There was a public launch of the RCCIL database on 11th May 2010 at City University London, which included a keynote address given by Professor Andy Pratt (King’s College London), together with a demonstration of the RCCIL website. Andy gave a talk entitled ‘Constructing an evidence base for research and governance of the cultural and creative industries: reflections on the last decade’.
‘Researching Cultural and Creative Industries’ (RCCIL) is a web-based database which contains summaries of pieces of research, together with bibliographical details and relevant links. The research can be browsed by theme, keyword, cultural/creative sector or London borough. The database is publicly accessible and free, and users are also provided with the means to add entries on their own research. RCCIL seeks to ensure that research on London’s cultural and creative fields conducted over the last decade is more accessible to policy-makers, researchers, students, practitioners, and service-providers working in the field.
Students will find this a particularly useful resource.
RCCIL offers an information platform to disseminate research and keep up-to-date with new publications. This will be the first database of its kind in London, and is expected to become a valuable tool for fostering the use of academic research in the policy-making process. The project is funded by the HEFCE’s Innovation Fund and it builds upon the model developed for the ‘Researching Asylum in London’ (RAL) project. RCCIL is housed at the Department of Cultural Policy and Management, City University London.
Undoubtedly, the cultural and creative industries have become buzzwords in policy agendas and academic research over the last decade. With the publication of the Creative Industries Mapping Documents (1998, 2001), which attempted to measure the economic contribution of these industries to the United Kingdom, the Department for Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS) prompted the proliferation of research on the creative economy.
The abundance of research in the area, however, has not been accompanied by a sufficient means to compile and organise this information into a single repository. The existence of ambiguity in the ways these industries are defined conceptually and measured empirically is regularly acknowledged. There is also a need for improving our understanding of the internal and external dynamics of these industries, and developing comparability and measurement tools. Concentrating this vast quantity of research in one place will avoid duplication and identify research gaps.
It is with this aim that this new independent database of research on the cultural and creative industries in London has been developed by the Centre for Research on London (CRL).
A video recording of the event is now available online. You can also see the slides from Professor Andy Pratt’s presentation (PDF).The RCCIL research database is already live and can be accessed at www.rccil.org.uk
Culture Media and Creative Industries @ Kings 