Superfused Brighton: research into how creative and media innovation drives the digital economy

What is fused and superfused? The Brighton Fuse project 

The AHRC-funded Brighton Fuse project (2011 – 2015), led by Dr Jonathan Sapsed at the University of Brighton, provided evidence of arts and humanities as drivers of innovation and economic growth in the Creative, Digital and IT (CDIT) sector. The first Fuse report, based on a survey of 500 businesses, evidenced that 65 per cent of the Brighton sector was fused or ‘superfused’, meaning that they combine creative, digital and business skills, overcoming traditional barriers between creative arts and ICT. 

The project found that one in three business owners who started a creative digital business had a background in the arts and humanities. This combination of skills evidenced growth figures almost three times as fast as businesses based on specialist skills in only one area, and ten times faster than the British economy overall. The research findings called for recognition of 'fusing' and 'superfusing' of creativity and technology as a new type of competitive ‘edge’ for business linked to innovation in management and production. The research associated this ‘edge’ with frequent and directed networking, a collaborative approach to working, a diffusion of expertise and an emphasis on creativity and innovation in business activities.

The Fuse research firmly established the role of creative arts and humanities as well as business as drivers of innovation in the digital economy and evidenced superfused individuals and clusters as crucial to the growth of the UK economy. Research findings provided evidence to support the Greater Brighton City Deal flagship proposal to develop Brighton as a Tech City South. unlocking more than £170,000,000 of investment in Greater Brighton to create 8,500 jobs and grow its technology businesses. 

The follow-on FuseBox24, led by University of Brighton's Professor Gillian Youngs and Wired Sussex (2014), was designed as a collaborative action research project supporting innovators and early-stage startups through a radical, experimental 24-week programme. This was a people-centred programme based at ‘The FuseBox’ space, an incubator in Brighton established by Wired Sussex based on the project. The research element led by Gillian Youngs built upon the Fuse research to explore how businesses with arts, humanities and design skills drive innovation and business creation by deploying collaborative flexible frameworks for innovation. 

The FuseBox24 project was designed to enable interactions and to support innovators to utilise knowledge and practices from the arts meshed with new technologies. It piloted a research-innovation model that drew iteratively on participant feedback, and tested a ‘toolbox’ of techniques that combined creative arts, technology and business approaches to innovation in a new fused way.

The 2014 City Deal created a hub for Brighton’s creative technology cluster through a £24,530,000 renovation and expansion of New England House, Brighton, providing additional workspace and support for the FuseBox business incubation space. In December 2014, the Coast to Capital (C2C) LEP drew on data and challenges in the Fuse reports to identify the CDIT sector as one of the strongest competitive advantages of the area. 

For the MakerClub, FuseBox24: ‘had nothing less than a monumental impact on our business. Upon entering the programme, we were offered business advice and challenged on our business model in a number of ways, and we continue to think in terms of lean canvas and iterative development. One of our core tenets at MakerClub is that electronics and programming should be taught in conjunction with creativity and craft, a belief taken directly from the Fuse ethos. Without help from those directly involved in FuseBox24 as well as the network we have met as a result, I am sure we would not have been successful.'

Brighton's Digital Catapult Centre 

In 2015 the Fuse research and the FuseBox24 model underpinned the award of one of only three regional Innovate UK-funded Catapult centres. Digital Catapult Centre Brighton, is led by the Coast to Capital Local Economic Partnership (LEP) with Professor Karen Cham from the University of Brighton and Wired Sussex as co-delivery partners. The Digital Catapult Centre Brighton was housed at FuseBox and the proposal was underpinned by Gillian Youngs’ conceptual framework of an ‘Internet of Place’, a human centred perspective on the Internet of Things. The Internet of Place concept employs the capacity of 5G to accelerate the release of value from real time location-based data. 

Digital Catapult Centre Brighton drives local innovation by linking universities and businesses and building pre-commercial research and development findings into market opportunities. Research and technology transfer, including creative arts and humanities skills, have expanded the capacity of SMEs to innovate and develop as a joint force, and thus drive growth in the CDIT economy. 

Since 2018 the Digital Research and Innovation Value Accelerator (DRIVA), a European Regional Development Fund project led by Karen Cham, applied her complexity and design practice-based research to extend the innovation ecosystem and FuseBox collaborative principles into the virtual sphere to support creative, collaborative, data driven innovation.  

The platform transformed the ‘Internet of Place’ concept into digital reality, delivering the Coast to Capital LEP strategic ‘Gatwick 360’ plan that placed Gatwick Airport at the heart of an innovation eco-system. Karen Cham led the design and build of a live data feed out of Gatwick Airport alongside an online innovation eco-system generator in the form of a platform, which accelerated the knowledge exchange relationships Gillian Youngs’ and Jonathan Sapsed’s research found were needed to drive CDIT innovation. Delivered in partnership with the ArtsDRIVA project, led by Donna Close, SME outcomes included data driven location based applications of AR, VR, digital twins, generative audio, haptics and 5G. 

As part of the UK Government’s Digital Strategy, the Digital Catapult Centre has informed the design of the national 5G testbed. The UK Government’s National 5G strategy (2017) commits to working with testbeds and trials to develop, test and iterate solutions with industry users. The Brighton 5G Testbed was highlighted as one of fourteen regional projects that ‘are helping to build the case for 5G networks as well as helping to build expertise and commitment to the digital economy amongst local areas and industry.’ This includes Donna Close’s work with Brighton Dome and Brighton Festival to make it one of the first large-scale performance, arts and cultural venues in the UK to be equipped with 5G technology.

At the launch of the 5G testbed in Brighton, Dr Jeremy Silver, CEO, Digital Catapult, said: ‘This is a major step forward in the wider roll out of this advanced technology, helping take the technology out of university labs and into the market. 5G represents more than just faster internet on the move, it […] offers new companies the opportunity to control their own networks, and enables operators to manage computing at the edge as a new business model for the future.’

Led by Coast to Capital LEP, in collaboration with Wired Sussex and the University of Brighton, the Digital Catapult team offers innovation programmes and facilities promote the development and adoption of digital technologies.