ELIC Group Projects

The Small Enterprises in Covid Times: On Regulation (SECT:OR) research project aims to make sense of how small businesses have dealt with a rapidly shifting regulatory environment during the Covid-19 pandemic. The project is led by Dr Paul Richter and a team of researchers at Newcastle University, with support from Prof Down. The research is in partnership with The Federation of Small Business (FSB). This research also builds on a large ESRC project in 2009-2012 that longitudinally examined how regulation is received, understood and used by small firms. This project was led by Professor Down with Dr Richter, and Professors Jane Pollard (Newcastle) and Monder Ram (Aston). Read more and check the Newcastle University project website.

Creotalents if funded by the British Council as part of the Creative Spark: Higher Education Enterprise Programme. The project is made possible thanks to the involvement of academic experts in entrepreneurship, innovation and strategy from the University of Birmingham in the UK, Oxford Brookes University in the UK and L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University in Kazakhstan. The platform is a space for creative individuals and students to learn entrepreneurship skills and take their talent to the next level in Kazakhstan, Central Asia and internationally. Read more and check the Creotalents project website.

The project recognises the complex set of cultural, economic and social relationships and engagements in community filmmaking. Therefore, our research will adopt a complexity framework to take a wider perspective to this object of study. Whilst the focus is on creative practitioners (community filmmakers), we aim to consider the cascade of connections which are behind their engagement with communities and partners, industries and audiences and which may impact on the cultural product and experience delivered as well as in urban/local development. 

At present, there is much that we do not know about our creative citizens. This project aims to provide better data on the value, scale and potential of UK hyperlocal publishers, analyse the value, potential and practicalities of community-led design, and evaluate every-day, "at home" creative citizenship. The project aims to provide a reference point for evaluations of the scale and potential of the UK creative economy, considered in the light of contemporary media ecologies. Read more and check the GTR-UKRI project website.