Universities as Cultural Infrastructure: Knowledge Exchange and the Solent Film Office

Over the past few years, I’ve become increasingly interested in a form of university work that is often acknowledged in principle but rarely documented in practice: knowledge exchange as infrastructure-building. Not short-term consultancy or delivery, but the slow, relational work of convening partners, producing evidence, sustaining momentum, and helping ideas move from aspiration to institution.

I explored this directly in an article I wrote for HEPI, Universities as infrastructures of support: making the Solent Film Office happen. The piece reflects on the development of the Solent and South Hampshire Regional Film Office, and the role universities played in supporting its emergence through research-informed knowledge exchange. You can read the full article here.

The article focuses on knowledge exchange rather than project delivery. The work described involved translating research evidence into a strategic case, convening local authorities and cultural development agencies, and providing continuity across funding cycles, policy shifts, and personnel changes. The contribution was not to build the film office directly, but to help create the conditions in which it could be imagined, argued for, and ultimately realised.

What interested me in writing the piece was how easily this kind of work disappears from view. By the time a regional initiative launches, much of the enabling labour has already taken place and been quietly absorbed into the background. Meetings, draft documents, feasibility thinking, informal advice, and relationship-building rarely leave a visible trace, yet they are central to how cultural infrastructure actually comes into being.

The HEPI article frames universities as infrastructural actors rather than service providers. Universities can hold ideas over time, lend credibility to early-stage propositions, and act as neutral conveners between sectors with different priorities. This work is often unglamorous, but it is frequently decisive.

This blog is a space to reflect on knowledge exchange as leadership and practice, and on the role universities can play in supporting long-term cultural and civic development beyond individual projects.