Landing a Morecambe Bay culture innovation ecosystem

Jones, Nathan and Simpson, Edward (2026) Landing a Morecambe Bay culture innovation ecosystem. In: i-PLACE Compendium no. 1, April 2026 :. i-PLACE Compendium, 1 (1). Document for the Key Cities Innovation Network, 197–216. ISBN 9780993415692

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Abstract

This paper argues that culture can function as research-and-development infrastructure for place. It introduces the concept of the culture innovation ecosystem as distinct from both the creative cluster and the innovation ecosystem. Whereas creative clusters concentrate sectoral activity and innovation ecosystems coordinate actors, activities and artefacts toward innovative performance, culture innovation ecosystems produce shared reference objects, recurring convenings and durable public formats through which places become more describable to themselves and more legible to institutions shaping their future. The paper develops the concept of “landing”, drawn from Bruno Latour, to describe the translation of situated cultural encounters into artefacts, routines and formats that can travel into planning, health, regeneration, community and policy contexts. It grounds this argument in Morecambe Bay, where large-scale energy, defence, environmental and regeneration programmes are reshaping coastal communities whose cultural infrastructure remains episodic and dispersed. A five-year Lancaster University programme is read as a sequence of landing practices, including participatory coastal futures tools, wellbeing walking formats, youth-led visual testimony, AI-embedded architectural practice and immersive scenario convening. The paper then proposes Twilight Commons, developed with Deco Publique, as a landing practice for bay-wide cultural coordination, and positions a returning Morecambe Bay Triennial as an activation regime capable of periodically recomposing actors, reference objects and public formats at regional scale. The paper contributes to debates on place-based innovation, civic cultural infrastructure, coastal regeneration, cultural ecosystems and arts-led research.