Edinburgh Napier University

  The creative economy is a workforce with a high proportion of freelancers and SMEs. This paper reflects on new ways of working, accelerated by the digital pivot of the creative workplace caused by the global pandemic. Whilst the impact of digital technology on the creative workflow has been well documented, in this paper case studies from Creative Informatics, a four-year R&D project which supported data driven innovation in the creative economy in Edinburgh and the Southeast of Scotland, highlight how these changes have affected the creative workplace. It reflects on the increased literacy and acceptability of online working to support diverse networking formats (Creative Edinburgh), support business development with online learning and multilingual toolkits (British Council), synchronous and a-synchronous collaboration through the use of VR technology as a means of shared digital creative workplaces for craft makers (Applied Arts Scotland), and new ways of reaching audiences (Scottie) and experiments with sharing economy models (Edinburgh Tool Library, CAN). The paper analyses how these innovation and developments have opened up opportunities, and raised challenges, for freelancers in particular and identifies directions for future developments in the creative workplace. We argue that the implications for creative freelancers can be applied to the freelancer workforce at large.