Do you want to be part of a national research project exploring the impacts of COVID-19 on the cultural industries across the UK?

Update: This open call is now closed.

By taking part you will be lending your story, your experience and your vision to research that will inform those directly responsible for making cultural policy across the UK.

We’re developing a series of case studies exploring the impacts in different sectors and across the four nations of the UK. We are already in touch with a number of festivals in Scotland and screen-based organisations in Wales, so in particular we are keen to hear from:

1. Theatre organisations based in England that are diverse-led, and/or making work for diverse audiences or working with diverse participant groups (Black, Asian and ethnically diverse, disabled, LGBTQ+).
2. Theatre producing or touring organisations or venues of any size working in or embedded in rural areas in England.
3. Independent or volunteer-led museums or heritage sites of any size based in the north east or north west of England.
4. Galleries operating in small town or rural areas in the north east or north west of England.
5. Leaders of arts and cultural organisations working or embedded in rural areas of Northern Ireland.
6. Theatre, performing arts, museum or gallery-based organisations in England that applied for but did not receive support from the Cultural Recovery Fund – or that were not eligible to apply for this support

What will be involved?
We would like to tell the story of individual or organisational experience of COVID-19 so far and over the next 12 months. We will be developing this through a mixture of interviews and documentary analysis. Your story will help us make sense of some of the other data being collected in this project and elsewhere.

We are sensitive to the pressures you face with resources and capacity and will be led by you in determining your level of involvement. Depending on the size of your organisation, this might include a number of online interviews with different people, including a director or someone at a similar level. We may also ask you to share some key strategic documents with us. Your involvement will be anonymous and kept confidential, unless explicitly agreed otherwise.

Why are we making this call?
To help us to identify immediate and long-term implications for cultural policy and practice, we want the case studies to explore impacts for different types of cultural and creative practice, visions, and economic models, and across the ethnic, geographical, socio-economic and demographic diversity of arts and cultural producers and their audiences.

We already have the involvement of a wide range of practitioners and organisations in this study, but we want to include more.

What is the time-frame for this?
We want to start working with you as soon as possible, so we are asking for you to contact us before 14 December 2020.

How do I get involved?
Please complete this quick online form expressing your interest. If you’d like to know more or have any questions about the project, please contact: ccv@leeds.ac.uk

While we can’t guarantee to include everyone in our case studies, we will be creating specific opportunities in the next year for everyone to comment on and further contribute to the findings of this study as they are released.

The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of UKRI’s Covid-19 funding.