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Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), it is a straightforward, practical resource, designed to specifically cater to arts companies' needs. It highlights the value and benefits of qualitative research by presenting the real-life experience of arts companies and encouraging them to undertake qualitative research with straightforward explanations of the stages of a research project.

Qualitative research stimulates deep insights. Exploratory and creative, it can mirror the artistic process. There are two main sections to the QUAL resource. In QUAL in Practice the project's arts partners talk about the benefits and value of qualitative research to their organisation. QUAL Essentials presents a DIY guide to the stages of qualitative research.

The starting point of the project was to invite people from arts organisations to explore their knowledge and current use of research. Eighty people from across the arts attended workshops in Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen in 2017. The team also worked closely with a number of case study organisations with specific research needs, and designed and implemented tailored qualitative research projects to address them. Many of these projects have had positive impacts on the organisations, particularly in understanding and engaging with new audiences. Those involved have become 'qualitative research savvy' - one of the main aims of the project.

From the start we wanted to make the QUAL project a real research partnership between artists and academics and to ensure that the resulting QUAL resource was as useful and useable as possible. This included taking lots of advice on the tone and language in QUAL—which we hope is mostly a jargon-free zone. We're grateful to our arts partners for their fantastic spirit of collaboration over the course of the QUAL project.

We really wanted to fly the flag for in-depth qualitative approaches as an important complement to quantitative research. And what we found was that the most powerful advocacy for the value of qualitative research came from artists themselves—that's why the main part of the QUAL site features arts people telling their research stories and reflecting on their experience.

QUAL is an excellent introduction to very useful and applicable research methods that takes you from first principles to an in-depth understanding of what it can do for your organisation.

Having something like QUAL that's really short, to the point, really well-filmed and easy to understand I think is really important.

Well done to Charlotte, and all involved in the project.