The Centre for Applied Music Research can provide advice and training to individuals, businesses and organisations in all areas of the music professions, from music creation through production to rights management and exploitation. With a well-connected network that stretches through Scotland and beyond, staff deploy innovative thinking and leading-edge technologies in helping to develop creative and business expertise.
As a designated AVID Pro School, the Centre delivers accredited courses in all levels of the industry-leading Pro Tools recording and production system. Bespoke and accredited music programmes, delivered on industry-standard facilities, include:
Staff from the Centre can draw on a range of research interests in providing businesses, planners and media with up-to-date knowledge and data on:
We have a strong multi-disciplinary creative design team with UK and international partners for knowledge transfer and academic research. We undertake commercialisation projects and offer consultancy in design, art direction, and creative development in a range of areas.
We have expertise in urbanism, advertising and branding, graphic design, product and furniture design, exhibition design, architectural design and digital arts. Our team members have a breadth industry experience and have worked with, among others, Norman Foster, Saatchi & Saatchi and the BBC. We have exhibited work across the UK and overseas including at the London Design Festival, The Lighthouse and with the Six Cities Design Festival.
We offer short courses for Continuing Professional Development (CPD), and research degrees at MRes, MPhil and PhD level, including by practice and publication.
Edinburgh Napier’s Centre for Literature and Writing (CLAW) promotes excellence and contemporary relevance in literary research and literary community activities. Our mission is to:
"demonstrate and champion the enduring importance of literary study and research to life and work in the 21st century."
Members of CLAW conduct research and outreach activities in a local context. In the past we have worked with a number of cultural organisations in the city of Edinburgh including:
CLAW members have expertise in organising public events with key speakers and celebrities, community literary events and workshops, expert seminars and international conferences. We are keen to talk to any organisations or agencies that could benefit from our expertise in terms of collaborations, consultancies or other forms of literary and cultural activities that contribute to the development, profile, practices and reputation of Scottish creative and cultural industries.
The Robert Louis Stevenson website is a CLAW project in collaboration with Edinburgh and Stirling Universities. This is an acclaimed, award-winning site that demonstrates the type of excellent outreach and international activity and expertise in literature and technology that CLAW can offer.
The Scottish Centre for the Book at Edinburgh Napier University provides an open door for research, consultancy, CPD and knowledge exchange in the fields of authorship, publishing, across all platforms, and reading.
Its members offer a diversity of experience, skills and understanding from the operational aspects of IPR and rights management to international markets for textbooks. They are drawn from backgrounds in book and magazine publishing, literary agency, bookselling, arts administration, web and online publishing, librarianship, and research.
The Centre has received over £1 million in external project funding for research and collaborative initiatives in the past four years. In addition, doctoral awards from the AHRC or Carnegie have been won in each of the last three years. PhD students are currently investigating topics from ‘IPR in China’ through ‘the global marketplace for fiction rights’ to ‘the structures and policies of publishing in Scotland and Catalonia’.
The Centre’s work was considered as ‘world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour’ in the last UK-wide Research Assessment Exercise and was selected for specific commendation in the confidential report from the assessment panel.
The Centre has worked with a variety of partners from the private, public and third sectors. These include Publishing Scotland, Museums Galleries Scotland, the City of Edinburgh, the National Library of Scotland and a number of SMEs. It has undertaken commissioned research ranging from the impact of the cultural industries for Million+ to a survey of authors in Scotland under the auspices of the Society of Authors in Scotland. The Centre’s reports have been the occasion for launches at a range of venues including Westminster and have attracted keynote speakers such as the Director General of UNESCO.
Current projects within the Centre include:
The Centre provides an integrated research and knowledge exchange environment for 75 taught Masters students alongside its PhD students, postdocs and academic staff. CPD courses are also given for publishers, librarians and others.
In 2008, the centre was commissioned by the university think tank Million+ to investigate the value of university teaching and research to the economy of the creative industries. The research was published as Creative Futures: Building the Creative Economy through Universities. The report was instrumental in encouraging the Arts and Humanities Research Council to increase funding for postgraduate education in the UK. Other projects in the centre have focused on the contributions of citizens to the media and have included workshops and public lectures on citizen journalism and democracy, to raise awareness of the contributions that ordinary people can make to popular culture and political life.
The Screen Media Research Centre is the focal point for our staff’s extensive practice-based, critical and policy expertise in film, television and screen industries. Home to the Edinburgh Napier component of Screen Academy Scotland (A Skillset Film and Media Academy) the Centre supports practice based and scholarly research into the creative, critical and commercial aspects of fil and television. It provides consultancy and contract research and development services in innovation, business development and international collaboration. Recent innovation projects include work for Hopscotch Films’ ‘The Story of Film’ and the Edinburgh Festival ‘Qatsi Masterclass’. Staff research expertise includes Film Authorship, Film Success in Small Countries and practice based film and television documentary and drama projects on subjects as diverse as film-maker Bill Douglas, the lives of Islanders in the Hebrides and screen adaptation.