A photograph taken at Carsebridge last week got me thinking about the changing relationship between universities, creative organisations and communities.
The people smiling at the camera had spent the afternoon talking, remembering, making and sharing ideas about water.
It was part of FORTH₂O, a University of Stirling-led research partnership exploring the future of the Forth's water environment. But perhaps something equally interesting was happening around the research itself.
Across Clackmannanshire, three creative organisations - Arts Included, Reachout With Arts in Mind and Resonate Together - are approaching the subject differently, creating opportunities for different people, from the Hillfoots to the harbour, to contribute.
That means expertise already rooted here in Clackmannanshire is contributing directly to university research. It is a reminder that our small county has a creative sector with knowledge, skills and connections that reach far beyond traditional ideas of arts activity.
And that matters.
For generations, we have sometimes imagined research as something that happens inside universities before knowledge travels out into the world. But what happens when knowledge travels the other way too?
What happens when researchers work with organisations already embedded within communities, and local people's experiences, memories, questions and ideas become part of developing knowledge?
As someone who has spent many years working in the creative and community sector, I believe creative organisations can provide an extraordinary bridge between the two. We are storytellers, connectors and solution-finders.
We can take a research question and approach it through a walk, a photograph, a conversation, a painting, a poem, an object or simply an invitation to imagine something differently.
That can create supportive spaces where people who might never consider participating in university research discover that what they know matters.
Dr Hanneke Booij, a researcher at the University of Stirling working with FORTH₂O, understands this relationship particularly well. Her own research has explored creativity, participation, place, memory and the importance of communities being active participants rather than simply recipients of expert knowledge.
Perhaps projects like FORTH₂O point towards a new era of collaboration. Universities bring research expertise, knowledge and the potential to influence policy.
Creative organisations bring different ways of thinking, communicating and reaching people. Communities bring something neither can manufacture: lived experience.
For the creative industries, these partnerships also create something increasingly important: meaningful professional opportunities to apply our skills beyond traditional ideas of "the arts".
So perhaps creative organisations shouldn't be invited into research only when it is time to engage the public.
Perhaps we should be around the table when projects are being imagined and funding bids are being written.
Not simply because collaboration helps research reach communities, but because creative thinking can help shape better research questions in the first place.
Because if we genuinely want research and policy to reflect people's lives, we need bridges between institutions and communities.
And the creative industries might just be rather good at building them.
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