Executive summary

Artistic production in theatre, music, dance and other performing arts is an under-recognised mode of innovation. New knowledge, methods, technologies, formats and relationships often emerge through rehearsal, composition, scenographic development, technical problem-solving, audience interaction, touring, adaptation and live performance. This can be understood as innovation by production: the process through which experiments and inventions generated through production itself are recognised, translated and developed into innovations with value beyond the production in which they originated.

The concept addresses a policy blind spot. Innovation systems often look for patents, start-ups, formal research outputs, scalable products or commercialisation pathways. Performing arts production, by contrast, frequently generates value as a part of solving technical, productional and artistic challenges within productions but also in situated and relational forms: embodied knowledge, new collaboration methods, accessibility solutions, audience formats, technical configurations, prototypes of experience and ways of reframing complex societal questions. These forms of innovation may remain invisible if they are not documented, translated, connected to wider ecosystems inviting more innovation stakeholders into the process.

Performing arts are important innovation environments because they combine experimentation, constraint, distributed expertise and public encounter. Experimentation and rehearsal functions as iterative testing; production teams bring together tacit, technical, artistic and organisational knowledge; and audiences create feedback loops around attention, interpretation, participation and meaning. Under these conditions, artistic production can generate technical, material, methodological, social, organisational, experiential and societal innovation. To realise this potential beyond individual productions, production-based findings and inventions needs to be recognised, documented and then connected and perhaps transferred to wider innovation ecosystems.

Innovation by production does not travel automatically. It is often held back by narrow innovation definitions, weak measurement frameworks, limited documentation, policy silos, short-term funding, insufficient brokerage, limited scaling pathways and weak intellectual asset management capacity. These barriers mean that valuable production-based knowledge can disappear when a production ends, or remain disconnected from research, technology, education, health, urban development and public-sector innovation.

A production may succeed while an invention remains invisible: once the performance, exhibition or event has been delivered, the immediate production problem appears to have been resolved. A parallel innovation pathway is therefore needed to recognise and capture selected outcomes without turning the artistic production itself into an innovation project or subordinating artistic autonomy to commercial or scaling requirements. However, not every experiment becomes an invention, and not every invention becomes an innovation. Innovation requires recognition, translation and further development beyond the immediate production context.

Policy action should therefore strengthen the ecosystem conditions around artistic production: recognition, shared skills and language, infrastructures for experimentation, access to finance, intermediaries and cross-sectoral networks, ecosystem building blocks as diagnostic tools, and intellectual asset management. The aim is not to instrumentalise the arts, but to enable production-based knowledge to be recognised, shared and adapted when relevant, while preserving artistic autonomy and cultural value.

This white paper builds on the following ekip policy recommendation report

ekip Policy Recommendations: Cross-sectoral innovation with performing arts

• Policy recommendations