About Creative United

Beatriz Alegre Infante is a Portuguese researcher and cultural practitioner. She holds a Bachelor´s degree in Drawing (Fine Arts) from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and a Master’s degree in Arts and Heritage: Policy, Management, and Education from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Her previous experience includes working under the Creative Europe programme at the European Commission (Executive Agency for Education, Audiovisual and Culture) in Brussels, as well as with cultural organisations and art residencies from New York, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal.

Currently, Beatriz is working towards completing her PhD at Coventry University (Centre for Creative Economies), in partnership with Creative United, London. Her project is grounded in the lived experiences of artists, with the goal of informing and designing new policies that create thriving and sustainable artist livelihoods. This project is supported by the M4C Collaborative Doctoral Award (AHRC-funded Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership).

James Cunningham is a Northern Irish, visually impaired musician currently studying at Queen’s University Belfast as part of the Bridging the Gap project. He grew up in NI surrounded by a musical family, and he received his Bachelor’s in Music (BMus) from Queen’s with a focus on composition. James has had pieces premiered in both Belfast and London, and he is also an experienced improvisor with various instruments, most notably clarinet and piano. James’ Guide Dog Bart has travelled with him through much of the formative time in his musical career, and although he plans on retiring in Summer 2022, he will always hold a special place of honour in James’ work.

Jason Dasent has over 25 years’ experience in all aspects of recording and music production. Jason launched Studio Jay Recording in Trinidad in 2000 catering to both the Advertising Sector and Artist Production for many top Caribbean recording artists. He has done Music Scores/ Dialog Replacement & Post-Production for both films & documentaries.

As a visually impaired producer he was challenged to overcome the limitations of mainstream music software when “accessibility” was in its infancy. Over the years this has enabled him to compete successfully with his sighted counterparts and makes him well poised to impart his knowledge and experience to other visually impaired producers and engineers.

In 2017 Jason became a member of a worldwide team of Beta testers for accessibility with AVID ProTools, the first DAW to fully support accessibility. As a result of this project, with the knowledge gained, he now engages with several music
equipment manufacturers e.g. Native Instruments, Arturia, Focusrite/Novation and Antares Autotune among others, to assist them in introducing accessibility features to their products from the back end.

I am a PhD student at the University of Leicester, supported by the Future 50 Scholarship. Currently, I am actively engaged in the project titled "Art & the Blockchain: a post-cryptographic future for the culture sector?" at the Institute of Digital Culture. Based on my diverse background of studying and working in the arts and creative culture industries across the UK and China, my research delves into the potential of emerging technologies within the art and cultural sectors, taking a 'post-hype' perspective to explore the forthcoming changes.

The overarching goal of my research is to empirically examine how these technologies address longstanding issues in the field of art and creative work, such as inequality, and the lack of inclusivity and diversity. This investigation is supported by Creative United, allowing for an exploration of real-world practices and an in-depth analysis of the everyday aspects of artistic, cultural, and creative work in relation to emerging technologies.