Innovation Studio Pilot Report

Over the course of the pilot, Innovation Studio delivered three funding rounds, awarding a total of £66,000 to 32 projects.

Originally conceived as themed challenges lasting four months each, the first round was shaped by the Green Recovery Challenge, putting a focus on sustainability, community-building, and addressing existing challenges within the creative industries.

Specific strands enabled artists to collaborate with community organisations via the Civic Fund, develop early-stage ideas via the Research & Development Fund, and conduct early-stage business development via the Business Ideas Fund.

However, we soon learned that this structure was too restrictive and did not fully support the innovation we hoped to unlock within RCS.

Hence, for the second and third funding rounds, we adopted a simpler, open funding model with two tiers of up to £1,000 for R&D and up to £4,000 for early-stage projects.

A key ambition of the pilot was to develop a support network for everyone who engaged with Innovation Studio: The Community of Practice.

Bringing together a diverse group of staff, students, and alumni, the Community of Practice provided a space for members to learn about and connect through their explorations of innovation.

We hosted three roundtable meetings where funded practitioners shared project updates and areas of interest. These sessions served as a useful forum for reflection, questions, and discussion of common themes and challenges.

For us, the roundtables were a much richer way of charting innovation and gathering insights that offered a valuable alternative to written reports.

The Community of Practice also encouraged members to try new things, tap into the group's 'hive mind' for problem-solving, and share resources.

Innovation Studio collaborated with Dr Michael Pierre Johnson, Creative Economy Leadership Fellow at The Glasgow School of Art, to undertake action research which enabled funding recipients to articulate and develop innovation within their projects.

Michael specialises in design practices that visualise the value of creative and cultural work and has developed a unique method to map growth potential.

He worked with 10 awardees to create narrative and network maps that helped define the 'story of value' behind their projects and identify opportunities for expanding their networks, knowledge, value, and audiences.

Workshops took place in the early stages of each project, supported reflection and helped participants strategically plan their next steps.

The collaboration has also strengthened our team's capacity, allowing us to integrate aspects of Michael's method into the next phase of Innovation Studio.

During the pilot, we identified a need among members of staff for dedicated time and space to focus on innovation. Busy teaching schedules often make it difficult for staff to develop new areas within their practice and introduce more innovative ways of working to their students.

In January 2024, we took 10 members of staff to Cove Park for a three-day mini-residency. Participants were chosen via blind selection and RCS ensured their usual work was covered to prevent a backlog upon return.

Each participant had a personal workspace and access to studio space. The residency combined solo work with optional group activities, allowing participants to decide how best to use their time and which aspects of their practice to focus on.

Over the three days, our Innovators in Residence led workshops, facilitated reflection sessions, and curated a programme of 10-minute micro-talks from artists around the world.

Springboard was an R&D opportunity for students and recent graduates to develop and experiment with an idea for a new piece of performance work.

The seven projects selected received two days of rehearsal space, a small honorarium and the opportunity to perform their work in progress in front of an audience.

Participants were encouraged to see this as a chance to take a risk and try something out without worrying about devising a fully finished performance. There were no restrictions on what the idea could be, with projects ranging from performance experiments, live music and new writing to theatre and spoken word.

Springboard culminated in a scratch night in the Jack Bruce Space on 22 February 2023.

At the event, audience members were given a booklet containing three questions about each work to elicit specific feedback. After each performance, the audience had five minutes to write down their thoughts and comments, which were later shared with the performers.