GW4 seed funding awarded to collaborative research projects exploring creativity in our society, culture and economy
Four new research projects exploring the place and potential of creativity in our society, culture and economy have been awarded GW4 seed funding. The ideas underlying the projects were developed during this year’s GW4 Crucible programme, for which the theme was: ‘Creative Societies and Cultures, Cultural and Public Good?’
GW4 Crucible is a leadership development programme for early career researchers and future research leaders. It provides them with the opportunity to reflect on new interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to their research and its impact.
Participants engage with peers from different disciplines across the GW4 Alliance of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, and Exeter, attending a series of workshops and residential labs. The programme aims to promote researchers’ visibility, supporting their career development and helping to nurture new ideas and projects which will develop real-world responses to societal and global challenges.
GW4 Crucible encourages participants to apply for seed funding for collaborative projects that have emerged from ideas generated by attending the programme. With awards of up to £5K available, GW4 aims to support bold and creative proposals that consider global challenges and how they might be tackled through innovative interdisciplinary action.
This year’s collaborative projects come from diverse perspectives to think about the changing and challenging nature of our society and culture in the digital age. They take inspiration from the huge potential creativity has in shaping meaningful, thoughtful interaction, supporting our wellbeing and collective sociocultural growth.
In total, GW4 awarded over £16K to the following projects:
PlayData: Multi-Sensory Digital Play for All Ages
Led by Dr Danielle House (University of Bristol), this project will explore how digital experiences can become collective, connective, multi-sensory, and embodied. Moving beyond digital interactions which rely on screen-based visual and textual content, the research team will collaborate on how data might be touched, moved with, and physically felt. The project aims to rethink how people of all ages can collectively engage with digital information in more meaningful, active, and interactive ways.
Led by Dr Alyssa Alcorn (University of Bristol), this project uses universities as sites to investigate how play currently operates, and how it could potentially operate, within multilayered organisations. This stems from a recognition that play is a powerful tool for thinking differently, fostering collaboration, sparking joy, and supporting wellbeing. The project group includes researchers with backgrounds in psychology, media, culture, social sciences, humanities and public health: they aim to develop a prototype vocabulary and conceptual framework for understanding play-at-work.
Led by Dr Harriet Hunt (University of Exeter), this project explores how folkloric community practices can be harnessed as tools for interpretation and sensemaking. How might they be used to help us examine our relationships to the past, imagine alternative futures, embrace uncertainty? How can they help us to recognise and resist reductive and politicised ways of framing information which proliferate in our age of information overload?
Led by Dr Karen Gray (University of Bristol), this project aims to explore the potential of ‘third places’ to support connection and rest experience when working remotely. The project will investigate how nature-based third spaces and places might disrupt remote work routines and offer a meaningful counterbalance to occupational demands. The group aim to characterise the components of an intervention that supports productive mental rest.
GW4 seed funding is intended to provide a stepping stone for large-scale collaborations and these projects all endeavour to deliver real-world impact with the aim of becoming larger collaborative research projects in the future. The current GW4 Crucible 2025 programme runs until March 2026.
