Marc Jaffrey – desk research for creative education and place-making strategies

We’ve worked with our colleague and friend, Marc Jaffrey, for many years now, and it’s always a pleasure to work with him. Our latest projects involved his work with the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) and Ebbsfleet Garden City (EGC).

For WMC, we carried out desk research about the Welsh and Westminster governments’ policies on health and wellbeing, and creative learning through the arts. We copy-edited and referenced the document before it was presented to the Centre’s board as part of the Centre’s Creative Strategy.

Next, we created a more in-depth desk research working document, looking at the impact of the arts in Wales. This covered creative learning through the arts, and the impact of the arts on health and wellbeing, poverty, looked after children and young people generally. We also compared Welsh Government initiatives with Westminster Government initiatives.

We then created four fact sheets for WMC staff on poverty, unemployment, the creative industries in Wales, as well as sustainable economic development in the county of Rhondda Cynon Taf. These were used to brief the team and others on the challenges facing Wales and the world, and the impact that arts and culture can make.

Our work for EGC was similar,  looking at how the arts could benefit, and be incorporated into, the development of a Garden City in north Kent.

The work in involved desk research to find evidence and good practice examples of the impact of the arts, culture and creativity on individuals and communities. It looked specifically at wellbeing and health, individual activation, community participation and placemaking.