The aim of the Network for Creative Collaboration in Arts, Science and Engineering (CCASE-NET) is to build a research community, to identify the research agenda and to create frameworks for collaboration and innovation in interdisciplinary research in the arts, sciences and engineering. We shall be identifying research projects and asking research questions that can only be answered by collaborations between arts and science and/or engineering. We shall hold six workshops in different locations, such as abandoned and working quarries, business and science parks, to stimulate these projects and to encourage strong partnerships to form. We have already some established partners who are members of our network who will become formal partners for specific research proposals.
We shall seek to create frameworks and models that facilitate interdisciplinary research to allow interdisciplinary PhD studies and credit within the national research assessment structures (RAE). The academic world is not yet configured to encourage collaborative research. The network will address this issue as an explicit theme, the results of which will be applied in projects we develop with our partners. The kinds of projects we have already begun include collaborations between a choreographer, external computer specialist and product designer; computer specialist, geographer, painter and earth scientist; and an earth scientist, music technologist and painter to produce new ways of thinking about space, time, landscapes and music to produce novel and exciting outcomes.