Philip Schlesinger, Professor in Cultural Policy at the University of Glasgow, and Deputy Director of CREATe, reflects on a recent workshop held at the University of Glasgow.
I convened The Lateral Seminar, a one-day workshop, which took place on 16 March 2015, to push forward new thinking on CREATe’s socio-cultural research and to look for potential points of integration of research conducted to date.
CREATe understands law, and in particular copyright law, to be a key condition for cultural production. Current far-reaching change in the digital environment requires us to develop a new framework that permits a more integrated approach to CREATe’s diverse portfolio of work. That’s why we engaged in some lateral thinking.
Contributors on the day were Raymond Boyle (Glasgow), Martin Kretschmer (Glasgow), Angela McRobbie (Goldsmiths), Keith Negus (Goldsmiths), Burkhard Schafer (Edinburgh), John Street (UEA) and Robin Williams (Edinburgh).
Stimulated by short talks given by each of the participants, several emergent themes were discussed. In essence, the workshop’s red thread of argument went like this: it is now essential to regroup work deriving from CREATe’s first two years, irrespective of where it has been situated in the original thematic set-up; it is, furthermore, important to inform continuing work as far as possible with a new framework that effects more integration and therefore adds value to what has been done; and finally, there are topics that we can identify now that might inform the next phase of CREATe’s work.