Methods & TheoryExploring personal communities: A review of volunteering processes
Principal Investigator: Professor Mihaela Kelemen, Keele University
2012
Exploring Personal Communities: A Review of Volunteering Processes investigates the idea that personal communities contribute to the public good by offering ways to transcend commonplace dualisms such as public/private and individual/collective. 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
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
Foodscapes
Principal Investigator: Michael Buser, University of the West of England
2013
FOODSCAPES was an AHRC Connected Communities project that explored the use of art as a way of opening up discussion about food, food poverty and sustainable communities. Participants included Knowle West Media Centre, The Matthew Tree Project, the Edible Landscapes Movement, UWE Bristol, University of Southampton, the James Hutton Institute and Paul Hurley (artist-in-residence). 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
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
Co-Curate North East
Principal Investigator: Eric Cross, Newcastle University
From 2013 to 2015
Co-Curate NE responds to demand from schools and community groups within the North East to access and enhance knowledge from a broad range of museum collections and archives. Schools and community groups are often unable to access physical collections and archives because of distance or because demand for physical visits outstrips the capacity of the museum/archive. Read more
Creative communities in art & design since the 1960s: lessons for socio-economic regeneration in a globalized world
Principal Investigator: Professor Jonathan Harris (University of Southampton)
From 2012 to 2018
A seven year doctoral research programme bringing together Winchester School of Art and Tate Liverpool. Four PhD students are examining the creative art and design communities associated with and generated by pop culture in Britain and its many legacies since the 1960s. Read more
The Ethno-ornithology World Archive – EWA
Principal Investigator: Dr Andrew G. Gosler, University Research Lecturer in Ornithology & Conservation, Oxford University
From 2013 to 2015
Birds inspire people, their cultures, and their faiths, whilst also acting as important environmental indicators. Many people possess knowledge of birds that is rooted in a cultural, rather than in a scientific, context. This knowledge is largely undocumented, but is no less valid than scientific knowledge. Read more
Writing Our History and Digging Our Past: Phase 2
Principal Investigator: Dr Richard Gaunt (Nottingham University)
2013
In Phase 2 we are working with 14 groups and running a series of collaborative skills workshops ranging from recording oral testimony, using archives and preserving artefacts, to geophysical archaeological surveys. Read more
