Pandemic & Beyond
Client(s)
University of Exeter
Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health
Policy@Exeter
Arts & Humanities Research Council
Project type
Policy Design
Delivery Year
2022
Culture Commons provided extensive policy and advocacy services to the University of Exeter on a flagship Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) led programme involving 77 research teams investigating the impacts of Covid-19 from an arts, humanities and social sciences perspective.
'Pandemic & Beyond' created a hub for researchers user groups, journalists and policymakers to meet, find out about research that is relevant to them, and work together to share expertise and resources.
Culture Commons provided a comprehensive wraparound service to the core team throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring emerging findings from the research was communicated to the right decision makers, at the right time.
To do this, we co-convened a series of high-level policy webinars and roundtables, bringing UK Government representatives, senior parliamentarians, officials across the Cabinet Office, No. 10, Department for Health and Social Care and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to the table.
We're also supported a team of over 300 individual researchers to develop resources for a digital policy hub where researchers and policymakers could meet, find out about each of the studies, access succinct policy briefings, and work together to share expertise and resources.
“Culture Commons have had a truly transformative impact on our project. They radically shifted the ways we engage with policymakers in Westminster, devolved governments and regional leaders through their ready-made networks.”
Project background
The research presented on the hub examined several urgent problems that were created or exacerbated by the pandemic. The extensive number of research teams involved contributed in important ways to understanding the effects of the pandemic and finding solutions across four broad areas, including:
1. Decision-making in a time of crisis: 14 research teams scrutinised legislation and guidance issued during the pandemic and advised policymakers on ethical considerations and questions of human rights in the context of governance and decision-making during the pandemic. They grappled with thorny questions of rights and responsibilities and considered how values-based frameworks might underpin developing scientific understanding to offer a more nuanced approach to balancing risk and benefit.
2. Creative industries: 20 research teams investigated how the creative industries continue to operate throughout the pandemic and as we emerged from it. They examined how performances have shifted to virtual or outdoor settings and thereby reached new audiences, ever more accessibly. They have worked with creative industry professionals affected by Covid-19 to understand how to build back better, more resilient, inclusive and sustainable industry structures.
3. Arts, health and wellbeing: 17 research teams explored how arts and creative practitioners and cultural and community organisations created connection through arts and nature-based activities, built resilience and forged pathways to improving mental and physical health and wellbeing for individuals and communities during the pandemic.
4. Communication, information and experience: 26 research teams examined the lived experience of the pandemic, with particular reference to how the pandemic has felt like a whirlwind of often deeply confusing and contested information. Artists, designers, and linguists involved in these projects found design solutions and devised better ways of communicating Public Health messages so as to reach the communities that have been most severely affected by the pandemic.
“The input of Culture Commons was transformative for the project, [they] were able to let projects within the portfolio that had no pre-existing policy contacts and who were geographically beyond the reach of policy makers in Westminster and devolved governments access ready-made networks, which the consultants expanded to create new connections with the right decision-makers.”
You can read the independent project impact report here.
‘Pandemic and Beyond’ was hosted by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter and embedded in the College of Humanities, with team members from Humanities (Prof Pascale Aebischer, Dr Benedict Morrison, Dr Karen Gray, Dr Eleanor O’Keeffe), the Medical School (Prof Victoria Tischler), the Business School (Prof Sarah Hartley), and Social Sciences and International Studies (Prof Des Fitzgerald). It is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, with additional funding by Policy@Exeter (Open Innovation Platform and Policy Support Fund).