Our Values

The system rewards speed. Faster timelines, quicker turnaround, efficiency as a signal of competence. The research shows this dynamic is self-reinforcing: speed generates volume, volume raises expectations, efficiency gains get absorbed into producing more rather than creating space for better.

Dispatch operates differently. The work takes the time it requires. When tools and technology create efficiency gains, those gains are reinvested in depth, research, and craft.

This applies to our evidence standards too. Claims are sourced. Hypotheses are marked as hypotheses. What we know is distinguished from what we're testing. We don't publish work that overstates its evidence base or moves faster than the research supports.

Systems produce patterns of behaviour that emerge from structure, often at odds with what the people inside them are trying to achieve. Burnout, precarity, the pressure to produce more with less: these are structural outcomes. Understanding that changes the conversation from personal coping to systemic possibility.

Dispatch investigates structure. When the evidence shows conditions are eroding, we make the dynamics visible so that people and organisations can see what's actually happening and make informed choices about how to navigate it. The tone is assertive and clear. The aim is understanding, not blame.

Cultural production exists within conditions that can be nurtured or degraded. When the research maps venue closures, freelancer precarity, education pipeline thinning, and platform power concentration, it is describing the ecology. The health of that ecology determines the quality of what it produces.

This shapes how Dispatch approaches everything. Understanding conditions matters as much as evaluating output. Interventions need to work at the level of the system.

Creativity research identifies specific conditions that creative thinking requires: time for incubation, freedom from surveillance, intrinsic motivation, and psychological safety. These are structural requirements for how creative work happens.

The dominant assumption treats creative capacity as infinite, always available, always ready to be called upon. The research shows otherwise. Creative capacity depletes when conditions erode.

Dispatch takes this seriously in how we work, how we design community programmes, and how we approach partnerships. Creative capacity, creative process, and creative output are respected at both team and individual level. The conditions for good work are a design question.

AI is reshaping what creative work looks like across the industry. The research maps two paths: one where AI replaces human effort, another where AI expands human capacity. The system currently defaults toward replacement because it fits the logic of speed and volume.

Dispatch operates from the principle that creative authority stays with people. AI is used intentionally, directed by human judgment, in service of depth. Efficiency gains serve the work rather than replacing the thinking that produces it.

Dispatch operates commercially. Consultancy generates revenue. Partnerships and sponsorships fund editorial programmes. This is how the work sustains itself.

The boundary is that commercial activity serves the mission. We can work with brands, produce with paying partners, and generate revenue while maintaining editorial integrity. The conclusions belong to the research. Partners and sponsors gain credibility through association with rigorous, independent work precisely because they don't shape its findings.

This extends to how we work with people. Contributors, participants, and collaborators are paid fairly and transparently. When budgets are constrained, we scale the work to what can be funded properly rather than asking people to work for exposure. We don't extract from the communities and practitioners we work with. Participants contribute with informed consent and clear understanding of how their experience will be used.