NESTA: The art of innovation report
On Monday, held an event to reveal and discuss the results of their report. They’ve been looking at how fine arts graduates contribute to innovation throughout their working lives. The research was conducted via a survey and one-to-one interviews with over 500 graduates from the University of Arts London, from the 1950s to the present. The study looked into what happens to fine arts graduates when they leave university and how this disseminates into the wider realm of innovation.
They were investigating 3 hypotheses
1. Fine arts graduates are highly skilled in innovation: there are two approaches to innovation - one is a rational approach and other is willingness to take risks. They say that the second approach is highly developed in artists.
2. There’s an argument that the way artists work and cultural innovation is the way we’re presently heading: there’s more casualisation of work, more project or portfolio work. Question: do the way artists’ work resemble other ways of working?
3. Notion of aesthetics is now everywhere: lots of products have a high aesthetic component, from running shoes to what you drink. For example, people buy a particular brand of shoe because of their aesthetic taste.
How does artistic labour get into the economy and take its place in innovation? They had a notion of where people were absorbed in other careers – right across the board. They didn’t find that many people had given up their artistic work, but were supplementing it with other work – the artists felt very strongly about this. Is culture everything and ‘work’ changing? The notion of culture being everywhere, which is especially portrayed through the media: arts graduates strongly resisted this – they regard a strong distinction between products and artwork – for example they didn’t regard designer running shoes as cultural pieces. Ex art students make a distinction between work and their personal work – they don’t see the fruits of their day job as art. Many of them work in casual, portfolio and project work. The reason for this might come down to arts graduates having transferable skills.
Some policy could help fine arts graduates feel more confident about their skills and prepare them to consider options in the wider labour market, as well as encouraging businesses to think of them when recruiting.


Some snippet observations about fine arts graduates and innovation pulled from the survey:
* Work in a interpretive, innovative way
* Are adaptive, risk taking and problem solving

* Are likely to be lifelong learners

* Characterise themselves as brokers across disciplines
* Use process of discovery, aided but not directed by experts

* Willingness to change, adapt or try new things

* Keen to keep their personal art going as well as career

* Those who list their primary occupation as within the arts, 40% have a second job

* Are adept at switching jobs between sectors
Panel Q & A session with the audience:
Q: Who is the audience for this research? A: Apart from the fine arts grads themselves, it is the innovation policy people in the context of how art links with work. How the flow of creative services flows into work.
Q: Is there any crossover? A: If you look at something like video games, music – you see art school graduates in abundance here. They saw lots working in the broader creative industries. Didn’t find many working outside this, they bend over backwards to stay in the creative industries
Q: How different do you think your findings would be if you’d engaged with designers instead of fine artists?
Yes, we would have found different answers, but we wanted to do a specific survey with fine arts graduates because they’re the most far removed from the generic work ethic and in some terms are considered ‘the most useless’ graduates and who weren’t being trained for anything specific.
Q:You said that fine art needs originality, but all areas have originality – there’s a difference between invention and innovation.
 A: Not many interviewees use the word ‘innovation’ when describing how they work - you have to look at how they are describing their own innovation and inventions.
