Impact case study database

King’s research has informed how public service content for children in the UK is funded

Since 2017, King’s research has influenced debate on how UK public service content for children should be funded. This culminated in directly informing the funding criteria adopted by the British Film Institute’s (BFI) Young Audiences Content Fund (YACF). Launched in April 2019, the YACF is now a major contributor to the funding of children’s content in the UK, responsible for £57 million of funding over three years. In its first year it awarded £12.5 million to 17 productions and 59 development projects in accordance with guidelines that were directly influenced by King’s research. At its launch, Steemers was appointed as Chair of the YACF Steering Group of content producers, in recognition of the centrality of her research to YACF and its development.

King’s research on the best practices for operating a fund – comparing and contrasting organisational procedures and funding criteria in other countries [1,2] – directly informed the BFI’s 2019 draft guidelines for running the YACF as a three-year pilot fund to stimulate the provision and plurality of programming for children. BFI’s Head of Operations, Partners and Projects explains that the research made “a critical difference to the BFI’s knowledge and approach to the YACF guidelines in taking account of market failure and experiences in other countries, along with the operational set up of the fund” [A]. Further explaining the impact on the establishment of the Fund, she states, “King’s research about how contestable funds operate in Ireland, New Zealand and Denmark, in particular gave the BFI real insights into what would work for a specialised children’s fund in the UK. The research was really helpful in pinpointing what didn’t work in these countries, and this allowed the BFI to shape our funding priorities and the YACF guidelines more clearly around quality, innovation, diverse representation, new voices, and plurality of provision in ways that were not always reflected in other funds, but met the YACF’s public service obligations, including for content that the market would not otherwise support – such as content for older children, drama and factual shows.” In these ways, the research was “immeasurably influential in our setting up the Young Audiences Content Fund.” [A]

In the years leading up to the creation of the YACF, King’s research directly influenced leading advocacy organisations feeding into policy debates over the funding of children’s content: the Children’s Media Foundation (CMF) and Voice of the Listener and Viewer (VLV). Steemers acted as an expert advisor to both. Key research findings – on how contestable funding without clear criteria does not guarantee greater diversity in provision or greater programme range [1,3] – were used by the CMF and VLV in their submissions to the DCMS Public Service Broadcasting Contestable Fund Consultation [B]. This directly influenced the creation and design of the BFI’s YACF. Using King’s findings about the distinctive market failure characteristics of children’s content and the efficacy of contestable funds in Ireland and New Zealand [1,2], VLV’s DCMS submission argued that any potential fund in the UK should concentrate on “less established producers, non-animated content and content for older children to promote more diverse content for children, which would not otherwise be commissioned” [B]. VLV’s Chair explains that the research was vital in “helping to formulate VLV’s arguments, which were later adopted as priorities for the YACF’s eventual operation.” Without King’s research, the VLV “would not have been able to assess funding in other countries, and its recommendations to the DCMS and British Film Institute would have been less effective in helping to shape the YACF’s eventual framework” [B].

CMF’s Director explains that King’s research on funding in other markets “helped CMF thinking on alternative funding, and what needed to be prioritised” [C]. Based on King’s insights into market failure and contestable funding in other countries, CMF’s submission to the DCMS also “took the position that the fund shouldn’t just benefit large scale international animation series and that there was a strong argument for addressing market failure, for example in underserved genres, in content for older children and encouraging new players to enter the market.” CMF highlighted these priorities, which were “reflected in the YACF’s guidelines as developed at the BFI.” [C] CMF’s Director adds that without King’s findings, “CMF would not have had the overview of public funding mechanisms in other countries, and its evidence to the DCMS would have been less convincing in helping to frame how the YACF should operate to ensure engagement from broadcasters” [C]. For CMF, the findings “significantly assisted in delivering the priorities of plurality of supply and a diverse range of content.” [C]

King’s research has influenced how producers of screen content portray under-represented children: enabling new approaches to challenging harmful stereotypes

Due to King’s research, six production companies/broadcasters based in the UK, Germany and the US have each adopted new approaches to ethics, diversity, children’s perspectives and the avoidance of stereotypes – reshaping screen content reaching children and families across Europe and Arabic-speaking countries on multiple platforms.

These producers have directly used King’s research to inform their work for children, impacting current and recent productions, development work, new commissions and funding applications. The six companies/broadcasters include experienced independent producers working for the BBC (Adastra Development, Three Stones Media) and Channel 5 (Adastra Development), German public broadcasters ZDF and KiKa (Imago TV), internationally active content providers seeking to reach young Arab audiences (BBC Media Action) and children in conflict areas (Sesame Workshop). The ultimate research beneficiaries are the many children who watch and engage with these companies’ content in Europe and the Arab world.

Each of these six companies/broadcasters attended one or more of the workshops held in Manchester (2017), Copenhagen (2018) and Munich (2018) as part of the King’s led AHRC-funded project on screen content for migration-experienced Arab children. Initial impact was signalled in surveys of 76 participants at the workshops, with 75% stating that the workshops definitely changed their minds about content addressing Arabic-speaking children [D]. According to the Managing Director of Adastra Development, a Cambridgeshire production company established in 2005, King’s findings on ethical considerations, children’s perspectives and avoiding tokenism (4, 6, 7) “clearly influenced our decision-making in terms of voices used for development, but also the characters, stories and the nature of the world we presented in our work. The fact that refugee children rarely see anything of their experiences reflected in work designed for their age group was something we very much took on board and will take with us in all future work” [E].

Adastra, who have scripted and produced content for all the UK’s children’s channels, used King’s research (4, 6, 7) to inform an Arts Council England project in 2018 with Peterborough Museum, Peterborough Syrian Refugee Action Group and Peterborough Asylum and Refugee Community Association. The findings were used to address diversity and inclusion in drama/puppetry workshops for ethnically diverse children aged 4–7 in Peterborough schools. This successful approach was then carried forward in 2019 into development of a new Channel 5 commission, Mimi’s World (in production), a 52-episode pre-school soap. According to Adastra, King’s research directly influenced their plans to work with children with forced migration experience, “to feed their ideas into development”, and informed and extended the company’s view that “aspiration, not victimhood was an important part” of what children should see represented on screen [E].

London-based production company Three Stones Media used King’s research on diversity and representation in children’s screen content, and the importance of children’s perspectives (4, 6, 7), to inform production. According to its company director, the casting process of series three of ethnically diverse pre-school soap Apple Tree House “benefited hugely from concerns about the underrepresentation of Arab characters” with the research bringing “more formal rigour to explore aspects of diversity and inclusion that previously we had only been able to study in an informal manner” [F]. The research “strengthened our resolve and also provide[d] substantial evidence to support our approaches to inclusion and diversity” – in this case for a show that first launched on the BBC’s CBeebies pre-school channel and BBC iPlayer in 2017 and is still being repeated, reaching thousands of UK pre-schoolers. The company continues to use King’s research on children’s perspectives and storytelling for a new project in development for BBC Children’s, with “a complete new approach to story development, scripting and casting that focuses even more on the youth voice” [F].

German production company Imago TV and the largest German public service commissioner ZDF both testify that King’s research on Arab children’s media experiences, ethical considerations, inclusive casting and victimhood (4, 6, 7) influenced their approach to diversity in series three of Berlin und Wir ( Berlin and Us). This is a six-part factual series featuring friendships between migrant and German children, first broadcast on ZDF and German children’s channel KiKa in 2019. They state that King’s research findings – on the need to consult children and prioritise their perspectives to avoid stereotyping and victimisation – clarified and confirmed that to “portray refugees in a positive light and consult them” was the right approach [G]. The way that the research highlighted the complexities of depicting religious and cultural differences around the wearing of headscarves by girls, for example, “influenced our approach in Series 3” to “other conflict lines” – namely the case of a Jewish girl and a Palestinian boy, where the team decided to focus on the personal experience of each child, rather than using them “in a secondary battlefield of the Middle East Conflict.” As a consequence of King’s research, now other children’s programmes professionals at ZDF “want to take greater account of the perspective of migrant children”, with the ZDF Children’s Department launching “an initiative to bring more diversity” into its programmes and commissioning further series dealing with diversity ( Strong Kids – Strong Classes) [G].

Beyond Europe, King’s research informed US-based Sesame Workshop’s successful USD100 million bid, in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee, to the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change programme. This was a bid to fund Ahlan Simsim ( Welcome Sesame) , an early childhood development programme for refugee families in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. According to Sesame Workshop’s Senior Vice President for International Social Impact, King’s research on the Arab media landscape for children (5) “was significant in helping Sesame develop an informed approach during the 100&Change competition, which recognizes the complexities of the Arab media market along with the unique needs and experiences of Arabic-speaking children and how they are impacted by forced migration. It allowed us to have an up to date and in-depth understanding of the media landscape in the Middle East to inform our winning proposal and meet the needs of children impacted by crisis and conflict across the region.” King’s research “provided key insights for Sesame Workshop to better understand the complex distribution of children’s media in the Arab world and importance of representation and locally relevant content” [H]. The Managing Producer of Ahlan Simsim, who attended the project workshops in Manchester and Munich, states that the research (4, 6) provided “ample insights” into the children’s media landscape in the Middle East, proving “very useful in the local creative talent bidding” and for the “framing of our initial creative development process.” The production team continue to refer to the research in developing and communicating “our continued mission” [H].

BBC international development charity BBC Media Action, which undertakes work in Lebanon, used King’s published research [4,5,6] to inform their approach to young audiences affected by forced migration in the Middle East. The research findings and recommendations were passed onto the BBC Media Action team and have “helped us redraft and review our approach” to Lebanon as well as providing insights on “ethical considerations” that are “key for the successful design of content that prioritises children’s perspectives over adults while also focusing on engaging, child-focused stories that avoid victimhood” [I].

Changes to our digital information environment have prompted global concerns about the spread of harmful and hateful misinformation. Coronavirus is the first pandemic of the social media age, and the implications of ‘viral’ misinformation have been highlighted in what WHO describes as an ‘infodemic’: an overabundance of information that includes the deliberate dissemination of falsehoods to undermine public health responses and advance harmful alternative agendas. King’s researchers have long been at the forefront of efforts to understand and tackle this. Journalists worldwide are now using digital methods from King’s [1,2,3] to investigate the digital infrastructures that facilitate viral misinformation and put pressure on tech companies, in order to more actively combat its circulation. King’s research [4] has enabled advocacy groups to successfully campaign for social media companies to ‘de-platform’ influential spreaders of misinformation. This research has also informed UK Government policymaking about coronavirus-related [5] and hateful-extremist conspiracy beliefs [6].

King’s research has directly enabled journalists in major international newsrooms to investigate online misinformation and influence the policies of major digital platforms

King’s Field Guide to ‘Fake News’ has provided journalists with original, research-derived methods to investigate the online platforms, algorithmic ranking systems and techno-commercial processes that enable the circulation of misinformation and ‘junk news’. The Field Guide has been cited as a key reference for responding to misinformation by organisations such as the BBC World Service, La Repubblica, Le Monde, Transparency International and UNESCO [A]. Insights from the Field Guide have been used and cited in collaborative investigations with NRC, Le Monde, Politico Europe and BuzzFeed News. BuzzFeed’s collaboration with King’s researchers in the process of researching and testing the Field Guide methods enabled their reporters to uncover how misinformation publishers were still earning money from major ad networks. This story resulted in a Google review of the sites in question and led to Google’s disabling of ads on those sites that were in violation of its policies [A].

The King’s research insights developed and accessibly presented in the Field Guide have had a direct impact on the investigative capacity of non-profit organisations, such as Media Matters for America, a research and information centre that monitors, analyses and corrects misinformation in the US media. Media Matters’ Research Director states that “having such a thorough resource available to help guide our thinking made possible rapid advancements in our research capacity – enabling researchers to effectively identify and help mitigate the effects of harmful narratives, both online and off” [A].

This research has also been put into practice through ongoing collaborations with First Draft News – a coalition brought together by the Google News Lab with the goal of fighting mis/disinformation online. The organisation’s Director states that “First Draft has embedded the effective digital methods produced by King’s research (as published in the Field Guide to Fake News) into all of our journalistic investigative and training activities. We draw in particular from their materials which support visual network analysis and extracting, analysing and visualising data from the web and online social media platforms” [B]. First Draft has been conducting regular training activities with journalists, policymakers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and has used the methods derived from the Field Guide and subsequent research to deliver training webinars to staff monitoring misinformation at organisations such as WHO, UNICEF and Mercy Corps [B]. First Draft’s Research Manager highlights how their use of King’s research has increased the accessibility of digital methods. He notes a “paradigm shift” among journalists and civil society actors in their realisation that data-driven approaches for investigating misinformation are both essential and actionable: “before, journalists weren’t necessarily using data, or were intimidated by data driven approaches. But you have to use them in order to investigate misinformation, the approaches that KCL [King’s] has been building for many years”. First Draft’s use of King’s research on accessible digital methods has “underline[d] that importance to journalists and normaliz[ed] these types of approaches within newsrooms” [B].

First Draft itself also conducts extensive monitoring of misinformation online and describes itself as an international ‘wire service’ on these issues for global media. First Draft’s Director states that “the digital methods developed through King’s research have directly capacitated our investigators to use new techniques to identify and track problematic online content” [B]. The results of these investigations have a wide and high-profile international reach and are disseminated to First Draft’s network of international journalists and newsrooms, for instance through their CrossCheck initiative’s Slack channel. This has over 400 members from major international newsrooms such as the BBC, AFP, CNN, CBS, NBC and Reuters. First Draft investigations using digital methods derived from King’s research are frequently cited by high-profile journalists covering issues related to misinformation, for instance NBC reporting on the spread of ‘QAnon’ conspiracy beliefs on social media in the context of the 2020 US election [B]. First Draft “believe[s] that the increased journalistic scrutiny and data collection on misinformation patterns (which First Draft’s use of King’s digital methods has significantly contributed to) has in turn influenced major social media companies’ recent steps towards more active content moderation and labelling” [B].

King’s research has directly influenced the content moderation practices of social media companies and has contributed to the permanent ‘de-platforming’ of influential purveyors of harmful coronavirus conspiracy beliefs

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the UK charity Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) used Allington’s research on the hateful content of David Icke’s online conspiracy videos in their discussions with YouTube’s policy team. CAA’s engagement with YouTube/Google influenced the platform’s removal of some of these videos in a wider take-down of white supremacist content in 2019 [C]. During the pandemic, there has been a further surge in such conspiracy theories, some of which incorporate similar hateful, antisemitic tropes. Again, David Icke has been a major purveyor of this misinformation. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an international not-for-profit NGO, one of Icke’s YouTube videos – which claims the Rothschilds were involved in planning the coronavirus pandemic – had been viewed 5.9 million times, making it the 27th most watched video about coronavirus on the platform. CCDH estimates that across social media platforms Icke’s coronavirus conspiracy videos have been viewed around 30 million times [C].

The full, permanent removal of Icke’s social media accounts was subsequently lobbied for by CCDH, and Allington’s research informed and influenced their (ultimately successful) campaign. As CCDH’s CEO explains, “Taking the lead from these research findings, our campaign #DeplatformIcke highlighted how social media platforms profit from such misinformation through online traffic and advertising revenue. Dr Allington’s research provided the campaign with an authoritative documentation that steered [its] direction and added significant weight to our conclusions and calls for action from tech companies. Our #DeplatformIcke report cites Dr Allington’s research extensively and we acknowledge the valuable insight that he provided to us in its preparation. As such, [this] research played a vital role in the success of CCDH’s campaign for major social media platforms to remove Icke’s accounts” [C]. The #DeplatformIcke report was launched in April 2020 and, at the beginning of May, Facebook and YouTube permanently removed Icke’s accounts (Twitter followed suit in November). CCDH’s report – for which King’s research was vital – was cited in UK and international news reporting on the decisions taken by the social media companies, and Icke himself noted the influence of CCDH’s campaign when discussing his de-platforming from YouTube (C).

High-profile King’s research about the impacts of online misinformation has directly informed Government policymaking on digital harms and ‘hateful extremism’

Allington’s survey research on social media use, conspiracism and health-protective behaviour in the coronavirus pandemic has been discussed extensively in the media, both in the UK (with coverage on the BBC’s Today programme, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph) and internationally (in The New York Times and on Voice of America) [D]. This research was taken up by campaigning organisation Avaaz, being cited in the press release accompanying its open letter signed by over 100 health professionals to social media platform CEOs [D]. The research findings were then cited in internal DCMS materials and in reports by SAGE on viral transmission risks in further and higher education. Referencing Allington’s research, the SAGE report notes that “lower adherence to Government guidelines [is] associated with exposure to conspiracy theories in social media” and emphasises the importance of “countering false messaging on social media” [E]. Indicating the international implications of the findings, this research has also been cited in a European Commission Science for Policy Report [E].

The policy impact of Allington’s research was further acknowledged in his invitation to join the Counter Disinformation Policy Forum convened by the UK Government’s Minister of State for Digital and Culture, and hosted by DCMS. Held in December 2020, the first Forum focused on the Government’s communication strategy for the coronavirus vaccine rollout, and Allington was one of 22 invited participants, alongside journalistic, civil society and tech company representatives. Allington directly contributed his research insight to the Forum, focusing on his findings that people who get their information from social media are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories and less likely to agree with the lockdown; and that vaccine hesitancy is higher among those who get their information about coronavirus from social media rather than traditional media [E].

Considering the wider impacts of misinformation and conspiracy beliefs on society, Allington’s research on the influence of politically extremist discourse has had a direct influence on the development and adoption of ‘hateful extremism’ as the key concept in the Commission for Countering Extremism’s work. The Commission was established in March 2018 to support society to challenge all forms of extremism and provide impartial advice to government. The Commission engaged Allington as lead researcher for an independent study on the relationship between revolutionary far left ideology and sympathy for violent extremism in 2019. The Commission has acknowledged that this research fed directly into and informed their flagship 2019 report Challenging Hateful Extremism [F]. The report’s articulation of this new category of ‘hateful extremism’ – informed by King’s research – has underpinned the Commission’s subsequent commitment to undertake a review of relevant laws. The Former Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations of the Metropolitan Police Service, Sir Mark Rowley, is leading this review and has stated that he is “convinced that the Commission’s clarity of focus on ‘hateful extremism’ can help identify the gaps that exist at the boundaries of current laws, such as hate crime and terrorism, which are being exploited daily by extremists” [F].

The impact of King’s research arises from making possible new ways of understanding everyday creativity and cultural democracy, contributing to (i) a new vocabulary and self-understanding of the cultural sector in England; (ii) new missions and modus operandi for organisations championing creative participation; and (iii) a new core purpose for arts policy in England. King’s research has thereby helped cultural policy in England move beyond the tenacious paternalism of ‘Excellence and Access’, providing a new framework within which cultural practitioners and policymakers of many kinds can support and promote not just ‘Great Art’ but also the conditions that enable everyone’s creativity.

Each of the key research findings that underpin the impact were generated via close collaboration between King’s and leading cultural organisations, campaigns and projects championing new approaches to supporting creative participation. This began with a partnership between King’s and 64 Million Artists (2014–15). This led, in turn, to the collaboration between King’s and the Get Creative campaign (2015–16), A New Direction (2017) and Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places programme (2019). In each case, King’s developed pathways to impact via sustained relationships with partner organisations during and beyond the research process itself.

King’s research has provided the cultural sector in England with a new vocabulary and self-understanding

Due to King’s research, published in Towards Cultural Democracy [1] and in subsequent journal articles, books and reports [2,3,4,5,6], the language of everyday creativity has now been adopted widely within the cultural sector in England, including by Arts Council England (ACE) and the organisations it supports. ACE is the largest and most influential arts funding agency in England, supporting 840 organisations as part of its National Portfolio and hundreds more organisations and artists through strategic funds, investing £408 million each year. The reach and significance of King’s impact is explained by ACE’s Director, Strategic Partnerships: King’s research “provided the organisation with a new way of understanding and describing the range of cultural and creative activity that takes place outside of arts organisations and the profit-making creative industries,” and through this impact on ACE, King’s research has helped “to give a new vocabulary to cultural practitioners” , with many of “the organisations that ACE supports now mak[ing] use of the idea and language of everyday creativity within their work.” [A]

Through and beyond its impact on ACE, King’s research on everyday creativity – framed, specifically, in the language of cultural democracy – has provided organisations and practitioners in the cultural sector with new ways of understanding and communicating their work. What this looks like in practice is illustrated, for example, by the Learning Officer at The Box, Plymouth, who explains that the Towards Cultural Democracy report [1] “has given me a language with which to describe work I was already doing, as well as changing the work I do too … It has changed my work in that I now have a ‘Cultural Democracy Query’ when designing any new project, to consider the ways in which it embraces cultural democracy, or what can be done to change a project if it doesn’t.” [B] By introducing the term ‘everyday creativity’ into policy discussions and bringing the term ‘cultural democracy’ back into public consciousness [C], King’s research has changed the terms of arts policy debate in England. The Co-Founder and Co-Director of Fun Palaces, an annual celebration of community culture, writes that King’s research “broadened and supported a wider discussion around cultural democracy” and that as a result “there is a more live conversation happening across the board.” [D] As ACE’s Director, Strategic Partnerships, states, through its empirical and conceptual contributions – its new accounts of everyday creativity and cultural democracy – “King’s research has helped shape the self-understanding of the cultural sector in England”. [A]

King’s research has helped to reshape the missions and modus operandi of leading national organisations championing creative participation

King’s research has enabled leading non-profit organisations, campaigns and projects that champion creative participation to rethink and restate their missions: to support ‘everyday creativity’, reframing their role within the ‘cultural ecology’ and in some cases to do so with an explicit commitment to ‘cultural democracy’. King’s research has directly influenced the following organisations to develop their missions and practices:

64 Million Artists’ activity in support of everyone’s creativity ranges from running events with small groups in specific workplaces, to initiatives at a city scale, such as Hull City of Culture 2017 and Coventry City of Culture 2021, and supporting thousands of participants online through the 31 days of the January Challenge. King’s research has been central to how the organisation has developed its mission, which is explicitly positioned against the deficit model of cultural participation, and adopts the language of ‘everyday creativity’. As the CEO and Co-Founder explains, “King’s research enabled us to establish our founding mission, to develop the ‘Do, Think, Share’ methodology, and employ the language of everyday creativity. We have since supported thousands of people to engage in everyday creativity in locations across England. For example, in the 2020 January Challenge alone, more than 30,000 people took part. Having this research embedded in the start of the company has ensured that our commitment to rigorous methodology has continued and has impacted our work in communities across the UK.” [E]

Get Creative is “the UK’s biggest ever celebration of creative participation”. During the 2019 Get Creative Festival, 1,200 people took part in 1,700 events. King’s research played a central part in enabling Get Creative to clarify and develop its mission. The Chair of Get Creative explains that King’s research played a very direct role in shaping the development of the campaign. King’s findings led the Get Creative Steering Group to “agre[e] on common language to describe the campaign” and “revie[w] and refin[e] explicit objectives for the campaign”. King’s research led to a clarification of the role of Get Creative’s ‘Champion’ organisations, clarification of the role of education in the campaign and agreement “to actively recruit a more diverse range of Champions, including non-arts organisations” [F]. In these ways, King’s research directly impacted key strategic and operational decisions for Get Creative, which now supports the ‘everyday creativity’ of thousands of people across the country every year.

Voluntary Arts (VA)

VA is the umbrella body representing approximately 63,000 amateur groups in the UK and Ireland, whose activities are participated in by 10 million people each year. VA is by far the largest and most significant organisation of its kind in the UK. Its activities include providing advice and guidance to local authorities, voluntary sector agencies and 198 umbrella organisations (from the National Association of Choirs to the National Association of Street Artists) and providing support to anyone wishing to set up a new voluntary arts project themselves. VA’s Chief Executive explains that King’s research led directly to “changes to our organisational strategy and approach.” This included the rewriting of the organisation’s mission. The Strategic Plan has been updated to state that “Voluntary Arts believes that, rather than starting from a deficit model that suggests not enough people are taking part in a prescribed range of arts and cultural activities, it is important to support the broad engagement of people in their and their communities’ creative lives, and on their own terms.” Operating with this new mission, VA plays a central role in supporting the Get Creative campaign, which in many cases involves participants beyond the groups that VA has traditionally supported. Enabling VA to develop its strategic and organisational approach in these ways, King’s research has thereby enabled it to “achieve some considerable advances in the recognition and valuing of the everyday creativity we represent and support” [F].

AND is London’s leading non-profit agency supporting cultural and creative opportunities for children and young people. In 2019–20, AND worked directly with just over 200 arts and cultural organisations and over 1,000 ‘education establishments’, including schools. The organisation is currently working to support the development of 16 local strategic partnerships to benefit cultural learning in 14 London boroughs, connecting education, cultural, youth sector, public and private sector organisations. AND’s Deputy Chief Executive explains that King’s research prompted “a profoundly different way of understanding our role in respect of supporting children and young people to be creative”. Due to King’s research, the organisation has “reframed how we discuss children and young people in relation to culture, consciously moving away from a ‘deficit’ model”. King’s research has provided “the conceptual tools to move … towards understanding how to nurture and develop their inherent creativity.” In re-writing their business plan, AND “used the language and findings of King’s Cultural Freedom report to re-align where we stand and what we are trying to achieve for the long-term.” [G]

King’s research has impacted AND’s approach to partnership and investment, directly influencing the organisation’s Place Strategy [H]. This strategy includes, for example, the Challenge London programme through which AND is investing £1.1 million in cross-sector partnership (£2.2 million with match-funding), with the aim of all young Londoners being able to develop their creativity and play an active part in the culture and heritage of the city. Challenge London is designed to support “sustainable cultural opportunity” for the young people in the locations involved, with 4,000 children to benefit from this series of partnership investments by 2022. AND’s Senior Partnerships Manager explains that King’s research “was suggested as reading for partnerships applying to Challenge London and specifically in the guidance notes for applications to ‘strand 1’, which was specifically about borough level local cultural education partnership working.” [I]

Directly employing the language of King’s research and citing key empirical findings about how young people’s everyday creativity is enabled, AND’s Place Strategy states: “Our research, Caring for Cultural Freedom with King’s College London suggests that spaces of ‘supported autonomy’ are essential, and we know that spaces for culture are at risk. In all our partnership working, we will support consideration of local ‘free’ and ‘open’ spaces in which young people can create, alongside more tightly programmed opportunities.” [H] As AND’s Deputy Chief Executive explains, “The Cultural Freedom report provides a template for how places can develop collective approaches to supporting cultural freedom, we are building these ideas into our work with local places and have made it part of our partnership ‘methodology’.” [G]

King’s research has helped reshape the core purpose of arts policy in England

Beyond the impact on these specific organisations – each of which plays a far-reaching function in supporting the cultural opportunities of particular constituencies and groups – by developing new understandings of everyday creativity and cultural democracy, King’s research has impacted the overall framing of arts policy in England. As ACE testify, King’s research has played a decisive role in pivoting the mission of ACE itself, which now self-describes as “the national development agency for creativity and culture.” [J] “The idea of everyday creativity has now become a central part of ACE’s Ten-Year strategy, Let’s Create.” [A] Over the next three-year period of funding, ACE plans to invest £1.45 billion of public money from government and an estimated £860 million from the National Lottery “to help England be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued” [J]. As ACE’s Director, Strategic Partnerships, says, “Without the new ways of understanding and talking about everyday creativity that King’s research has made possible, the new Ten-Year strategy is unlikely to have developed such a strong and central emphasis on supporting everyone’s creativity” [A].

King’s research has transformed understanding and awareness of the immersive cinema sector amongst arts funders and the wider entertainment sector. This has led to positive changes for a wide range of beneficiaries, including: Arts Council England (ACE), professionals working within immersive cinema production chains – including film festival staff, distributors and exhibitors – and audiences. By defining immersive cinema and demonstrating how the sector works, Atkinson’s research has directly contributed to the development of a new cinematic culture at the intersection of live and digital; enabling sector growth via increased funding opportunities, steps towards workforce equality, increased attendance and new audience experiences.

Pathways to impact were established via the highly collaborative nature of the research design – including the action research partnerships developed between King’s and leading immersive cinema practitioners and the central role Atkinson’s work played in establishing the Live Cinema Network.

Benefits and changes for arts funders

Due to Atkinson’s research, ACE now funds live and immersive cinema. Atkinson’s research on immersive cinema and its dissemination via high-profile public reports commissioned by ACE (‘Live Cinema in the UK’) and Creative Europe Media (‘Live Cinema in the EU’) – and the Live Cinema Conference bringing together the immersive cinema sector for the first time – led to her being invited to act as an expert consultant on ACE’s ‘From Live-to-Digital’ report, through which ACE came to expand the scope of its funding.

ACE’s Director, Research, explains that “In 2016 I was delighted to be introduced to Professor Atkinson’s work on immersive cinema. In May of that year I attended the major conference she organised at King’s College London. It was only with this event and the research that underpinned it that this group of practitioners began to recognise themselves as the immersive cinema sector for the first time, rather than a loosely associated set of practitioners. Professor Atkinson was subsequently asked to act as a consultant on Arts Council England’s report, ‘From Live-to-Digital’, which has played a key role in ACE expanding the range of activities we fund. Her research directly shaped its key findings and messages.” [A] Drawing on King’s research, in 2016 ACE thereby became the first public funder in the country to provide substantial financial support to live and immersive cinema. It has continued to fund live cinema in the years since, and this is now an established, legitimised area of ACE-funded activity, explicitly named in guidance to applicants as ‘live cinema’ [B]. As ACE’s Director, Research explains, “In 2020 ACE moved towards explicitly including 'Live Cinema' as a named area of funded activity, naming it in our funding application information sheet for the first time. This is a […] significant testimony to the impact that King’s research has had on our work, and on the development of immersive cinema in the UK.” [A]

Benefits and changes for immersive cinema practitioners

The expansion of ACE’s funding remit to include immersive cinema has benefited the wide range of practitioners involved in producing these events. As ACE’s Director, Research, explains, Atkinson’s work “played a direct and central role in establishing the research base that enabled Arts Council England to better understand the immersive cinema sector. We use our investments not only to support individual organisations but also the production chains and ecosystems of which they are a crucial part.” For example, he explains, “Through the 2020 Cultural Recovery Fund – which serves to support arts and culture during the Covid-19 pandemic – ACE invested £977,000 in Secret Cinema. This organisation currently employs 32 permanent staff. But its reach extends far beyond this core group. Each of its productions involves hundreds of professionals from actors to plumbers, set designers, illusionists to videographers, chefs, makeup artists, composers, animators, bartenders, security, dancers, web developers and sound technicians. Moreover, Secret Cinema holds its events in under-used urban spaces which it reanimates through its events, working in collaboration with local authorities and communities in doing so. It employs local residents in productions wherever possible, offers filmmaking courses, back to work schemes, and workshops in schools. Secret Cinema’s enormous success in this country has now led to productions in China and in the USA: making immersive cinema one of the UK’s most notable recent cultural exports.” [A] In enabling ACE to expand its funding remit, Atkinson’s research has benefited this large and diverse range of practitioners and communities.

New understandings of how immersive cinema works, how it can be defined and what its value is have made possible the formation of new communities of practice. Atkinson’s research defined the sector for the first time and, via the Live Cinema conference she organised at King’s in 2016, a new organisation formed on the basis of her research: the Live Cinema Network.

Atkinson is the founder and chair of the Live Cinema Network steering group, which includes the National Theatre, Royal Opera House, Live Cinema UK, Light Surgeons, Event Cinema Association and Rooftop Film Club.The Founder-Director of Live Cinema UK, said that “Without Atkinson’s research, the Live Cinema Network would not have formed, and professionals working in this area would remain a dispersed set of individuals. The research has enabled the definitive articulation of what live cinema is and why it matters to practitioners and to audiences. This has been essential for the development of my own organisation, Live Cinema UK, and for the growth of the sector. By defining immersive cinema, showing how it works and demonstrating its value, Atkinson’s research has led to the development of new communities of creative practice, facilitating stronger advocacy for what we do.” [C]

This greater ability to advocate for immersive cinema to arts funders and within the wider entertainment sector has facilitated significant changes in industry policy and practice, such as immersive cinema’s identification by Filmbankmedia as “a distinctive category of film exhibition” [D] for the purposes of issuing exhibition licenses, ensuring that it is no longer a fringe activity and is instead given official recognition within industry monitoring and licensing processes.

By supporting the development of immersive cinema as a coherent sector rather than a loose set of unaffiliated practitioners and by demonstrating gender inequalities within the workforce, Atkinson’s research has raised awareness of gender inequality in virtual reality and related careers [E,F], “enabling advocacy for greater gender equality within immersive cinema employment practices” [C].

Atkinson brought together 20 virtual reality professionals to discuss her research findings, who collectively established a ‘vision’ to improve employment practices to diversify workforces. Stakeholders included BAME in Games and the BBC. The ‘Vision for Women and Virtual Reality’ (VWVR) was formally launched at two tech conferences: the New Festival, Stuttgart, and the Augmented World Expo, Munich. The VWVR has been shared widely at industry conferences and expos, including a virtual reality event held by Google for International Women’s Day, attended by 200 brands and social media influencers. The CEO of Limina Immersive said that “the VWVR and the research underpinning it has raised awareness of gender disparity within the sector, and is already leading to positive changes in employment practices” [G]. The Knowledge Transfer Network Manager of Immerse UK added that Atkinson’s research, and the VWVR it enabled, “increased our collective ability to advocate for improved employee support practices, in order to diversify workforces in immersive cinema. It has provided us with the knowledge and the language to make change happen.” [H]

Benefits and changes for audiences

By supporting and expanding immersive cinema practice in the UK and internationally, King’s research has not only benefited immersive cinema practitioners but has “hugely benefitted audiences” [I] too. Festivals have expanded their programming due to Atkinson’s research, such as the Motovun festival in Croatia, whose director explains, “Drawing directly upon Professor Atkinson’s research we produced our biggest live cinema event TUVALU LIVE, which put our production abilities on a higher level and gave our audiences the chance for a very new experience – not only watching the film with the live soundtrack, but taking part in creating live film music themselves. Following that project we … have made immersive cinema a regular part of Motovun Film Festival” [I].

Atkinson’s research also enabled new approaches to programming at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, the largest and most influential festival of its kind in the UK. As the CEO of Live Cinema UK explains, “Atkinson’s research made possible the Live Cinema Summit at the Sheff Doc Fest in 2018: leading the festival to programme immersive cinema and making it possible for hundreds of festival audience members to experience this kind of theatrical cinematic performance for the first time.” [C]

The greatest benefits to audiences from Atkinson’s research have been achieved via the expansion of ACE’s funding remit: now investing in production companies such as Secret Cinema and in organisations supporting the immersive cinema sector as a whole – in particular, Live Cinema UK. As ACE’s Director, Research, explains, “Since funding the organisation for the first time in 2016, ACE has increased its investment year-on-year, in recognition of the reach and significance of Live Cinema UK’s work in supporting this emerging sector. It is the country’s leading organisation dedicated to producing, promoting and researching live cinema events, reaching over 400,000 live audience members, and collaborating with over 60 partners across more than 10 countries.” [A]

Atkinson’s research has benefited thousands of audiences in the UK and internationally. As ACE’s Director, Research, puts it, “All of this activity undertaken both within single organisations and the networks they support would not take place without the investment of Arts Council England – made possible by the development in our funding and commissioning policies since 2016. By enabling ACE to make this pivot in its funding priorities, over the past four years Professor Atkinson’s work has directly benefitted a large number of professionals and communities, as well as thousands of audience members – and future audiences in the years to come.” [A]

The four areas of King’s research described above are interlinked in their theory-meets-practice facilitation of massive and sustainable global openings of cultural heritage material to new audiences in diverse global settings. King’s research has changed practices of building sustainable and accessible digital collections worldwide, benefiting heritage practitioners and the many different publics they serve. It has done so through developing lasting collaborations with museum professionals and policy makers in Europe, North America and sub-Saharan Africa. These impacts on digital collection practice have ensured the future of priceless (and, in some cases, endangered) collections and have radically expanded the range of people who can enjoy and make unrestricted use of them. King’s research has also strengthened practitioners’ abilities to systematically and comprehensively measure the benefits of accessible digital collections to their communities. This, in turn, further advances the case for continuing the wider OpenGLAM agenda, which King’s research has long pioneered.

King’s research has directly contributed to massive growth in openly accessible and re-usable collections of digitised arts and cultural heritage material in the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector

Tanner’s research on the costs of managing digital assets has influenced a shift in the sector towards open access of collections of artworks and artefacts. For example, in 2017, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art made all images of public domain works in its collection openly available under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence. This allows anyone to freely build upon, enhance and reuse these digital assets for any purpose without restriction under copyright or database law. The Project Lead of the initiative confirms King’s direct impact on the “transformative effort” of opening up 400,000 images: “[Tanner] generously contributed to change the course of art history and made possible an even more accessible panhuman experience of art across culture, space and time as embodied in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection” [A]. Further, the research and continuing collaboration was instrumental in facilitating the National Archives and National Library of Sweden’s move to provide open access to their newspaper collection with over 1,200 titles (some 3 million pages) made freely accessible since 2019 [A].

In February 2020, the Smithsonian released 3 million 2D and 3D images and directly attributed the influence of King’s research on their decision to do so and the process of achieving this. Noting challenges relating to the size of their institution, the Director of the Smithsonian’s Digitization Office states that “the move toward open access collections was a monumental undertaking that involved working through bureaucratic, cultural, and infrastructure barriers. Our ability to do so can be credited, in no small measure, to the work that Professor Tanner has done in this field for well over a decade” [A]. The research evidence that informed and spurred the Smithsonian’s open access initiative relates to revenue generation from in-house rights and the intangible value of open access collections, namely increased goodwill and trust from the public [A].

This research also led to further collaborations with the US National Gallery of Art (NGA), the development of their digital strategy, the instigation of an Innovation Lab and moves to full CC0 licences for their collections [B]. Digital assets that are made available on CC0 licences by museums and galleries spread even further into the public domain by virtue of their new accessibility to other online platforms that have greater reach than the original institutions’ collections. Events of 2020 have highlighted the importance of the public digital accessibility of cultural material. Between March and November 2020 (through the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic), the 50 most viewed NGA images received a total of 39,967 views on the institution’s website. However, the same images – which the NGA could now donate to Wikimedia – received over 39 million views on those platforms [B]. Were it not for the impact of King’s research on the NGA’s decision to move to CC0 licences, this massive and unrestricted public access to cultural heritage material would not have been possible.

King’s research on techniques and best practices of digital archiving has been applied globally by the researchers to preserve internationally-important and endangered cultural heritage and historical collections

The reputation of King’s research on globally transferable models of digital archiving infrastructure prompted Sudanese stakeholders to reach out to King’s to provide support to their National Cultural Heritage Digitization Team. Prompted by the 2013 destruction of libraries and manuscripts in Mali by Jihadist militants, the Sudanese Ministry of Information, the Sudanese Association for the Archiving of Knowledge, along with museums, libraries and archives throughout the country, recognised the urgent need to preserve endangered cultural material. King’s Sudan Memory project (led by Deegan) played a central role in this endeavour, creating a collaborative infrastructure to integrate resources and facilitate use. King’s research on the economic, legal and political factors that influence the sustainability of digital archiving projects has enabled this work to continue through the difficult conditions of the revolution and accompanying instability in 2019.

King’s Sudan Memory project has resulted in the digitisation of 100,000 endangered cultural artefacts from 10 institutions [C] and has fulfilled Sudanese stakeholders’ explicit objectives to safeguard the full wealth of Sudan’s cultural heritage for both local and global audiences. The Country Director of the British Council in Sudan states that “the main impact has been the realisation in Sudan ministries, press and academic circles that the Sudanese cultural material can, and is being, captured and preserved for future generations. Without [Sudan Memory], many priceless Sudanese cultural records and artefacts would be forever lost to the ravages of the desert storms, or to the fading memories of those who had no investment or professional expertise to capture and preserve them” [C]. The work has imparted new skills and technical capacity to Sudanese partner institutions to sustain the preservation agenda. 148 Sudanese colleagues were trained in digital skills to preserve and document cultural heritage. The Sudanese Association for Archiving Knowledge [C] stated that “one of the key successes of the project was building consensus and a national community; and that training young people and having them work with older people who have cultural knowledge has empowered them both”.

Elsewhere in Africa, King’s researchers (Hedges) have applied their work on transferable knowledge architectures and infrastructure to undertake projects to digitally archive collections of great contemporary and historical importance, for instance archives relating to Rwanda’s post-genocide Gacaca Courts. The Executive Director of Aegis Trust (with which King’s collaborated) states that “the application of King’s research in this context has facilitated the creation of [an archive which] digitally safeguards approximately 48 million records/digital assets relating to the Gacaca Courts. The records are a primary and reliable source of information about the Genocide, which was otherwise at severe risk of being lost, and is key for the fight against Genocide denial and revisionism, and for reconciliation among the people of Rwanda” [C].

King’s research underpins the work of King’s Digital Lab: an exemplary hub for research software engineering that has directly informed the design of next-generation infrastructure for humanities labs and arts and cultural heritage sectors around the world

133 websites hosted by KDL gained a total of almost 243 million hits between August 2013 and September 2020. Of those sites, 14 together contain 1,485,229 digital assets [D]. The ability to build and manage sustainable infrastructure for digital collections on this huge scale has made King’s an international point of reference. The Director of The Sussex Humanities Lab notes that KDL has “created an exemplar of best practice, for how we collectively support inherited web resources” [D].

Ensuring that national memory institutions can undertake their traditional functions in a new digital environment is a challenge that KDL’s development of a Research Software Engineering (RSE) model has successfully responded to. Developed through King’s research, this is a holistic model that has enabled university-based RSE teams to deliver public impact and provides a level of operational maturity that makes collaboration with community organisations and commercial technology partners more effective. Navigating relationships and knowledge transfer between the private sector, the public sector and HE, “KDL has brought all these stakeholders onto the same page, in a way that no other centre has been able to do” [D]. The RSE model has influenced university and cultural heritage teams globally, informing the design of next-generation infrastructure for the Sussex Humanities Lab, the Centre for Digital History Aarhus, Rice University, Jordan’s cultural heritage sector and Australia’s arts and humanities sector [D]. Aspects of the RSE model have also influenced the Royal Archives and the Bodleian Library [D].

King’s research has enabled cultural heritage practitioners to measure the social, cultural and economic benefits of the resources they make available to their communities

The Balanced Value Impact Model (BVIM) has been applied by cultural heritage practitioners all over the world as a mechanism to demonstrate to decision-makers the value of their digital resources and collections. This has led to better management of content, more closely aligned to the needs of communities served. The impact of the BVIM on international ‘impact practice’ is evidenced through its extensive and wide-ranging use across the cultural heritage sector. Implementations or adaptations of the BVIM include: The Wellcome Library digitisation programme; The People’s Collection Wales with the National Museum Wales; Nectar Virtual Laboratories; and Jisc’s training and guidance on ‘making digital collections easier to discover’ [E].

A significant application of King’s BVIM is in the work of Europeana, the foundation tasked by the European Commission to develop a digital cultural heritage platform. Europeana provides access to over 58 million digital objects from more than 3,500 institutions. Its Senior Policy Advisor states that “our approach to collecting and analysing the [impact-related] data rested heavily on using five of the BVI Model’s value drivers” [F]. The Europeana Impact Playbook (2017) is the culmination of this strategy and the Senior Policy Advisor notes that the BVIM “lies at the heart of the Playbook and has helped us frame and debate each step we have taken” [F]. The Impact Playbook has been downloaded over 2,900 times by cultural heritage professionals [F] and is now used across Europe in institutions such as the Rijksmuseum and Denmark’s State Museum for Art (SMK). A Curator and Senior Advisor at SMK states that Tanner’s research “has been instrumental in introducing a strategic awareness of the importance of impact assessment in all aspects of the organisation” [F].

SMK has tested the Impact Playbook in its assessment of the benefits of activities it runs with open access cultural materials. For example, a 2018 ‘Taboo’ workshop allowed young people to create visual expressions of emotions related to mental/physical disorders through discussing, clipping and remixing artworks from the Museum’s collection. The Impact Playbook assessment allowed the Museum to increase their “understanding of how playful participation and engaging creative practices can help bring art and museums at eye level with young people, making them feel empowered to explore and learn about different cultures and ways of life.” [F] This demonstrates how King’s research has enabled institutions to evidence the benefits of opening public access to digital collections.

** Overall,** King’s strengthening of practitioners’ capacity to evidence the value of digital collections for their communities allows them to further advance the case for making even more cultural heritage material freely available digitally under CC0 licences. This feeds back into the original research agenda of OpenGLAM promotion of massive and sustainable digital openings and the global preservation of invaluable cultural heritage and historical assets.