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The UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Strategy 2013-18 is available.  Priorities and key themes are.../continued

Priorities

1. Research
1.1. To support the best ideas and projects emerging from researchers.
1.2. To enable larger projects, including facilitating collaboration and interdisciplinarity.
1.3. To bring scholars together to address new research questions and agendas in themes and strategic initiatives.
1.4. To develop both the assessment and formative role of peer reviewers to ensure that funding is directed toward research of the highest quality and greatest ambition.

2. People
2.1. To develop postgraduate support to provide the strongest possible foundation for capacity, quality and creativity.
2.2. To support researchers through skills development, networks and projects.
2.3. To promote intellectual leadership through fellowships and large and thematic projects.
2.4. To develop our engagement with the research community through the measures highlighted under ‘AHRC Commons’ and, in tandem, to enhance the role of the AHRC Peer Review College as outlined below.

3. Partnerships and Knowledge Exchange
3.1. To extend our contribution to the UK’s creative economy through Knowledge Exchange and other means.
3.2. To deepen engagement with public, private and third sector partners to enlarge the contribution to the arts, public engagement and policy formation nationally and internationally.

Themes

Themes were developed by AHRC in 2009-10 and continue into the new strategic period:

• Care for the Future affords an opportunity for researchers to generate new understanding of the relationship between the past and the future and how we transmit and question our heritage.
• Digital Transformations investigates the potential of digital technologies to transform research in the arts and humanities. It addresses crucial topics such as intellectual property, cultural memory and identity, and communication and creativity in the digital age.
• Science in Culture explores cross-disciplinary dialogues in the relationship between sciences and the arts and humanities.
• Translating Cultures explores understanding and communication across cultures, looking at the role of translation, in its broadest sense, in the transmission of languages, values, beliefs, histories and narratives.
• Connected Communities is a cross-Council programme led by the AHRC working with EPSRC, ESRC, MRC and NERC and a range of external partners. Arts and humanities researchers lead on areas related to creativity, sustainability, historical experiences and the cultural and belief frameworks through which communities self-identify and interact.

Dr Claire Donovan, Brunel University, has written a report for the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport on A Holistic Approach to Valuing Our Culture.  Recommendations on contextual validity of economic and non-economic approaches, the need for DCMS guidance, better tools (with reference to the AHRC Cultural Value Project) and access to studies.