India-UK Creative Cultures

Project duration: 2022–2026
Principle investigators: Professor Navtej Purewal (UAL) and Dr. Eleanor Newbigin (SOAS)
Project coordinator: Tajender Sagoo
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Project reference: AH/X004821/1 and AH/X004821/2
Partnerships: SOAS University London

The AHRC India Fellowship analysed how the changing international research environment affects India-UK collaboration. The project examined factors such as funding, academic freedom, national economic agendas, cultural policy and international geopolitics that are impacting creative and cultural research between UK and Indian teams. The work involved researchers, practitioners, universities and funding bodies.

Project context

The Fellowship’s work followed the growing ascendance of the Cultural and Creative Industries policy agenda, in the UK, India and more globally.

A detailed analysis of the current moment and how we got here was provided by the India Fellowship team. This happened at a critical juncture in UK-India relations amidst uncertainties around the future of arts and humanities funding.

The India Fellowship presented an approach to cultural heritage and the creative industries research. It drew on the experience and insights of the rich legacy of arts and humanities research in and on India. Past research projects and networks show what is essential for the creation of sustainable, innovative research environments and cultures:

• fore fronting inclusive, equitable and ethical research practices
• strategies grounded in and shaped by community and society-led questions.

Research aims

The India Fellowship considered how to move towards the goal of enabling and supporting more ethical and equitable research, by asking:

• How can power imbalances be meaningfully addressed through equitable research across Global South and Global North contexts?
• What is required to create research environments accessible and open to a diversity of researchers, practitioners, cultural workers, creatives and curators?
• How can contextual awareness be embedded in research to ensure that local knowledge production and structural inequalities are recognised?

Researchers, creative practitioners and institutions alike will benefit from our Fellowship’s report when creating their funding design and research practice. It offers tools to critically assess how to plan and undertake research focusing on equity, academic freedom and artistic integrity.

Reflecting back on the AHRC’s 2022-2025 strategy plan, the report outlines possible steps to ensure that cultural and creative research prioritises long-term societal benefits despite an increasingly close alignment of cultural policy with economic metrics and priorities. It is a resource for taking stock and a framework for thinking forward.

The Cultural Industries and Cultural Heritage programme and cohort

The India-UK Research into Cultural Heritage and Creative Industries research programme commenced in 2025. Explore the 7 projects funded under this programme comprising the cohort.

Relationship to previous research

India-UK Creative Cultures project scales up the insights established during the AHRC-funded Border Crossings project (2022–2023, AH/F009143/1).

Border Crossings project team, based across the UAL Decolonising Arts Institute and SOAS University of London, explored partition and imperialism not as aspects of the past but as forces that continue to shape our present and how we see the world.