatrical manuscripts from the Terezin Ghetto near Prague, musical works from Eastern Europe uncovered in private collections in Australia, South Africa and England, and literary accounts of survivor experiences written immediately after the Holocaust. Via these case studies of Jewish artistic creation in diverse situations of internment, exile or migration, we will illuminate more broadly the role of art in one of the paradigmatic experiences of the modern age: displacement. When do artists use creative works to represent the rupture of displacement, and when do music, theatre and literature create continuity with their former lives, or a bridge between the old life and the new? Our co-textual performances create a relationship between past and present, not only by drawing upon on all three types of archives (for example, by interspersing scenes from a rediscovered play with narrated survivor testimony against a backdrop of projected archival images), but by engaging explicitly with the multiple possible meanings of these artefacts from the past, both for their original audiences and ourselves. The performances foreground ways in which that past may live on in our present and future - in a very real sense, 'thinking forward through the past'. Audience response testing, developed during the project, will help us determine how successful we are in generating audience engagement in the present. We will attract audiences from widely diverse constituencies by featuring world-leading practitioners such as the Nash Ensemble alongside amateur and student performers, and by staging performances in historically significant venues such as the Terezin Memorial (the site of the former WWII Jewish Ghetto) and Clifford's Tower in York (the site of a 12th-century pogrom). We will perpetuate engagement with these archives by encouraging arts practitioners, policy-makers and cultural event programmers to engage with them, and through educational projects in which participants create their own performances based on archival co-texts.

Virtual Production (VP) is a novel approach to media creation that utilises digital tools such as computer-generated imagery, motion tracking and virtual and augmented reality to produce immersive media experiences that appear realistic. Used more widely in the gaming, film, and television industries, the application of VP technologies to the live performance industry has yet to be fully explored. Despite the environmental and creative benefits of VP, the technology is currently expensive, highly specialised, and out of the reach of most small production companies, creating a significant skills gap. The development of new, accessible, low-cost technologies and frameworks targeted at real creative sector needs is therefore essential for UK industry to maintain a competitive digital economy. To this end, the University of York, in collaboration with our core project partners, Production Park, Screen Yorkshire, Wakefield Council, Vodafone, and York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership, have created the CoSTAR Live Lab - a world-leading facility in the research and development of novel immersive and interactive technologies. Our lab supports the rapid convergence of the UK screen and performance sectors within the framework of live performance and the metaverse. Directed by the University of York, which has a track record of delivering high-impact XR technologies and developing the creative industry in its region, and based at Production Park, the UK's largest live production facility, in the heart of West Yorkshire. The CoSTAR Live Lab facility focuses on developing market ready products and services utilising immersive technologies, achieved by building a unique laboratory infrastructure on top of a thriving state-of-the-art commercial VP facility. This is the only specialised research facility in the world where the creation of production tools, workflows, and content for networked immersive virtual live performances coexists with a campus of businesses committed to live performance. Our main goal is to develop innovative, low-cost technologies and efficient workflows to transform the live performance sector, boost the growth of small and medium-sized businesses in the region, and contribute to the expansion of the wider UK creative sector. CoSTAR Live Lab includes three main laboratory spaces: a large volume commercial VP stage with high resolution motion tracking, LED panels and 3D immersive sound; a performer-performer / performer-audience network lab; and an end-user experience lab for VP. It also houses a team of world-class researchers dedicated to creating innovative and novel technologies that are close-to-market and shaped by the needs of industry. The facility enables commercialisation of the research and will incubate start-ups and high-growth SMEs. Our unique Access programme encourages public and industry participation in R&D activities, workshops, networking events, technology showcases, lectures and symposia. Within the CoSTAR ecosystem the Live Lab contributes a unique capability to develop technologies for future live performance experiences using VP, from small-scale pilots to arena-sized productions, and will deliver scalable, efficient, and accessible workflows, paving the way to position the UK as the leader in immersive and interactive live production experiences.

This international research network asks: How do people of conflicting worldviews, memories and future visions encounter each other? Cultural, civic and educational organisations are expected to create a platform for such encounters and their public value is increasingly assessed on how well they reflect societal diversity in their core activity, outreach and governance. While some improvement on diversity measures, such as gender, age, ethnicity or disability, is evident within these sectors, less is known on what meaningful engagement across and within these categories looks like, why and how it matters and what it takes to foster it. This is an urgent question in the face of disconcerting societal tendencies around the world: the coarsening of public discourse in increasingly divided societies, the rise of political and military activism fuelled by hostility and violence towards the other, or the fast-spreading epidemic of loneliness and mental illness across and within generations and social strata. This network is based on the recognition that genuine engagement with difference of any kind is necessary for building peaceful, sustainable and healthy communities. It also acknowledges, however, that success on diversity measures alone does not guarantee meaningful encounters with those who are not like 'us'. Such engagement requires effort, can be difficult to bring about, and sharing the same space is a necessary but insufficient condition for it to occur. The Network addresses this challenge by shifting the theoretical focus from diversity as a social category to difference as a quality that defines every human being. This shift implies that human interactions of any kind are meetings with difference. They are not made meaningful by emphasising sameness, but by exercising an ethical commitment to preserving difference while making a genuine contact. How individuals and communities practise this encounter with 'the other' across diverse contexts of human activity can have profound consequences for addressing some of the global societal conflicts. The Network brings together international artists, linguists and philosophers to examine aesthetic and ethical dimensions of communal meaning making across geographical boundaries and domains of social life: in music and dance rehearsal rooms, in museums and art galleries, in theatres, markets, service encounters, schools. We will study existing research and experiential evidence of these interactions and examine what genuine encounters with difference look like and what it takes to enable them. The resulting theoretical and methodological frameworks will advance inquiry across academic disciplines and creative practices. The practical guidelines will support public institutions in the UK and internationally in their commitment not only to reach diverse communities but to become catalysts for genuine encounters across divides of any kind. More generally, through engaging with one another's disciplines, cultural contexts, existing research data and ways of working, the Network will develop new conceptual frameworks, analytical approaches and practical proposals for researching and living in complex, changing conditions. The Network will be organised in two one-day seminars, a public assembly and a dissemination lab to consolidate Network outputs. The seminars will include short data-led provocations, keynotes, experiential sessions and moderated conversations. The public assembly will reach out to a wide range of stakeholders, including arts organisations, educational charities, local authorities, health and mental wellbeing agencies and social care sector. The material will be disseminated through creative outputs (interactive website and a digital ethnography blog led by a Doctoral Researcher in Residence), social media and professional workshops. The Network will facilitate the development of new partnerships and inform future inquiry into global challenges of societal conflict.

The UK's arts & cultural sector is thriving: it contributes 674,000 jobs and £11.8bn per annum to the economy and remains one of its fastest growing sectors (DCMS, 2018). Yet despite this strong economic performance and its world-leading reputation for quality, the sector consistently fails to comprehend, capture and convey its values in a compelling way. This is partly because it suffers from structural problems including a lack of diversity, skills gaps (especially in data analysis & digital engagement), poor research & evaluation skills, and significant under-investment in training and R&D. These issues hinder its innovation and resilience and compromise its ability to make a coherent and compelling case for investment to key stakeholders, including private donors, corporate sponsors and HM Treasury, and to cognate sectors such as health & education. So we will dedicate resources to training/developing sector practitioners and students (FE/HE/PGR) in key areas of need including data analysis, audience/participant research, research-driven evaluation and storytelling. This proposal has been conceived by a genuinely national consortium comprising world-leading universities & sector partners. These partnerships will enable the Centre to quickly tap into existing networks and gain ready access to different types & sizes of arts/cultural organisations from all over the UK. The Centre will be delivered in a collaborative way that draws on the complementary expertise of its core & affiliate members and harnesses this in a strategic way to maximise the potential of its activities. Based partly on the findings of the Cultural Value Project, the Centre's priority themes will comprise: diversity & inequality, public impact, health & wellbeing, place-making, culture-led regeneration, civic engagement, cultural democracy, co-creation & participation. These themes will be prioritized in our calls for £200k seed funding and reflected in our events. The aim of the events is to stimulate fresh thinking on key themes related to cultural value & engagement and communicate this beyond the sector. The Centre will deliver the following 20 knowledge exchange events over 5 years: 1. Scoping Event 1 (Creative workshop, Opera North/DARE, Leeds) 2. Scoping Event 2 (Open Space event, British Library, London) 3. Launch (Leeds Town Hall) 4. Arts impact evaluation (Creative workshop, U. of Liverpool) 5. Cultural & economic value (Symposium, Cardiff University) 6. Arts, wellbeing & health policy (Colloquium, U. of Leeds) 7. Cultures of participation & co-production (Creative workshop, QMU, Edinburgh) 8. Diversity Forum (Coventry 2021) 9. Audience research & empirical aesthetics (Participatory Action Research event, UCL) 10. Cultures of fandom (Symposium, U. of Bristol) 11. Creative industries, innovation & the creative economy (Symposium, U. of York) 12. Place-making, culture-led regeneration & evaluation (Symposium, U. of Hull) 13. Barriers to cultural engagement (Open Space event, U. of Sheffield) 14. Arts & education policy (Creative workshop, National Theatre/British Library, London) 15. Processes of cultural value (Creative workshop, Eden Court/U. of Highlands & Islands, Inverness) 16. Cultural taste & class (Symposium, U. of Warwick) 17. Arts and conflict resolution (Symposium, Queens University Belfast) 18. Festival & storytelling symposium (Opera North/Leeds 2023, Leeds) 19. Conference on Cultural Value and Engagement (UoL) 20. Evaluation & legacy planning roundtable (UoL) These events will be supported by our website, which will encourage and facilitate engagement & debate between and beyond the events. Outcomes will be captured via regular research digests & blogs. In order to remain open to stakeholders' input and responsive to emerging issues, the Centre will earmark additional funding to support & partner fringe events that arise during the scoping events and over the lifecycle of the Centre.