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Words by Alice Sachrajda
Photography by Derick Armah
How does cultural change lead to social justice? This fundamental question sits at the heart of our work at the Power of Pop Fund. There are a range of curiosities and motivations within this question. We know that social justice organisations want to understand more about how their cultural outputs have influence and resonance, to maximise their impact and to attract onward funding. We also see how the entertainment industry wants to understand more about the impact of its cultural outputs - both positive and negative - to inform its approach and audience engagement. We recognise that funders need to prove to their trustees and senior executives that cultural strategy work has value and requires ongoing investment.
At the Power of Pop fund, we are fascinated by the way in which culture affects how our society thinks and feels about social justice, particularly migration and racial justice. We are keen to consider what useful research interventions could look like to support and strengthen the creative industries, social change sectors and our community of practice. In this regard, we are exploring a multitude of questions including:
Why do we need research to support storytelling and cultural change in the UK?-How can research help to further our work and missions?
What are the research priorities and what types of research are of most value and for what piece of the work?
Who should we be partnering and collaborating with to grow this field and body of research - both in the UK and internationally?
What should the priorities and focus of future research programmes be?
To get stuck into some of these questions, we recently held a cultural strategy research roundtable in collaboration with our friends at the University of the Arts London AKO Storytelling Institute(opens in new window), along with some of our partners, funders and wider network collaborators. We were lucky enough to hear valuable insights from our guest speaker, Ishita Srivastava(opens in new window), Vice President of Cultural Strategy at FrameWorks. It was a rich and engaging discussion. Some key insights and questions that the roundtable delegates raised included the following.
How can we ensure that research is additive? There is a huge and growing body of research about representation and diversity in the creative industries and a wealth of content on narratives, framing, audience segmentation and storytelling analysis. How can we ensure that this body of research is archived and consolidated so that new research contributions are generating additive insights?
How can we ensure that research is accessible? A constant challenge is how to translate complex and detailed research studies into actionable insights for creatives to be able to work with. Sometimes theoretical work on narratives and studies on representation do not necessarily translate into formats that can enable implementation by creative industry partners. How can accessible blueprints, toolkits, guides and other forms of creative engagement be used to ensure research is taken on board?
Can our research be more solutions-focused? In the field of research we are very good at identifying problems. We know, for example, that people of colour made up less than 5% of the creative industry workforce in 2020.(opens in new window) This type of research is of course necessary, but how can we also research and investigate how diverse content resonates constructively with audiences? What research can we produce that unearths how diverse cultural content influences perceptions towards under-represented communities and creates greater awareness about social and environmental justice issues? What can we understand about positive mindsets(opens in new window) and the role culture can play in shifting them?
What can we do to work together more collaboratively? All of our roundtable participants recognised that we are far greater than the sum of our parts and that there is tremendous value in coming together to pool our research findings, knowledge and insights. In addition, it is important that no one organisation feels the pressure of having to prove their worth. Cultural strategy is more about the impact of multiple initiatives over time and our research into this field needs to reflect that.
How can we move at the speed of trust? Creatives do not want to be hijacked by a cause and so how can we produce captivating research that helps them to produce more authentic and engaging content? Trusted relationships are paramount in this field and so how can we work to ensure that our research outputs are produced and shared in ways that build trust and connection?
The creative industry is incredibly powerful; decisions about who gets to create, produce and commission content have a corresponding knock on effect on our belief systems and societal mindsets. Over time we have seen how certain storylines in popular culture influence public perceptions, and can even shape law and policy as a result. At the Power of Pop Fund, we know that we need to produce compelling, creative research that demonstrates how and why pop culture has the potential to create large-scale social, behavioural, cultural, and even political and policy change. We were delighted to come together with our partners to explore the potential for cultural strategy research to uncover insights in this space and we look forward to continued partnerships and engagement in the future.
