Co-Lab Policy Network Award Summary:
Dr David Wright at the University of Warwick will work in partnership with the West Midlands Combined Authority, Coventry City Council and cultural organisation Talking Birds to co-create a new foundational economy framework to better understand and represent the value of culture for sustainable and inclusive growth in devolved mayoral authority areas.
Re-positioning culture as part of the foundational economy of the most mature mayoral authority in England, the new network will reflect the mixed metropolitan, urban and rural contexts of devolution and co-create cross-sector policy solutions to foundational economic growth.
Co-Lab Policy Network Lead
David Wright
Co-Lab Policy Network Host Institution
Network Partners
Devolved Context:
Co-Lab Lead:
David Wright works in the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies and serves as Director of Research and Impact in the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures at the University of Warwick. He trained as a sociologist, researching work in the creative economy, taste and cultural inequalities. His current research interests cut across all areas of cultural policy and the cultural/creative industries.
Recent work has focused on how digital technologies are changing the problem of culture for policymakers, the idea of regional creative economies and cultural devolution, popular cultural heritage in English towns and the relations between universities and their local cultural sectors. David has also been working on creative labour, examining how state and regional policies might support creative workers in Europe. The resulting collection, edited with colleagues from Finland, Norway and Croatia, will be published by Routledge in 2026.
Brought to you by
