Bio

Dr. Abigail Gilmore has a background as research director of the Northwest Culture Observatory, an English regional body for evidence, impact assessment and evaluation of arts, culture, sport, heritage, tourism and creative industries, from 2005–2009. Recent publications and current research concern local cultural governance, cultural economies and place.

She is the lead for the Beyond the Creative City network in Manchester research policy models for place-based development and cultural industries. Past projects include AHRC Connected Communities ‘Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Values’, a mixed methods study radically re-evaluating the relationship between participation and cultural value, and the recent Centre for Cultural Value project researching the impacts of Covid-19 on the UK’s cultural industries, as Co-Investigator on the AHRC Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre..

In 2019, Abi was a Faberllul resident on the Future of Cultural Institutions resulting in the forthcoming monograph on municipal public parks and cultural policy.

Project

This Beyond the Creative City residency brings together international experts on policy, place-making and artistic and cultural practice in dialogue with each other and with regional stakeholders. Individual research projects and group discussion will explore and progress what happens in endemic and post-Covid localities including rural areas, small cities, satellite towns, peri-urban settlements, peripheral suburbs, and diffuse networks brought together through digital technologies. Our objective is to establish research relationships with a shared agenda for interdisciplinary, international collaboration on place-based and local development which draws and impacts on arts and cultural ecologies and economies.