Investigating the ‘productive’ knowledge of practices in the creative economy (at individual and organisational level) is a valid starting point for critical enquiry, although it may require a shift in mind-set about what constitutes ‘knowledge’, where it arises, and how we make sense of it.

This symposium session explored how partnerships between HE and Cultural Sector partners have the potential to transform the ‘tacit’, ‘productive’ knowledge of the creative economy into something more ‘explicit’.

Two-minute case study: Sage Gateshead has been delivering two undergraduate music degrees in partnership with University of Sunderland since 2009. The research focus of this approach has facilitated knowledge development in a number of ways: students’ critical understanding of cultural sector practices; practitioners’ development as practitioner-researchers; articulation of organisational purpose in more critical terms; contribution to academic discourse.

Session hosts: Dr. Dave Camlin, Head of Higher Education & Research and Wendy Smith, Director of Learning and Participation, Sage Gateshead.

The discussion revealed questions to do with how HEI’s can ‘include’ Cultural Organisations more in collaborative research – not just as sites for research, but as sites of research i.e. recognise more fully the practices of the cultural sector in the North as an invaluable element in the development of knowledge.

There was a feeling that Culture Forum North could usefully: