Deadline: 9-Nov-21
The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is pleased to launch India and UK Creative Industries and Cultural Heritage Engagement that aims to support a programme of India-UK collaborative research activities which map and analyse the current research and innovation landscape in these areas; highlight key outcomes of recently funded research; identify synergies and emerging research challenges; and foster new partnerships for engagement.
Aims
On behalf of the cross-UKRI and HMG UK-India Creative Industries Working Group, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is seeking to commission a scoping study to provide an overview and mapping of the creative economy in India, and the research and innovation ecosystem which supports it, including highlighting particular areas of strength, growth, and innovation. The prevailing aims for the scoping study are to:
- Map these areas of strength and growth against existing studies which map UK strengths in creative economy research and innovation
- Provide an overview of current levels of connectivity between creative economy research and innovation systems in the UK and India, including barriers to collaboration
- Identify areas within the creative economy where there may be the greatest potential to grow or develop India-UK research and innovation collaboration
- Identify areas where there may be a need for further in-depth scoping or research to fully understand possible India-UK opportunities, as well as addressing some more specific questions such as whether the UK’s tax coding for the creative economy could be mapped onto India’s formal and informal creative economies to indicate likely GDP across specific areas.
Areas of Focus
They expect the study to provide an overview of the creative economy in India and potential India-UK opportunities, as well as to identify areas for more in-depth analysis. As a part of this, they expect the study to cover the following sectors and areas of the creative economy which have been identified through previous work by UKRI and partner organisations as being of particular interest:
- Screen/Film/TV/gaming and related broadcasting technologies
- Mobile economy/creativity/technologies
- Digital content production – inclusive of screen, books, gaming, music, podcasts etc
- Live Performance, including music, dance and associated technologies to improve distribution and audience experience, such as streaming and immersive technologies
- Fashion, especially Sustainable Fashion – including the whole supply chain from design to manufacture to retail and end of life
- Design and cognate fields such as architecture, crafts, and creative manufacturing, including those which relate to sustainability and Net Zero
- AI, machine learning and data in the creative industries and related areas such as AdTech and MusicTech.
Strands
There are three strands to this opportunity:
- Creative Industries scoping study
- Cultural Heritage scoping report
- Follow on Funding for past and existing AHRC/UKRI award holders to support activities relevant to the 75th anniversary of independence in India (India 75).
Funding Information
- Creative Industries Scoping Study – one award is available. Applicants will be able to apply for up to £100,000 funding and eligible costs (fEC) with AHRC contributing 80% of the full economic cost.
- Cultural Heritage Scoping Report – one award is available. Applicants will be able to apply for up to £100,000 (fEC) with AHRC contributing 80% of the full economic cost.
- India 75 – up to three awards are available. Applicants will be able to apply for up to £50,000 (fEC) with AHRC contributing 80% of the full economic cost.
The award duration for all the two scoping studies (strands 1 & 2) is up to 6 months and for the third India 75 follow-on fund strand it is up to 9 months.
All projects must have a start date of 1st February 2022. Exceptionally they may be able to consider no cost extensions to awards where there is a strong case for extending activities later into 2022 but they expect all activities to be completed by the end of the 2022 calendar year.
Eligible activity
Funding will support innovative and creative activities that engage with themes such as those above and which would be timely to undertake in 2022 as a part of India’s 75th anniversary of independence. Eligible activities for this strand include:
- Knowledge exchange, interactive public engagement, civic dialogue or active dissemination activities with a particular focus on themes related to India 75. These activities should focus on engagement with user communities, enhancing impact from AHRC/UKRI-funded research, widen audiences or support commercialisation or proof of concept activities.
- Activities that build upon knowledge exchange and impact already undertaken but which take those activities in the direction of themes relevant to India 75 and to wider audiences.
- Conferences, seminars, briefings, tools/resources or digital engagement, aimed at a policy/practice audience or cultural production, exhibitions, performances, educational activities, digital content and similar activities aimed at wider nonacademic communities, including public engagement/local community groups.
- Pursuit and development of new India-UK partnerships involving non-academic organisations or ‘user’ groups
- Feasibility studies to test the potential application of ideas emerging from the research in different business, policy or practice contexts.
Eligibility Criteria
- Applications must be submitted by a UK:
- eligible higher education institution
- independent research organisation
- research council institute.
- For all three opportunities, they welcome and encourage proposals that include international academic co-investigators, particularly based in India, and that involve:
- partnership or collaboration with non-academic organisations in India
- subcontracting of work to partners in India.
- This must be delivered in keeping with the 2020 amendments to the Indian Foreign Contributions Regulation Act.
- An individual applicant can be named as principal investigator on either the Creative Industries Scoping Study or Cultural Heritage Scoping Report, but not both.
- If you are applying to the India 75 Follow on Funding for Impact and Engagement opportunity, your proposed activity must follow on from current or past research projects funded by AHRC.
- Applicants to the creative industries and cultural heritage opportunities may also apply to India 75 Follow on Funding for Impact and Engagement, so long as it can be demonstrated that a sufficient amount of time can be committed to both concurrently.
- Applicants must be able to start their projects between 1 and 14 February 2022.
For more information, visit https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/india-and-uk-creative-industries-and-cultural-heritage-engagement/