AHRC has become a leading figure in the UK’s creative industries, with major investments in cutting-edge infrastructure for the screen industry and regional clusters for SMEs announced in 2023. But research and industry weren’t always so closely aligned. This success builds on over a decade of industry collaborations and commercialisation, first emerging through AHRC’s open research funding schemes.

1998 – Training for a sustainable workforce

HEPI research shows that employers can provide technical training in-house, but critical thinking and language-handling skills “provide an invaluable platform that takes years to develop and cannot be quickly back-filled or worked around”. AHRC’s doctoral training has been providing the UK with specialists in these invaluable skills across universities, research institutes, and cultural organisations for the entirety of its 25-year history.

AHRC open funding

2007 – Dear Esther: the game that sparked a new genre

AHRC’s open funding established a new video game genre, nominated for five BAFTAs, creating a £2m company and setting out a profitable legacy for other UK game developers to follow. Dear Esther recouped its budget within six hours of release, and sold over 850,000 copies, proving that games with a narrative focus could be commercially successful.

University of Portsmouth | AHRC open funding

“One of the most influential independent video games of the last five years” The Guardian

2009 – Updating European copyright laws for the digital age

A pioneering Humanities in the European Research Area research programme made significant advancements for Creative Industries research in 2009, including timely interventions to update intellectual property and copyright laws for the digital age, influencing revisions to EU copyright policy. The UK has been part of this European research network since its establishment in 2004.

University of London | University of Cambridge | AHRC international partnership

2012 – The Emergence of Clusters: Bristol, Brighton and the North East

AHRC’s REACT hub brokered collaborations between researchers and creative SMEs and microbusinesses, stimulating over £5m in external investment and 86 prototypes and products. Research proving that businesses that ‘fuse’ the creative and digital sectors were growing twice as fast as comparable businesses later informed the £170m City Deal for Brighton in 2013/14, and Tees Valley Combined Authority strategic planning in 2017.

University of the West of England | University of Sussex | Newcastle University | AHRC strategic programme

2013 – Industrial heritage leads to regeneration and growth

Historical research on the Hafod Morfa copperworks led to economic growth through tourism and attracting business to Swansea, including a new Penderyn whisky distillery.

Swansea University | AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

2018 – Defying expectations: the Creative Industries Clusters Programme

With nine clusters spread across the UK from Cardiff to Dundee, the Creative Industries Clusters Programme didn't just prove that collaboration between research organisations and creative SMEs leads to innovation and economic growth – it surpassed its own targets sixfold, generating £252m of co-investment and a range of innovative products, including a sustainable leather alternative, and an upskilling programme for the film and TV industry in virtual production, a cutting-edge carbon-saving screen technology.

AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

2021 – Helping businesses and charities to tell their story

Prof Bambo Soyinka’s StoryArcs programme is placing storytelling experts in 15 organisations from 9 cities, spanning UK charities, public bodies and SMEs, including Winged Chariot, a creative agency collaborating with SpaceX and NASA on deep space travel. Story Associates will help hosts craft compelling narratives to build their reach and impact.

Bath Spa University | AHRC strategic programme

Now: Transforming the screen industry

CoSTAR is a 6-year £80m investment in state-of-the-art digital facilities, positioning the UK at the forefront of future screen and performance technologies: film, TV, streaming, and beyond.

AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

Now: Expanding the Creative Industries Clusters

New funding for the Creative Industries Clusters Programme is extending the work of the existing clusters – from recycling textile waste to VR for the music industry – and will establish new clusters with £50m to foster new sectors in new geographies.

AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

The earliest AHRB reports from the 1990s establish a commitment to encouraging arts and humanities researchers to use information and computer technologies in their work. We’ve come a long way since then: today, AHRC-funded research is driving technological progress across sectors, from artificial intelligence to heritage and conservation.

2000 – Precision archaeology in modern Rome

Using early computer imaging and virtual reality technologies, researchers constructed a virtual model of the Theatre of Pompey, allowing them to identify precise entry points, minimising disruption to the city and gaining permission to dig the site for the first time in 150 years.

King’s College London | AHRC open funding

2002 – Computers can read music

AHRB funded some of the earliest research into optical music recognition, teaching computers to read music, an invaluable time-saving tool for publishers.

University of Leeds | AHRC open funding

2006 – Computers can write music

AHRC’s first grant mentioning the use of artificial intelligence was an experimental exploration of how computational tools can use visual input to create automated music, and vice versa. The software has been used for music therapy, as a tool for deaf people to experience music, and to improve search engines at Yahoo, Google, and the BBC.

Goldsmiths College | AHRC open funding

2014 – Big data in the humanities

Amazing things happen when humanities scholars and data scientists collaborate. One project in this landmark programme pulled together online gambling data from across the internet to show real-time odds for major events including the 2015 General Election. Another shaped the development of advanced search capabilities at the British Library and improved access to archived websites.

University of London & Swansea University | AHRC strategic programme

2015 – Whaaam! Pop Art and its conservation

AHRC funding helped researchers to develop a new cleaning technique for modern art, allowing Lichtenstein’s Whaam! to be cleaned for the first time in over 50 years.

Tate | AHRC international partnership

2018 – What if robots had a sense of touch?

With support from the Creative Industries Cluster Creative Informatics, Edinburgh-based start-up Touchlab developed an electronic ‘skin’ that enables humans to ‘feel’ what a robot touches in another location – such as a medical setting or disaster zone – in real time. The company has secured more than £3.5m in investment.

University of Edinburgh | AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

Now: World Class Labs for the arts and humanities

To conduct all of this cutting-edge technological innovation, researchers need infrastructure – facilities, machines, and software. AHRC funding is allowing research organisations including universities, museums, and libraries to buy and upgrade infrastructure to sustain our world-class research, driving innovation for the next decade.

AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

Now: Ethics for Artificial Intelligence

The public has growing concerns about how artificial intelligence uses private and copyrighted data, such as personal medical records, an image of a person’s face, or works of art. That’s why AHRC is investing £8.5m to transform AI ethics and regulation, recognising that ethics, law and human rights are humanities disciplines: this isn’t a problem that computer scientists can solve alone.

University of Edinburgh | AHRC strategic programme

Researchers around the world are working together to combat and adapt to climate change, and building a greener and resilient future is a core focus for the whole of UKRI. AHRC's investments in Design have a critical role to play by making truly sustainable products, buildings, and systems that reduce carbon emissions. We also need history to track environmental trends, human rights to protect people from environmental disaster, and law to enact change.

1999 – Early innovations in recycling

One of the first projects funded AHRB designed a cutting-edge strong, glass-like building material made of 85% difficult-to-recycle waste. Resilica is still on the market today, now 100% recycled.

Sheffield Hallam University | AHRC strategic programme

2007 – Historical research protects rainforests in Borneo

Archaeological and cultural research has provided Kelabit and Penan people with crucial evidence of their claim to land in Borneo, helping to protect the rainforest from logging.

University of Cambridge | AHRC-UKRI international partnership

2010 – The role of historical buildings for sustainability

Experts in architecture and archaeology play a key role in the fight against climate change, both by retrofitting old buildings to make them more energy efficient, and also by protecting them against the impacts of climate change. The PARNASSUS project developed methods to assess flood risk and condensation for historic buildings in town centres, used by Bristol City Council and English Heritage.

University of Bath | AHRC-EPSRC strategic programme

2012 – Extreme weather throughout history

The Met Office used historical research tracking and confirming patterns in extreme weather to reconstruct how weather and the climate has changed in the UK over time.

University of Wales | AHRC strategic programme

2013 – BBC Earth in Vision

Earth in Vision traced 70 years of BBC environmental programming. In an exclusive interview, David Attenborough explains how nature documentaries have changed due to climate change and new technologies.

Open University | AHRC open funding

2014 – Design Leadership towards Net Zero

The Design Leadership Fellowship cemented AHRC’s commitment to Design research, and the importance of design for net zero. Through this programme, researchers created a new bathroom tile product using 91% recycled material, which is now available at Topps Tiles.

Lancaster University, University of Central Lancashire | AHRC strategic programme

2016 – Legal rights for people displaced by climate change in Pakistan

Collaborative research with local communities into the gendered impacts of climate change and land acquisition in Pakistan helped displaced and at-risk people understand their legal rights, provided evidence for court cases, and informed work by FCDO and ActionAid.

Imperial College London | AHRC-UKRI international partnership

2020 – Towards a National Collection

AHRC is using digital technology to create a unified collection of items and data held at the UK’s museums, libraries, galleries and archives, enhancing remote access and thereby reducing the carbon footprint of the cultural sector.

AHRC strategic programme

2021 – Green Thinking Podcast

On our BBC Podcast for COP26, arts and humanities experts taught us about: How green are cryptocurrencies? Is climate change causing conflict? Is climate change impacting the refugee crisis?

University of Exeter | AHRC strategic programme

2022 – Design Council partners with AHRC

In 2022, Design Council joined the UKRI family. Their Design for Planet mission unites designers across research and the private sector to commit to accelerating a sustainable future.

“We won’t win the battle against the climate crisis unless we design the solution” Rt Hon. the Lord Deben, Chair of the Climate Change Committee.

Now: Circular Fashion

UKRI is bringing together researchers in fashion, textiles, science and business in a £15m programme to develop innovative solutions to sort and recycle fashion and textile goods at scale in the UK.

AHRC-NERC-Innovate UK strategic programme

Now: Future Observatory

AHRC’s Future Observatory is harnessing design research to accelerate solutions for net zero, including decarbonisation, waste reduction, and circular economies.

Design Museum | AHRC strategic programme

History and culture are key to what makes one place different from another. AHRC funds research all over the UK which works together with communities to create benefits for everyone, combatting inequalities and boosting local economies.

1998 – Funding to train new researchers across the UK

Anyone should be able to have a career in research, regardless of their background or where they’re from. Our doctoral training programmes provide students with tuition and living costs to develop their research and innovation skills in universities, museums, galleries, archives, and libraries across the whole of the UK.

AHRC open funding

2000 – Early investments in the North of the UK

AHRB’s first major investments included a Centre for Scottish and Irish Studies, and a Centre for North-East England History, establishing the international significance of the UK’s northern heritage.

University of Aberdeen & Durham University | AHRC strategic programme

2010 – Connected Communities

AHRC’s Connected Communities programme brought researchers outside the walls of the university, introducing revolutionary ways of working equitably with local communities which – over a decade later – are now considered standard practice. Through this programme, archaeologists worked together with people living in one of the most deprived areas in Cardiff to dig a 3000-year-old Iron-Age Hillfort, creating jobs, opportunities, and pride in place for the local community, and even featuring on Time Team.

Cardiff University | AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

2012 – Who gets to play the Dane?

Historians worked with actors and theatres to trace over a thousand Black and Asian actors in Shakespeare, including Ira Aldridge who managed the Coventry Theatre Royal in 1823. Despite this long history, Black and Asian actors remain significantly underrepresented in productions of Shakespeare.

University of Warwick | AHRC open funding

“I would have thought that perhaps after the 1980s it would have changed, but it doesn’t seem to have done in any major way. So that is shocking.” Paterson Joseph, Actor

2019 – Manchester Voices

Linguistics experts drove around the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester to collect information about how different communities speak, and how they perceive each other’s accents. The project attracted attention locally and nationally, and countered the myth that the UK’s local accents are dying out.

Manchester Metropolitan University | AHRC open funding

2019 – Using evidence to combat Modern Slavery

The Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre works with policymakers, businesses, civil society, survivors and the public to improve the UK’s response to Modern Slavery. The centre has led a number of important interventions, such as helping investors to identify and avoid supply chains involved in modern slavery, improving support for survivors, and assessing if prevention initiatives are working.

Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law | AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

2020 – How an equipment grant can bring communities together

Historic Environment Scotland used their upgraded conservation equipment to involve local communities in their work. When they brought an Islamic glass fragment to a Kurdish women’s group in Edinburgh, they learned more about how it ended up in the grounds of a Scottish castle.

Historic Environment Scotland | AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

“When you work in heritage, you allow people to meet themselves through history” Vicky Inam Mohieddeen

2022 – Bradford’s Digital Twin

Archaeology researchers have created a ‘digital twin’ of the city of Bradford, used by the council to model traffic, tourism, and natural disasters such as flooding. AHRC funding has expanded this work with state-of-the-art mapping equipment and an extension into Bradford’s UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saltaire.

University of Bradford | AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

Now: Place Matters

Prof Rebecca Madgin is working with local and regional decision makers to better understand the complexities of places across the UK, and determine when local policies and initiatives can be transferred from one place to another. The programme supports sustainable, equitable, and long-term decision making for place-based policies and planning.

University of Glasgow | AHRC strategic programme

Now: Creative Communities

Prof Katy Shaw’s new AHRC programme is working to generate economic and social value through new cultural activity, and show how communities all over the UK are co-creating opportunities in the creative industries.

Northumbria University | AHRC strategic programme

Arts and humanities research is the key that unlocks improvements in our health and social care systems: we need ethics and law to combat inequalities; design to bring new products to market; language to communicate health needs; and history to learn from the past.

“The huge volume of numbers of users, things like waiting lists, things like access to services are a real challenge, particularly for people living in the poorest areas. Arts and humanities scholars have real expertise in thinking about how best to solve those complex problems.” Helen Chatterjee

2002 – Protecting our private health data

The AHRB Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law collaborated with the NHS on the protection and appropriate use of personal data in healthcare research.

University of Edinburgh | AHRC strategic programme

2010 – Deciding for oneself

Experts in ethics and law helped change how we treat patients whose ability to make decisions may be impaired, bringing the UK into compliance with the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

University of Essex | AHRC open funding

2011 – The art of plastic surgery

Fine Art experts trained surgeons to develop their aesthetic eye, drawing skills, and artistic anatomy, improving results in reconstructive surgery.

University of Lincoln | AHRC open funding

“It made a definite difference to my clinical practice. I have made several adjustments to my operating procedure.” Consultant Plastic Surgeon, Birmingham

2016 – How HIV/AIDS has affected policy

This European collaboration disentangled the impacts of HIV/AIDS history on policies, including LGBTQ+ rights, prisons, drugs, migration, and sex work, emerging from activism and prejudice.

Goldsmiths College | AHRC international partnership

2017 – Design to prevent antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

Experts in design and architecture found evidence linking house ventilation design to AMR, providing advice to the UK government and WHO on ventilation and building regulation

Glasgow School of Art | AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

2017 – Saving lives in road traffic collisions

Design researchers created a trauma pack for road traffic injuries in Namibia which is 80% cheaper to produce than existing products, and useable by non-medical first responders. The pack is being used by Namibian police to save lives in road traffic collisions, shootings and stabbings

Cardiff Metropolitan University | MRC-AHRC open funding

2018 – Creative innovation for pain relief, arthritis care, and... cows

AHRC’s Creative Industries Clusters have used gaming technologies to improve healthcare: VR to reduce pain in the labour ward [Cardiff University]; haptic gloves to assess stiffness in arthritic joints [Ulster University]; and AI-enhanced VR to help vets identify and diagnose cows more efficiently

University of Abertay | AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

2020 – The Pandemic and Beyond

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, AHRC funded research at pace in areas such as ethics, conspiracy theories, and the experiences of marginalised groups. For example, 75% of nurses were using single-use, one-size PPE that caused trip hazards, overheating, and landfill. Researchers designed reusable and adjustable PPE in a range of sizes, which quickly went into production for the NHS.

University of Exeter, Nottingham Trent University | AHRC-UKRI strategic programme

2021 – Increasing mental health literacy for young people

AHRC researchers at the Institute of Mental Health worked with Aardman and partners to develop the What’s up with Everyone? campaign. The team produced five animated films with and for young people, about dealing with life’s challenges before they impact mental health. 

University of Nottingham | AHRC strategic programme

Image © 2021 University of Nottingham, Loughborough University, London School of Economics and Politics, Aardman Animations Ltd, Mental Health Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

2023 – Untold Stories: NHS and Windrush at 75

AHRC’s writers in residence at the Trafford General Hospital worked with porters, nurses, cleaners, catering staff, and doctors to tell their stories of working in the NHS, as well as stories from the families of Windrush generation NHS workers.
Read their stories here

Manchester Metropolitan University | AHRC strategic programme

Now: Mobilising Cultural Assets to Combat Health Inequalities

Everyone in the UK should benefit from the positive health effects of community assets like gyms, libraries, and parks. But these assets are unequally distributed. This £26m programme links and integrates these assets into healthcare systems across the UK to improve health outcomes for disadvantaged groups.

UCL | AHRC strategic programme

Now: Disability-inclusive global development

This programme is transforming how we develop research on disability, by involving people with disabilities in every part of the process, including the design, delivery, and leadership of research. In doing so our aim is to truly meet the needs of these communities by improving access to culture, co-designing services, and more.

AHRC international partnership