WHAT IS CREATe?

CREATe is the Centre for Regulation of the Creative Economy, anchored in intellectual property, competition, information and technology law. Following a major infrastructure award from the AHRC in March 2024, our research agenda is currently structured around seven themes at the intersection of Creativity, Technology and Markets. They include (1) Dealing with Creators, (2) Legal History and Cultural Memory, (3) The Law of Innovation, (4) Automation, Decentralisation and Platforms, (5) Access to Knowledge, (6) The Political Economy of Digital Regulation, and (7) Digital Technologies and Humanism. Our seven research themes are illustrated in this poster exhibition.

The name CREATe is an acronym for Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise and Technology. We were established in 2012 as the result of a competition for a national centre for “copyright and new business models in the creative economy”. As the only UK research centre funded jointly by AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council), we conceived and delivered an interdisciplinary research programme at the intersection of law, technology, social sciences and humanities.

In 2017, we received follow-on funding from the AHRC. In 2018 and 2020, we won two large grants as part of the AHRC Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre (PEC) and the H2020 project “reCreating Europe: Rethinking digital copyright law for a culturally diverse, accessible, creative Europe”. We are now a University of Glasgow research centre hosted by the School of Law  (a global top 50 law school). We provide resources and new research of national and international significance as part of the University’s Advanced Research Centre (ARC).

Challenge-led research is supported by resource pages and tagged with disciplinary icons. This approach allows new priorities to emerge organically.

Our work is guided by three principles.

Openness

In a contested policy environment with limited evidence, synthesizing knowledge from different fields requires an open approach. CREATe has demonstrated that it is possible to involve users in research design at all stages, and in the development of dynamic, open access resources. Our resources receive 100,000s of visitors per year from over 160 countries.

Interdisciplinarity

The norms governing the information space are not a legal problem. Research questions and policy issues cannot be solved from one disciplinary perspective. CREATe projects typically involve collaboration. We take empirical, historical, computational, cultural, sociological or economic approaches seriously. Within law, we are anchored in the subject areas of intellectual property, information and competition law.

Agility with a long view

CREATe has the ambition to contribute to the big questions of our time. In a fast moving technological environment, sustained intervention needs to take the long view. We try to be responsive but not fast. Our policy contributions include EU and UK copyright policy, platform regulation and the wider questions of innovation, creative economy and the digital public sphere.