Unpacking the university-creative economy assemblage: the discourses, dynamics and possibilities of creative R&D programmes

The UK government's Creative Industries Sector Vision identifies the creative industries as a growth engine, supporting the state's ambition for the UK to be a global innovation hub and foregrounding the role of universities ‘to champion spin-outs’ and ‘enrich local SMEs with their applied research’ (June 2023). Attempts to mobilise universities as agents in regional creative economies via University-Industry R&D programmes have intensified in recent decades, with over £276 million invested since 2012 in programmes such as the AHRC's Creative Industries Clusters Programme, CoSTAR, XRtists and UKRI's Strength in Places Fund. This paper unpacks the imaginaries and mechanics of such projects to show how universities have become complicit in a political shift that positions innovation, knowledge exchange and technological capability as the most valuable forms of ‘creativity’, rather than other artistic, social, or cultural practices. We examine the often-inflexible structures of partnership, resourcing and knowledge hierarchies within higher education institutions (HEIs) that delimit the potential of universities as agents in regional creative economies. We explore how creative sector-facing practices performed by universities, such as knowledge exchange, performance measurement and administrative procedures, can reproduce an exclusionary and extractive vision of creative economies. Lastly, we consider what alternative practices of intermediation may exist to support a more progressive role for HEIs in the creative economy. • Universities have become central to the creative economy through creative R&D programmes. • Current versions of creative are technology-led and equate innovation with new technology. • This version excludes other forms of creativity, seen in the defunding of arts and humanities. • Understanding universities as assemblages demonstrates possibilities for change. • This enables Creative R&D teams to offer equitable, more-than-economic creative opportunities.