The research team worked in partnership with Creative Fuse North East (CFNE) to evaluate the project.

• Project Dates: Start date: Sep 2017 End date: Mar 2019
• Project Leader: Jill Clark
• Staff: Ulrike Thomas
• Sponsors: CFNE

The evaluation comprised of in-depth case studies of specific features of the project alongside in-depth interviews with key project staff. Case study as a method is very versatile, as it uses many methods to gather information, from analysis of key documents, observation of projects in action, network mapping activities, interviews to testing.

Case studies identified included:

• CAKE programme. Each themed CAKE (Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange) event has expert speakers delivering short presentations that explore opportunities and innovation challenges from their sector. The events generate debate, explorative discussion and stimulate new innovative ideas by looking at each event’s theme from a variety of different perspectives. The programme has been running for a year and will continue to run throughout the evaluation period. This will enable us to explore the impact and ‘reach’ of these events both retrospectively and prospectively. We anticipate conducting mapping activities alongside qualitative interviews to explore networks, connections, perceived intentions and actions.
• Innovative Pilot projects. Phase 2 of the project began in the summer of 2017 with all five Universities collaborating with the CD&IT business community, a range of sector support organisations and National organisations supporting the sector. This collaboration will develop a range of innovation pilots, action research projects and CPD activities for the businesses, leveraging the key assets, strengths and knowledge of the Universities to stimulate new collaborations across the sector and the region’s industries. The evaluation will focus on 3 of these innovation pilot projects as case studies. Sampling would be based on discussions with the CFNE team and would hope to maximise variation across the project. It would be ideal for us to have early sight (if possible) of the proposals to aid the sampling process. The case studies will continue into Phase 3 the project (2018) and will contribute to the analysis of outputs of the pilot projects delivered in Phase 2. A key feature of the case studies will be to identify best practice, and perceived effectiveness and impact.

Contact

For further information contact:
Jill Clark, Principal Investigator.
Email: Jill.Clark@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: 0191 208 5637