Over the last decade, the creative industries have been revolutionised by the Internet and the digital economy. The UK, already punching above its weight in the global cultural market, stands at a pivotal moment where it is well placed to build a cultural, business and regulatory infrastructure in which first movers as significant as Google, Facebook, Amazon or iTunes may emerge and flourish, driving new jobs and industry. However, for some creators and rightsholders the transition from analogue to digital has been as problematic as it has been promising. Cultural heritage institutions are also struggling to capitalise upon new revenue streams that digitisation appears to offer, while maintaining their traditional roles. Policymakers are hampered by a lack of consensus across stakeholders and confused by partisan evidence lacking robust foundations. Research in conjunction with industry is needed to address these problems and provide support for legislators. CREATe will tackle this regulatory and business crisis, helping the UK creative industry and arts sectors survive, grow and become global innovation pioneers, with an ambitious programme of research delivered by an interdisciplinary team (law, business, economics, technology, psychology and cultural analysis) across 7 universities. CREATe aims to act as an honest broker, using open and transparent methods throughout to provide robust evidence for policymakers and legislators which can benefit all stakeholders. CREATe will do this by: - focussing on studying and collaborating with SMEs and individual creators as the incubators of innovation; - identifying "good, bad and emergent business models": which business models can survive the transition to the digital?, which cannot?, and which new models can succeed and scale to drive growth and jobs in the creative economy, as well as supporting the public sector in times of recession?; - examining empirically how far copyright in its current form really does incentivise or reward creative work, especially at the SME/micro level, as well as how far innovation may come from "open" business models and the "informal economy"; - monitoring copyright reform initiatives in Europe, at WIPO and other international fora to assess how they impact on the UK and on our work; - using technology as a solution not a problem: by creating pioneering platforms and tools to aid creators and users, using open standards and released under open licences; - examining how to increase and derive revenues from the user contribution to the creative economy in an era of social media, mash-up, data mining and "prosumers"; - assessing the role of online intermediaries such as ISPs, social networks and mobile operators to see if they encourage or discourage the production and distribution of cultural goods, and what role they should play in enforcing copyright. Given the important governing role of these bodies should they be subject to regulation like public bodies, and if so, how?; - consider throughout this work how the public interest and human rights, such as freedom of expression, privacy, and access to knowledge for the socially or physically excluded, may be affected either positively or negatively by new business models and new ways to enforce copyright. To investigate these issues our work will be arranged into seven themes: SMEs and good, bad and emergent business models; Open business models; Regulation and enforcement; Creators and creative practice; Online intermediaries and physical and virtual platforms; User creation, behaviour and norms; and, Human rights and the public interest. Our deliverables across these themes will be drawn together to inform a Research Blueprint for the UK Creative Economy to be launched in October 2016.

The dramatic upsurge during the 2000s of Chinese investment (both public and private) in sub-Saharan Africa has sparked much discussion and controversy about its development impact. However, despite some recent advances in research, concrete evidence on this impact has remained limited. This research will focus specifically on gathering concrete information on the employment effects of such investment. But this research will not confine itself to examining just Chinese FDI. It will also investigate the impact of the much broader category of what are called 'Chinese overseas contracted projects'. These initiatives, which include Chinese aid, have grown exponentially in recent years, and have often taken the form of construction projects. In order to gauge the employment effects of such initiatives, firm-level and worker-focused surveys will be conducted in two sectors, construction and manufacturing, in two countries where such Chinese investment has been substantial, i.e., Angola and Ethiopia. Though Chinese firms have created more employment in construction in both countries, the recent increase in Chinese investment in manufacturing is particularly important because it could portend significant increases in higher-productivity jobs, which are in short supply throughout sub-Saharan Africa. This research will assess the impact of Chinese investment in three specific areas: the employment, working conditions and skill development of national workers. Worker-level interviews will be important to the project because they will enable researchers to develop a more dynamic picture of the employment conditions of national workers. For example, the workers interviewed will be asked about their previous employment so that comparisons can be drawn with their current conditions in Chinese firms. Moreover, such worker-level interviews will be utilized to identify workers who have left Chinese firms in order to secure new jobs in national firms or in self-employment. Such workers will subsequently be interviewed in order to determine whether their employment in Chinese firms was a springboard for improved future employment. Of particular concern will be the effect of employment in Chinese firms on training and general skill development. This research project will also seek to compare employment conditions in Chinese firms in sub-Saharan Africa to the employment conditions of Chinese workers themselves in similar firms in China. This research will be carried out by both researchers in China and researchers in the United Kingdom who are China specialists. But this aspect of the project's research will not be based on new surveys but on the gathering of all relevant available material on labour conditions in China and especially their recent evolution. Of particular concern will be the effect of recent trends in employment conditions and any changes in the policy of the Chinese government that could have influenced the conduct of Chinese firms investing in sub-Saharan Africa. The intent of this research project is to have an important impact on the character of the ongoing debate on the development impact of Chinese firms located in sub-Saharan Africa. Particularly important will be the effect of our results on the policy stance of governments and regional development organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. But also one of the project's major objectives is to influence the character of the broader debate within the international development community on the employment effects of development cooperation, particularly within the context of the efforts to frame a new and more effective global post-2015 development agenda.