The University of Brighton's (UoB) arts and humanities research has a distinct role within local, regional, national, and international communities and spans the AHRC disciplinary remit. UoB has built capacity and community-driven outcomes in key areas using AHRC funding, e.g. participation in social design; film, screen and archive practices; sustainable connected digital futures; popular culture and cultural regeneration; material histories, visual cultures, and cultural memory. The IAA will be used to develop a culture that enables effective and ambitious arts and humanities knowledge exchange and impact via capacity, capability and skills development drawing experience from our established expertise in the area, but also engaging with external best practice programmes. This IAA will apply our research expertise in a transformational way to more areas of critical need and will help sustain trajectories using legacy projects and the strategic investment of funds. It will help build new pathways, using old and new networks, key cultural assets and interdisciplinary opportunities, to release potential and support multiple stages of application. This will contribute to our aim to improve access and equality of opportunity.

The IAA model will support the delivery of our distinctive research impact initiatives on a much greater scale, providing additional value for a wider range of partners and sectors. A key priority of this expansion is to enable our partners, old and new, to innovate and regenerate in a post-pandemic context. The ethical responsibility around economic and cultural recovery is a core priority for this fund. The IAA will also support our Early Career Researchers (ECRs) to become innovative leaders in their fields. The IAA will enable the following: support the delivery of a much larger set of projects in areas that UoB has excelled in in the past, e.g. building global initiatives in marginalised communities; develop the links between arts and humanities and other disciplines, e.g. environmental sciences, product design and engineering; sustain and expand the links with regional cultural sectors; support the development of key growth areas, e.g. sustainability and digital inclusion and nurture new areas, e.g. net zero initiatives, commercialisation and innovation opportunities and projects focusing on arts and health.

The IAA will take a three-strand approach to deliver our aims and objectives. Researchers will be supported to work locally, as well as upscale their work to national and international communities, working across a range of sectors. Strand 1 is an ambitious annual series of capacity building activities tailored to arts and humanities researchers combined with interdisciplinary activities linking to the social sciences and the sciences. This programme will upskill and reskill staff and ensure researchers are fully equipped to apply their research in complex global environments. Strand 2 will capitalise on the Ignite partnership model developed and proven by UoB with UKRI funding. The Ignite pilot was a prototype programme delivery model to scale-up work with community-university partnerships to create a step change in activities in relation to local and global challenges. The model combines seed and catalyst funding and co-created community research and impact activities. Strand 3 is a two stream, responsive (bottom up) and challenge-led (top down), impact fund that will invite applications for research projects with partnership/co-production as core to the proposal.