Shared ground: Artists, academics and the rise of the independent researcher

Across UK higher education, the precarity of freelance, short-term and contract-based work is no longer an outlier – it is fast becoming standard. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) at the end of 2023, nearly 29% of academic staff were on fixed-term contracts. Among research-only roles in that academic year, the figure rises to an astonishing 63.9%

That pattern increasingly mirrors the arts and culture sectors, where self-employment and freelancing are deeply embedded. It is estimated that around half the arts and cultural workforce is freelance.

Artists and academics now inhabit overlapping terrains: short contracts, variable income streams and growing overheads associated with collaboration (administration, contract negotiations, institutional access, etc.). Both also share a deeper mission: generating knowledge, provoking meaning, shaping public life.

To sustain and support that mission under increasingly precarious conditions demands infrastructures that make cross-sector collaboration easier, more transparent and accessible, especially for voices operating outside traditional institutional frameworks.

Strengthening connectivity

In response, NCACE is launching the Independent Researchers Network (IRN), a purpose-driven initiative to strengthen connectivity across independent researchers working in arts, culture, community, practice-based inquiry, academic settings and beyond.

The premise is straightforward: independent researchers – be they artists, producers, curators, scholars or community-based investigators – already contribute substantial insight, evidence and cultural value. What is too often missing is the scaffolding: recognition, shared language, pathways for capacity building, access to institutional resources such as libraries, training and professional networks.

The IRN is designed as a participant-led platform, a network shaped by the people who use it, rather than as a top-down imposition. NCACE’s early consultations, including roundtable conversations with independent researchers from diverse backgrounds, surfaced priority needs and tensions.

Among these is the necessity to bring into view the research artists conduct as part of their professional practice. While arts funders and support agencies have long supported artist-led enquiry, this work often remains siloed and under-valued in conventional research frameworks.

The IRN seeks to reveal this work and elevate its status, asserting that artist-led inquiry deserves attention and respect alongside university-anchored research, both in disciplinary spaces and in its public and societal impact.

Lines of inquiry

The IRN’s first phase will be shaped by three interwoven lines of inquiry, each aimed at translating NCACE’s ambitions into tangible support:

Firstly, the network will explore how arts research conducted in professional (non-academic) contexts can be meaningfully theorised and articulated. That means creating language and conceptual tools so that practice-based insights, rooted in embodied, contextual, iterative, often collaborative processes, can travel to academic, funder and policy spheres without being flattened, depoliticised or divorced from artistic ownership.

Secondly, the IRN will build a grounded, case-led understanding of support needs across roles, contexts and career stages. What do independent researchers require, whether early in their trajectory or mid-career, to do their best work? Time, space, tools, access to funding, credit (authorship, citations, acknowledgment), ethical recognition, brokerage roles, and institutional legitimacy all emerge as vital areas for investigation.

Thirdly, the network will test how interdisciplinary frameworks such as SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy) can be actively deployed in independent research. Rather than treating interdisciplinarity as a bureaucratic label, IRN aims to unpack how such frames can support work that is hybrid, responsive, emergent, making connections across sectors, disciplines and publics. The outcome sought is not only more coherent collaborations, but accessible frameworks and shared terminologies that smooth the path from initial conversations to final outputs.

Two-year pilot

The IRN has been conceived as a two-year pilot, with the option to expand over four years (or more) if it proves both valuable and viable. Its architecture centres on ongoing online gatherings, regular convenings where participants surface questions, share insight, test experimental practices and define collective priorities. These sessions will be underpinned by a curated resource hub housing readings, toolkits, methodological prompts and connections to peers across geographies and disciplines.

Between sessions, participants will be able to exchange ideas and methods, find collaborators, access tailored resources and support one another in navigating complex professional and funding landscapes. The network will also convene a writing retreat for artist and citizen researchers as a critical space of reflection, consolidation and peer exchange.

NCACE will further strengthen the network via three pilot associate positions, each awarded to independent researchers whose practices align with NCACE’s mission. Associates will receive a modest stipend, but their real value lies in access: a School of Advanced Study (SAS) email address, which unlocks library access, training, research services briefings, and hot-desking at Senate House. Through this bridge to institutional infrastructure, independent researchers can more fully engage with the broader research ecology.

This is not simply an experiment in network-building; it is a structural intervention to support how knowledge, especially the knowledge nurtured in artistic, participatory and community contexts, is valued, shared and sustained. Independent researchers frequently operate in the margins: they are invisible in promotion frameworks, excluded from institutional privileges, and often forced to recast their work to meet unfamiliar conventions. The IRN seeks to influence that dynamic without requiring independent researchers to subsume their forms to established academic norms.

If you are an independent researcher; an artist, producer, curator, practitioner-scholar, community activist or sole researcher in an arts organisation, local authority or cultural charity, and your work is driven by enquiry and curiosity, we invite you to the IRN’s launch. Come shape its direction, connect with curious peers and help build shared ground where creative research thrives.