Research:
Voices of Creativity
Case Studies

My motivation in this work has been consistent from the beginning. I wanted to challenge the accent and class biases embedded in the creative industries. That decision wasn’t just academic. It was personal. And political. The arts still function as a kind of closed shop. Recent research and testimony point to a system that is not only rigged, but quietly self-reinforcing. Almost a third of major arts leaders come from private schools. Creative industries remain elitist and largely inaccessible to young people from working-class backgrounds (Khomami, 2024; Bakare et al., 2025).

Faced with that reality, I wanted to learn from those already working to open things up. I began looking at projects that centre inclusion, critique inherited norms, and reimagine what creative work can look and sound like. In this section of the journal, I reflect on six case studies that shaped my thinking. Six examples of creative resistance and intervention. Each one helped validate my decision to build a story-led digital platform interrogating accent and class bias. Each one offered something: a method, a strategy, a warning, or a possibility. Together, they showed what digital storytelling might make possible.

Working Class Creatives Database was the first project I returned to. It’s an online platform and community that confronts class-based exclusion in the arts directly. The model is simple. A searchable database of working-class creatives. A space for visibility, connection, and support. What struck me most was its grassroots approach. Over a thousand artists and designers have joined. They’ve built profiles, shared work, attended events, organised together. The platform acts as both archive and artwork, a living, growing record of who is here.

Its political intent is clear. WCCD states that its mission is to eliminate class barriers in creative practice and to ensure that all creatives have the opportunity to thrive (Working Class Creatives Database, 2022). That transparency matters. It does not hide behind soft language or tokenistic claims. It says what it’s doing. What works about WCCD is its mix of visibility and community. By existing, it disproves the idea that creative excellence only comes from certain backgrounds. It doesn’t just list names. It creates a network. A structure. A way to feel part of something bigger. I did wonder about its limits. Can a database on its own shift hiring practices or redistribute funding? Probably not immediately. But as a form of digital storytelling, WCCD already matters. It reframes creative legitimacy. It tells a collective story. It turns scattered voices into something shared.

This affirmed something for me. A digital platform can be a political act. Not by being loud, but by being real. By creating a space that holds people in their complexity, and lets that presence speak for itself. Alongside WCCD, I looked closely at Designing Women, an initiative by Readymag. Where WCCD addressed class, Designing Women focused on gender. It approached inequality through a mix of storytelling, funding, and visibility. In 2024, Readymag relaunched the platform to amplify female and non-binary voices in the design industry. They introduced the ReadyLaunch Grant to support new projects and curated a showcase of 37 influential designers from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Readymag, 2024).

What stood out was the dual method. One part archival, one part activation. The exhibition celebrated past and present voices. The grant supported the next generation. This pairing felt intentional. It was not just about acknowledging underrepresentation. It was about shifting it. The political intent was clear. To rebalance the field. To invest in the voices that have too often been overlooked. What worked was the tone. The optimism. The way it turned critique into momentum. I did note one limitation. The initiative depends on a private company. Its future relies on sustained interest and resources. Still, Designing Women showed that a digital platform can do more than tell stories. It can help write new ones. It reinforced my belief that content and community, when aligned, can become infrastructure.

From digital platforms, I turned toward physical institutions. Ai Weiwei: Making Sense at the Design Museum offered a different kind of intervention. It was his first major exhibition to centre design. And it did so with sharp clarity. The work blurred object and protest. Ceramic shards, Lego bricks, tools , gathered and arranged into layered installations. Each piece challenged the idea that design is neutral.What I saw, through documentation and writing, was a space transformed. The museum became a site of critique. Viewers were asked to walk through, over, and around objects that stood in for violence, loss, and political control. There were no screens or prompts. The interaction was spatial and emotional. The message was structural. The creative method was immersive installation. The participation was quiet. Thoughtful. Visitors were implicated. That was the point. Ai Weiwei used the language of design to show what systems hide. The exhibition was temporary. But its impact was lasting. It made the Design Museum hold something heavier than usual. It asked questions that did not resolve.

For my own practice, this was a provocation. Making Sense reminded me that story-based critique belongs in institutional spaces too. Not all design needs to be explained. Some of it needs to be felt. This exhibition used scale, repetition, and stillness to create tension. That tension became the method.

It made me think about what a platform can hold. A website. An exhibition. A space for resistance. For refusal. For saying what is not usually said. That insight returned me to Voices of Creativity. The aim has never been to make something slick. It has been to make something that holds space. Something that listens differently.

Another museum-based case study was the Design Museum’s Designers in Residence programme. From 2007 to 2020, it invited emerging designers to develop work around an annual theme. These themes often pointed toward social issues or speculative futures, identity, migration, care, disruption. The programme was described as one of the most important platforms for supporting new design talent in the UK (Design Museum, 2020). What interested me was the method. This was not exhibition for exhibition’s sake. It was incubation. A space for design to become a form of enquiry. Residents were given time, mentorship, and visibility. In some years, the theme itself shaped the structure.

One example was Support, where even the offer of studio space became part of the conceptual framing. Participation happened at two levels. The residents were participants themselves, co-shaping the public programme. But the audience was also brought in, through exhibitions, events, and talks. The politics of Designers in Residence were quiet. There was no activist framing. But there was intention. The programme widened access to platforms that shape public understanding of design.

Its long-term impact is visible. Some of the alumni have gone on to shape influential practices. Others brought their residency work into education, publishing, or public space. The structure worked because it created space without requiring polish. It trusted that process was enough. Still, the scale was small. Only a handful of residents each year. And by 2020, the programme had paused. That decision raised questions about how institutions sustain critical work over time.

For Voices of Creativity, the key insight was structural. Platforms do not need to speak loudly to shift perception. They need to create space. And they need to share that space with people who are not already at the centre. It made me think about co-authorship. About inviting people not just to tell stories, but to help shape the platform that holds them.

The next example came from a different world altogether. Airphoria, a 2023 collaboration between Nike and Fortnite, was an immersive, game-based campaign. Nike built a digital island within the game. A surreal Air Max landscape. Players could explore the environment, search for virtual sneakers, and unlock narrative elements as they moved through the space (Nike, 2023). It was playful. Immersive. Built around a clear objective, brand engagement. But what stood out was the scale. Millions of players entered the space. The campaign blurred the boundary between commercial storytelling and digital world-building. There was no social critique. That was not the goal. But the form offered something worth considering. It created a collective experience. A speculative world with shared meaning. Nike built it for celebration. But I began to wonder what it would mean to use a similar structure for critique.

Airphoria removed the usual barriers between content and user. It showed how narrative, interaction, and environment could work together. What was missing was tension. Or challenge. The world was seamless. But not reflective. Still, there was a lesson. If a speculative game space can invite millions of people to engage with shoes, why not with ideas? About class. About voice. About who gets to belong. The technology is not the limit. The intent is.

For Voices of Creativity, this confirmed the potential of immersion. Not as entertainment, but as invitation. People do not need more information. They need to feel something shift. To walk through a space that reflects what has gone unsaid. To hear a voice and recognise it, not as other, but as familiar.

Finally, I looked at Impossible is Nothing, Adidas’s global campaign that revived its original slogan through a new kind of narrative. Where Nike built a virtual world, Adidas constructed a story across film and social media. The 2021 reboot took the form of short documentary-style videos, sharing quiet, human stories from athletes, artists, and changemakers. What stood out was the tone. The footage felt unpolished. Intimate. It was often narrated by friends or mentors. Some clips included home video, some were layered with archival material. The campaign positioned itself around inclusion and possibility. Its themes were belonging, sustainability, and hope. One film featured the founder of Parley for the Oceans. Others focused on sports icons from marginalised communities (Adidas, 2021). Together, they formed a kind of mosaic. Values expressed through voice, not voiceover.

The method was montage storytelling. The strategy was emotional. There was no invitation to click or play. The participation was representational. Audiences were asked to see themselves in the stories. To believe that impossible is nothing for them too.

The politics here were subtle. But not absent. By centring people who had been excluded, Adidas was making a statement. Not confrontational, but present. It was branding, but it was also a form of visibility. What worked was the feeling. The production values were high, but the tone was soft. It didn’t lecture. It didn’t pitch. It just told stories. What didn’t work, or at least what I questioned, was what happens after. The campaign reached over 50 countries. It gathered more than a billion views. But impact isn’t only reach. It’s what follows. Storytelling can move people, but it also needs infrastructure behind it. Funding, support, change. Without that, even the most moving film can end at the screen. Still, I didn’t dismiss the campaign. It confirmed something I had been circling for months. People respond to stories. To honesty. To voice. If a campaign like this can create emotional resonance on a global scale, then the same techniques could be used for social design. The question is how. How do we keep the resonance and add rigour? How do we borrow the form, but use it to ask something harder?

Having spent time with all six case studies, I feel both clearer and more open. Each project offered something distinct. WCCD and Designing Women showed how digital platforms can centre the people left out. Ai Weiwei and Designers in Residence showed how institutions can host critique. Not just accommodate it, but actively support it. Nike and Adidas demonstrated scale. The ability of story and speculation to move across platforms and reach millions.

Not everything they did applies directly to my work. But what they share is a belief that design can hold more than aesthetics. That storytelling can challenge. That platforms can be built for invitation, not just display.

Together, they gave shape to what I was trying to do. They helped me trust that a digital platform can be more than content. It can be a position. A method. A small act of refusal. Or repair.

They reminded me that critique does not cancel creativity. It sharpens it. If we want to rewrite the assumptions around voice, class, and creative legitimacy, we cannot rely on language alone. We need structure. Atmosphere. Design. We need to build spaces where different stories can be told, and believed.

These case studies became part of my own story. Not just as examples, but as conversations. They shaped how I think, and how I will continue to work. Voices of Creativity is not finished. But it now feels aligned. With something larger than itself. With a community of efforts to make the creative world more honest. More open. And more able to listen.

References

1. Adidas. (2021). Impossible is Nothing campaign report. https://www.adidas.com/impossibleisnothing

2. Ai Weiwei: Making Sense. (2023). Design Museum, London. https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/ai-weiwei-making-sense

3. Bakare, L., Boyd, R., Khomami, N., & Vinter, R. (2025, February 21). Working-class creatives don’t stand a chance in UK today, leading artists warn. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/feb/21/working-class-creatives-uk-art-elitism

4. Designers in Residence Programme. (2007–2020). Design Museum, London. https://designmuseum.org/designers-in-residence

5. Designing Women Initiative. (2024). Readymag. https://designingwomen.readymag.com

6. Khomami, N. (2024, November 12). Young working-class people being ‘blocked’ from creative industries, study finds. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/nov/12/working-class-creative-industries-study

7. Nike Airphoria. (2023). Nike and Fortnite collaboration press release. https://www.nike.com/airphoria

8. Working Class Creatives Database. (2022). https://workingclasscreativesdatabase.co.uk

   
   Additional Supporting References:

• Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.