About
Creative Empirical partners with creative organisations to evidence their psychological impact.
We bring together project-specific teams of leading academics and practitioners to design and deliver cutting-edge research studies that generate robust evidence and high-quality evaluation frameworks. Our expertise spans quantitative methodologies (including neural, physiological, moving-image, and large-scale survey approaches) and every project is reviewed through university ethics boards at Goldsmiths, University of London or the University of Cambridge (UK). This ensures our work meets the highest academic and ethical standards while remaining directly relevant to the creative industries.
Founded in 2025 by researcher Oliver Durcan during his PhD, Creative Empirical was created to offer a level of research integrity, precision and expertise rarely found outside academia. Many evaluation and research practices in the creative industry rely on qualitative or interpretive methods that, while valuable, can struggle to produce consistent, comparable, and bias-resistant data. Our approach uses experimental research design, inferential statistical methods, and advanced machine learning to produce results that are both scientifically robust and practically actionable.
By translating subjective experience into a quantifable language, we give partners a deeper and more reliable picture of their psychological impact. Our research spans the neuroscientific mechanisms underpinning creativity and altered states of consciousness through to the wider effects of arts engagement on wellbeing and public life - enabling organisations to demonstrate impact, inform policy, secure funding, and innovate with confidence.
Company No. 16502201