Equal - Digital Repository

Increasingly, the key to economic growth lies not just in the ability to attract the creative class, but to translate that underlying advantage into creative economic outcomes in the form of new ideas, new businesses and regional growth. Nevertheless, the paradox of the creative industry is that so little research has been undertaken on how regions, cities and companies generate new creative products and services, let alone on professional formation within this highly diverse yet key economic sector.

The Institute will undertake ground breaking research in 'creative apprenticeships'. This is a multifaceted concept. It encompasses nationally recognised and funded programmes such as the Modern Apprenticeship; regional, sectoral and company-specific schemes that have been designed to develop and nurture creativity such as Graduate Apprenticeship (we need better examples); and, the contribution made by many rarely recognised, but highly valued, pathways, networks and cultures to fostering creativity, such as, 'media running'.

To assist the project to demonstrate the strategic importance of creative apprenticeship to creative economic outcomes and to assisting BME talent to realise their ambitions, the research will:

• develop a typology of different modes of creative apprenticeship and the access that they provide to the creative industry
• identify the unique configurations of learning opportunities, learning resources that facilitate creative development
• identify the ways in which BME can more effectively take advantage of these opportunities and resources
• challenge policymakers' conventional wisdom about the link between 'skills' targets and the development of creativity