Policy@Sussex

Collaboration for evidence-based policy making

• Video transcript

  [Name caption: Josh Siepel – Senior Lecturer in Management – Science Policy Research Unit]

  Josh: My name is Josh Siepel. I'm a senior lecturer in the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex Business School.

  One of the things that is involved in being an academic is being able to think through and try to come up with answers to complex problems. In many cases for policy makers or for companies, the problems they face are complex problems and so we as academics bring the ability to think about, to address complex research questions, which may also, for instance, be complex policy questions, complex business questions and we may be able to take something that, to someone on the ground, might look like something completely impenetrable and very difficult to get a hold of and to be able to say here's a couple of ways that we can think about it, one, two, three, here's the data we need, here's how we can figure out to get you the answer that you want.

  Our research looks at the creative industries and so this includes sectors like film, music, TV, architecture, performing arts, things like this. It's a really interesting sector that has a very major role in the economy but it's not terribly well understood and we don't have a huge amount of evidence about how these sectors work and how the government can support them and so a lot of the work that we do at the moment is based on helping governments and policy makers to understand what is going on in the creative industries and to support them to develop policy instruments that can best support these types of businesses and these types of workers.

  I think there are a number of ways that our research benefits stakeholders, one of the ways as an academic that I'm the most proud of is that our work in the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre has been seeking to build a strong, robust, data-driven evidence base for creative industries and this means that policy makers now have tools and data and evidence that they can go on rather than having to rely on hunches or suspicions or anecdotes and by virtue of bringing a more data-driven approach, which is based fundamentally upon our work as academics, that is a really valuable part of the work that we're delivering to our stakeholder partners.

  [END CARD.UK Research and Innovation logo. University of Sussex logo].