Dr Nathan Jones, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art (Digital Media) at Lancaster University, will join the Key Cities Innovation Network’s parliamentary launch of the i-Place Compendium on Innovation Ecosystems at the House of Commons on 29 April 2026.

Jones is a contributing author to the compendium with Prof. Ed Simpson. Their paper “Landing a Morecambe Bay Culture Innovation Ecosystem" sets out a culture innovation model for place-based development: producing formats that help people in strategically important territories describe their conditions and have a voice in the institutions shaping their futures. Central to the argument is “landing” (after Bruno Latour): the work of composing a territory as a political object: so a public can say what it is attached to, what is at stake, what constraints it carries, and then carry that description into planning, policy, commissioning, investment, and institutional routines.

The paper draws on a five-year Lancaster University track record of culture innovation in the region, including participatory coastal futures tools, wellbeing walking formats, youth-led visual testimony, AI-embedded architectural practice and immersive scenario convening. It also describes an AHRC-funded flagship partnership with Deco Publique and University partnership on their idea for the Morecambe Bay Triennial, as a coordination scaffold for bay-wide collaboration that can advance ecosystem maturity over time.

The work was supported by Lancaster University’s AHRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) and forms part of Cultivate, an initiative led by Jones that convenes cultural and creative work across campus and the region to generate impact and strengthen research innovation capacity.

Hosted by Rebecca Long-Bailey MP, the KCIN Parliamentary Dinner brings together leaders from government, parliament, industry and universities across the network to discuss innovation-led approaches to local and regional development and the conditions that allow innovation ecosystems to sustain value in place.

Event: Key Cities Innovation Network Parliamentary Dinner (i-Place Compendium launch)

Date: 29 April 2026, 6.30pm–9.30pm

Venue: Thames Pavilion, House of Commons

Host: Rebecca Long-Bailey MP, Chair, Key Cities APPG

Link to journal: https://keycities.uk/publications/

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