1: Creative R&D

Artists are in a perpetual state of discovery with a huge amount of knowledge to add to the R&D conversation.

- Sarah Ellis, Director of Digital Development, Royal Shakespeare Company

The purpose of this chapter is to focus a clearer lens on Creative R&D as a distinct category of art and advanced technologies (AxAT) activity; at once broadening its scope beyond association with the 'creative industries' and simultaneously creating a firm foundation for designating activity that bridges the cultural sector with innovation ecosystems.

Formal definitions of R&D are institutionally tethered to the natural sciences and engineering as codified in the OECD Frascati Manual - the internationally recognised guidelines for collecting and using R&D statistics.¹ In 1976 the manual defined R&D as 'creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications'.² Over time the manual has broadened its scope to account for intangible innovations in areas such as computing, acknowledging the importance of the social sciences and humanities in the development of the service industries.³ This framework, while robust for measuring R&D activity in science and engineering, has proved inadequate for capturing the innovation from the cultural and creative industries. Nevertheless, it has shaped government policies globally, including the UK's HMRC criteria for R&D tax relief, which still explicitly excludes the arts, humanities, and social sciences.⁴

In 1998, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) published the Creative Industries Mapping Documents, which codified thirteen creative industries sectors and positioned them as economically significant contributors to UK GDP, valued at £60 billion annually and employing 1.4 million people.⁵ This marked a decisive shift from viewing arts and culture primarily through the lens of public subsidy and cultural value toward recognising their commercial and innovation potential.⁶ Yet, despite being celebrated for their economic contribution and innovative capacities, the creative industries remained systematically excluded from the formal R&D infrastructure that supported innovation in other sectors.

In response, the 2010 Not Rocket Science report made a strong case for redefining R&D to include the arts and culture.⁷ The authors argued that many arts organisations already engage in activities that align with Frascati's categories of basic research, applied research, and experimental development - particularly when experimenting with digital distribution, audience engagement, or new forms of collaboration. However, this work is often excluded because its outputs are not always codified, reproducible, or framed in technological terms. They urged policymakers to rethink the science-and-technology bias in R&D frameworks and arts organisations to make their innovation processes more explicit and methodologically rigorous.

The 2015 edition of the OECD Frascati Manual was the first to substantially address research in the arts, offering guidance on what arts-related activity could be classified as R&D.⁸ However, Bakhshi and Lomas have argued for further revisions to broaden applicability across all knowledge domains.⁹ Their research proposes a revised definition of R&D that explicitly incorporates the creation of cultural and social value 𝖛, addresses forms of uncertainty specific to creative practice, and acknowledges that R&D can result in experiences or behavioural changes - not just products and technologies. This revised framing calls for recognising the legitimacy of R&D in arts, humanities, and social sciences; enabling more effective cross-domain 𝖎 collaboration; and measuring returns on investment with the same seriousness afforded to STEM disciplines. Their proposed unified definition maintains the Frascati's core but adds dimensions including aleatory uncertainty and experience-led knowledge creation, challenging narrow interpretations of novelty, reproducibility, and systematisation that have historically excluded creative sectors.

The specific term 'Creative R&D' gained currency within the creative industries as advocates sought to bridge the gap between the economic importance of the creative industries and their lack of legibility within traditional R&D frameworks. The term served multiple strategic functions: it asserted the legitimacy of research and development activities in creative sectors, it challenged the science-and-technology bias in existing frameworks, and it provided a conceptual bridge between cultural policy and innovation policy.

While the creative industries have advanced recognition and support for R&D beyond traditional science and technology sectors, positioning Creative R&D solely within this domain creates significant limitations for its full potential and impact. Creative R&D within the creative industries has typically prioritised research in technologies associated with distribution and presentation - particularly immersive technologies and digital interfaces - while giving less attention to other technological fields.¹⁰ Furthermore, Creative R&D has often been situated within the 'soft' and 'downstream' aspects of innovation, focused on concept development, user experience, and design thinking that lead toward product development and go-to-market strategies. This positioning, while valuable, represents only one dimension of what Creative R&D can encompass. The broader exploratory research, critical inquiry, and social innovation aspects of Creative R&D - which may not have immediate commercial applications but which generate crucial insights about technological and cultural evolution - have received comparatively less emphasis.

Definitions matter and if we don't define and conceptually understand what we're doing as R&D, and if we don't establish criteria that recognise our work, we won't receive proper support.

- Amy Tarr, Head of Policy & Public Affairs, Creative UK

The decoupling of 'Creative R&D' from 'creative industries' represents a necessary recalibration for understanding how experimental practices operate across diverse domains - from cultural institutions to technology companies, from independent studios to academic research labs. While creative industries have developed robust frameworks for measuring commercial success through audience engagement, market share, and revenue generation, which reflect some aspects of applied research and experimental development, Creative R&D requires a broader anchoring. This need becomes particularly salient when Creative R&D occurs at the intersection of multiple fields: e.g., artists working with biotechnology - which can involve cultural, academic and industry actors; cultural institutions developing AI capabilities - which can involve think-tanks, legal professionals and engineering teams; or, technologists exploring narrative systems - which can involve tech companies, philosophers and artists. In these contexts, 'creative' signals not a market sector but a mode of experimental investigation that prioritises emergent 𝖊 possibilities over predetermined outcomes.

Creative R&D often occupies an ambiguous position - neither purely upstream nor downstream, neither exclusively hard nor soft technology.¹¹ For example, artificial intelligence exemplifies this hybrid nature - requiring both foundational technical research in machine learning architectures (hard technology) and experimentation with generative systems, interaction design, and ethical frameworks (soft technology). Similarly, immersive technology development might involve both hardware innovations (display technologies, haptic systems) and experiential design (narrative structures, interaction models), requiring teams that can work across these traditionally separated domains. These inherited categories create particular challenges for activities at the intersection of culture and technology.

Furthermore, the separation of digital and cultural policy within the UK's governmental structure has created significant barriers to realising the ecosystemic potential of Creative R&D. Historically, digital policy was housed within the, then titled, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as part of a broader strategy to integrate technology and culture, aligning with the 2017 Digital and Industrial Strategies. These strategies envisioned the cultural sector as a testbed for technological applications, fostering new art forms, modes of engagement, and collaborations with major technology companies. This alignment facilitated logistical efficiencies and enabled cultural institutions to pioneer AxAT projects that operated at the intersection of digital innovation and cultural production.

However, in 2023, digital policy was transferred to the newly established Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), decoupling it from cultural policy.¹² This structural shift not only disrupted established collaborative frameworks but also compartmentalised digital innovation away from cultural strategy, hindering the flow of resources and policy coherence that previously encouraged cross-sector 𝖎 experimentation. This structural issue has been acknowledged, if not fully addressed, as a priority challenge in the recent Industrial Strategy Green Paper (2024).

AxAT represents a non-codified dynamic field where artistic practice intersects with technological innovation across a spectrum of sectors and domains.¹³ Creative R&D activity might include artists developing custom AI systems that challenge conventional machine learning approaches, cultural institutions establishing laboratories for experimental work with emerging technologies, as well as cross-sector collaborations that reimagine technological applications through artistic interventions 𝖎. Although lacking formal recognition in policy frameworks, AxAT has emerged as a distinctive and fluid ecosystem 𝖊 through which advanced technologies are investigated, reimagined, and transformed into materials, media, tools and infrastructural foundations to underwrite new forms of expression, knowledge, and social engagement. AxAT can be distinguished from other artistic work by its direct investment in the development and implementation of advanced technologies, rather than a focus on art historical representation and interpretation, and other non-technology specific Creative R&D work.¹⁴

Creative R&D within AxAT encompasses practices that use interdisciplinary methodologies to investigate advanced technologies, generating new knowledge and applications across cultural, social, and technological domains 𝖛. Building on the OECD Frascati Manual's definition of research and development and Hasan Bakhshi's and Elizabeth Lomas' revisions, we propose the following definition:

Creative R&D is a systematic, transdisciplinary 𝖎 activity that investigates and develops advanced technologies through innovative methods, generating new knowledge and applications across cultural, social, and technological domains. It adheres to established R&D principles while emphasising exploratory approaches that may originate in artistic, design, and/or cultural practices.

Like all R&D, Creative R&D encompasses basic research (acquiring new insights without specific applications), applied research (investigation toward specific aims or objectives), and experimental development (creating new or improved outputs, processes, systems or services), thereby meeting the internationally recognised criteria for R&D: novelty, creativity, uncertainty, systematic process, and transferability.

• Novelty - R&D pursues new knowledge or insights.

• Creativity - based on original concepts and hypotheses that are pursued through non-routine activity.

• Uncertainty - R&D is uncertain about the final outcome. There is a broad recognition of the possibility of not achieving the intended results and negative results are considered valuable.

• Systematic process - R&D is a formal activity that is conducted in a planned way, with records kept of the process followed and the outcome.

• Transferability - R&D should result in the potential for the transfer of the new knowledge 𝖊, ensuring its use and allowing others to reproduce the results.

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What distinguishes Creative R&D is its capacity to operate across 𝖎 traditional boundaries, integrate diverse knowledge domains, and address complex challenges 𝖗 through approaches that complement other R&D methodologies. Its outcomes can be measured through both conventional R&D metrics and additional frameworks that capture cultural, social, and long-term impacts.

We propose to work within this existing definition in order to remain compatible with a recognised policy framework and within a definitional lineage that is legible to different communities.¹⁵ This approach provides a foundation for better recognition, evaluation, and support of Creative R&D activities across an ecosystem that encompasses creative industries, universities, civic, technology and cultural sectors. The success of this ecosystem is critical. As advanced technologies increasingly shape all aspects of social, economic, and political realities in profound and often unpredictable ways, Creative R&D has the capacity to ensure that their development reflects diverse societal needs 𝖛.