Dr Liz Roberts

• Qualifications:BA MSc PhD
• Position:Senior Research Fellow in Creative Economies
• Department:Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries, and Education (ACE)
• Telephone:+4411732 87026
• Email:Liz3.Roberts@uwe.ac.uk

About me

Research interests:

Liz is a Senior Research Fellow in the Creative Economies Lab working on a number of projects that centre creative and community-engaged methods to respond to pressing socio-ecological challenges. Liz is a cultural geographer who has worked at the intersection of social science and arts and humanities across multiple interdisciplinary projects.

Her current research interests include knowledge exchange in the creative industries, responsible innovation, creative technologies, and diverse/community economies. Previous projects have focused on the cultural industries and digital policy (specifically in the rural context), visual and creative methods, science communication and climate change, resilience and wellbeing, film analysis and storytelling.

Area of expertise

Current Projects:

Fair Creative Economies:

Liz is currently working on the UKRI Strength in Places MyWorld programme to deliver the Fair Creative Economies project. This project seeks to broaden our understanding of the values and motivations that drive creative practitioners (businesses and freelancers) to carry out the work they do and form the types of businesses they do. It looks at the barriers and opportunities – at individual, company, and regional levels – for making the creative sector high inclusion, high democracy and low carbon.

Hopeful and Generous Food Futures:

The Generous Food project is a partnership between Liz and community hub, Bricks Bristol, and co-designer, Studio Meineck. Over the last year and a half, they have been delivering work at St Anne's House in Brislington to think about what a 'generous city' – one that is redistributive and regenerative, puts back more into the ecosystem than it extracts – looks like in the context of food. Artist and hydroponics expert Katy Connor joined the team to co-facilitate workshops on co-designing a community-led hydroponics system at St Anne's across 2023-24. This work has been funded by AHRC Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Cluster, a UWE Public Engagement Grant, and an AHRC Impact Accelerator Award.

Enhance GBI

The 'Enhancing Blue-Green Infrastructure multiple benefits through co-development with disabled people' project ran in collaboration with Dr Glyn Everett (UWE) and in partnership with the West of England Centre for Inclusive Living (WECIL) and creative consultancy, Play:Disrupt. It was funded by a UWE cross-College building grant. The project introduced playful and creative methods into conventional access review processes to explore their potential for bringing about more transformative solutions to access in blue-green spaces. The project is opening better dialogue between disabled people in Bristol and the city's decision-makers and planners for blue-green space.

Rural Creative Workforces and 4IR

Through UWE VC Accelerator and Research Investment Scheme funding, Liz is developing work around the rural creative workforce in the West of England region and looking for partners and stakeholders in this work. In the context of levelling up, there is renewed focus on intraregional equality of opportunity, while traditional creative industries policy and funding mechanisms remain city-centric. This begs the question of what the rural creative workforce needs to compete with urban creative hubs and future-proof it against accelerating changes in digital society, labelled as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Publications

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