UK CREATIVITY RESEARCHERS
CONFERENCE 2026 – eDINBURGH
About us
UK Creativity Researchers is a collaborative community open to anyone with an interest in the psychology of creativity. We are a network that facilitates the organisation of annual creativity conferences, to bring together researchers, practitioners, industry, academics, students, and any other interested parties. The conferences are not-for-profit events organised by volunteer committee, one of whom normally hosts at their home institution, see our HISTORY for more information. We aim to keep our registration fees low, to be as inclusive as possible, and put all fees back into the costs of the conference events.
UK Creativity Researchers was founded by Dr Lindsey Carruthers at Edinburgh Napier University, Dr Gill Hill at University of Buckingham, and Dr Shelly Kemp at King’s College London.
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Our core values: Accessibility, inclusivity, & Sustainability
What makes us unique?
True to the original motivation to set up UK Creativity Researchers are our aims to ensure our network and conferences offer opportunities to all who have an interest in the psychology of creativity and creativity research. At the time we founded UKCR, in 2016, there were limited opportunities for UK-based researchers to access dedicated conferences for creativity without travelling to, at best mainland Europe or usually further afield. Likewise for our international colleagues, there were limited opportunities to come to the UK and share creativity research. This created barriers and so we were proactive with our aim to improve visibility, inclusivity, and strength of our discipline and representation within the UK in our field. Accordingly, we have held annual events (with the exception of 2020, where our conference was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and post COVID alternated between in person and online platforms. This innovation has enabled us to work with amazing researchers, as keynotes, presenters and attendees from across the world, to the benefit of UK and internationally based delegates alike. But also, to catch up with, and meet new people in person for the unique opportunities in terms of networking and friendship that are so difficult to replicate online.
Locations for attendees from our 2023 conference
We aim for our conferences to be affordable, so that early career researchers and those with funding or resource challenges have opportunities to be fully included in our community. For online this means registration is free of charge, whilst our in-person events operate on a not-for-profit basis, to keep costs down and ticket prices affordable. We are always on the lookout for hosts from different regions of the UK to further showcase the diversity of our field, or internationally for online or in person events. So, if you are interested in hosting a future UKCR event, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
All of the above have the additional benefit of helping to make our events more sustainable, for example in terms of reducing our travel-based footprints. It means our delegates travel once every two years rather than each year. In addition, we hope that this also means people travel shorter distances and so for many of our UK-based researchers enables more sustainable travel options to be taken. We are always looking for new ways to act, with a useful framework being the UN’s sustainable development goals (https://sdgs.un.org/). We welcome ideas from our network in ways we can go further.
UK Creativity Researchers 