Creative & DigitalListening to Voices: Creative Disruptions with the Hearing Voices Network
Principal Investigator: Dr Gail McConnell, Queen's University Belfast
From 2015 to 2016
In the field of mental health research, voice-hearers feel the effects of academic language-use in their everyday lives through the hierarchical language of ‘others’ (e.g. ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’) and stigmatising labels. This project seeks to learn how to listen to ‘others’ and to counter oppressive structures of language-use by building a network of expertise in listening. It brings together voice-hearing networks, independent artists and academics to develop a suite of resources for creative listening practices. Read more
Stories to connect with: disadvantaged children creating phygital community objects to share their life-narratives of resilience and transformation
Principal Investigator: Dr Candice Satchwell
From 2015 to 2017
Working with children and young people from Barnardo’s and other participatory groups, we will gather stories about young people’s lives which might otherwise not be heard. First we will train young people to become researchers, and they will ‘collect’ narratives from other young people. Then we will work with well-known children’s authors to make these stories into assemblages of fiction. Read more
Localism, Narrative & Myth
Principal Investigator: Antonia Layard (then University of Cardiff, then University of Birmingham)
From 2012 to 2013
Localism, Narrative & Myth was a research project funded by the Connected Communities programme of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in 2012-2013. The academic partners were Antonia Layard (now Bristol), Raksha Pande (Durham), Joe Painter (Durham), Hilary Ramsden (then UWE) and Hamish Fyfe (Glamorgan). The project consisted of two strands both of which are available on this website. Read more
Global Cotton Connections: East meets West in the Derbyshire Peak District, UK
Principal Investigator: Dr Susanne Seymour, School of Geography, University of Nottingham
From 2014 to 2015
Britain is famous for its ‘Industrial Revolution’ and cotton textiles were a key component of this. Many early mills were located in rural areas where water power could be harnessed. The Derbyshire Peak District, now partly covered by a National Park and containing the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, is one key area yet its global connections remain obscured. Read more
Community filmmaking and cultural diversity: Practice, innovation and policy
Principal Investigator: Dr Sarita Malik (Brunel University)
From 2013 to 2014
The research aims to understand better how community filmmaking practices, in culturally diverse contexts, contribute to the wider film ecology and to representation, identity and innovation and how this contribution can be better supported by policy. Read more
Pararchive: Open Access Community Storytelling and the Digital Archive
Principal Investigator: Simon Popple (University of Leeds)
From 2013 to 2015
Pararchive aims to co-produce a new open digital resource that will allow anyone to search and collect on-line sources and combine them with their own media (film, photographs and other ephemera) to tell their own stories, make new archives, be creative, start new projects and do their own research. Read more
Cultural Planning for Sustainable Communities
Principal Investigator: Graeme Evans
From 2013 to 2014
This 18 month research project aims to use cultural mapping and planning as a way to explain and value the relationship between arts & culture and the environment. Ideas of and behaviour towards the natural environment and ‘ecosystems’ tend to lack a cultural dimension, or include the cultural sector of arts organisations, artists and other ‘hidden’ community culture. Read more
Productive Margins regulating for Engagement
Principal Investigator: Professor Morag McDermont
From 2013 to 2018
Community engagement needs radical re-design. All too often decision-making is top-down and decision makers do not adequately engage, deeming ‘community engagement’ a passive exercise. Communities are often only invited to comment on decisions which have already been made, leaving isolated and excluded communities feeling even more powerless, and adding to dislocation between politicians and the electorate. Read more
Stories of change: Exploring energy and community in the past, present and future
Principal Investigator: Dr Joe Smith
From 2014 to 2016
The Stories of Change project aims to help to revive stalled public and political conversations about energy by looking in a fresh way at its past, present and future. The project draws on history, literature, social and policy research and the arts to encourage a more imaginative approach to current and future energy choices. Read more
Towards hydrocitizenship. Connecting communities with and through responses to interdependent, multiple water issues
Principal Investigator: Owain Jones Bath Spa University
From 2014
This 3 year project will investigate, and make creative contributions to, the ways in which citizens and communities live with each other and their environment in relation to water in a range of UK neighbourhoods. Read more
