Impact, intersections and interlacing: a reflexive account of navigating REF at a creative university

This article offers a reflexive exploration of impact in creative universities through the lens of a central facilitator navigating the collection of REF case studies across disciplines and faculties. Drawing on personal experience, it interrogates the tensions between bureaucratic expectations and the iterative, experimental, socially embedded nature of creative practice. Using playful metaphors, vignettes and theoretical insights from Barad, Haraway, Ahmed and Bolt & Barrett, the article explores how impact narratives are translated, negotiated, performed without flattening nuance or relationality. It considers the opportunities and constraints of REF: legitimising creative work, fostering interdisciplinarity and generating visibility, while privileging measurable outcomes and potentially homogenising inventive practice. The piece also reimagines impact as performative, narrative, affective and networked, highlighting subtler, community-driven and digital forms of influence. Concluding with playful provocations and a reflexive ‘manifesto’ the article suggests strategies for creative researchers and facilitators to navigate REF logics while preserving the mess and magic of creative practice. It contributes to discussions on research culture, interdisciplinary collaboration and the evolving conceptualisation of impact in arts and humanities contexts.