FuseBox24 is a collaborative project to support innovators and early-stage start-up businesses based at the FuseBox in Brighton. Funding for the project comes in part from the EU’s Interreg programme, ReCreate, which is focused on urban regeneration through the creative industries in nine areas across France and the UK. It also comes in part through the Arts and Humanities Research Council who have funded me, Jim Byford as the FuseBox Researcher-in-Residence, through The FuseBox Knowledge Exchange Project.

This blog category, Adventures and Wisdom, serves as a commentary on The FuseBox Knowledge Exchange Project. This year long action research project  has within its scope the design, delivery and evaluation of the FuseBox24 programme. Additionally it seeks to understand the relationship between the programme and the academic community and to this end as Researcher-in-Residence I am employed by the University of Brighton as a Research Fellow with mentoring support from the Principal Investigator on the project, Professor Gillian Youngs who is Professor of Digital Economy within the Faculty of Arts.

The project outline is as follows:

This project is focused on the development of and research on a new start-up support programme for innovators at Wired Sussex.

The work follows on from the Brighton Fuse project’s findings on arts, humanities and design knowledge and expertise as major drivers in businesses in the Brighton creative and digital cluster.

The Fusebox Knowledge Exchange project aims to connect academic approaches to learning with entrepreneurial business strategies aimed at creating value.

The research represents a practical and applied way of exploring innovation, how it happens, and where academic expertise and insights can be instrumental in creating business value.

The project’s knowledge exchange approach also recognizes the importance of the cross-flow of insights from the new creative and digital business sector into the academy.

This can enhance arts and humanities researchers’ awareness of the roles of their work in economy and society and different forms of creativity aimed at generating value within them.

As well as offering insights for other incubator and related contexts, the project also aims to inform curriculum developments in areas such as informal, flexible and continuous learning.

These orientations and practices from the entrepreneurial work and culture of the Fusebox enabled by the new economy are strong elements that can feed back into arts and humanities.

During the course of the year long research project which commenced in February 2014, I will be posting on the design, delivery and engagement with academic debates and ultimately on the evaluation of the programme.