Out of Bounds

On publication, our anthology, Out of Bounds (OOB), was hailed by the leading Caribbean poet and novelist, Fred D'Aguiar, as 'an alternative A-Z of the nation'. The book focuses on black and British Asian poets as they imaginatively interact with the diverse landscapes of Britain, from the Highlands of Scotland, to the Isle of Wight. The proposed Out of Bounds project re-purposes this critically-acclaimed book to engage schools, young people and the wider public in thinking imaginatively about one of the most pressing issues facing Britain today: migration. While questions of diversity, belonging and inclusion are included in Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence and are being embedded in the revised GCSE curriculum, high profile national debate around immigration has transformed the themes of this book into a key part of daily public life. This project invites the next generation to explore these issues of national and regional belonging through the creation of an online multimedia resource, and a series of live poetry events across England, Scotland and Wales led by OOB poet, Vahni Capildeo.

Through exploratory workshops involving 6 schools in England and Scotland (connecting 10 teachers and 180 students), this project addresses the challenge of making poetry as meaningful, accessible and interactive as possible. Working with the world-leading 'Digital Interaction' team at Newcastle University (already core partners in several AHRC-funded projects), the school workshops will test the various ways in which the poetic map of Britain might be re-drawn by using the latest digital technologies at our disposal. For example, by enabling pupils to arrange poets and poems within the instantly recognisable shape of Britain, we encourage them to think of themselves as cartographers, making dynamic online sound, image and text maps as part of a literary landscape that can be constantly updated and is at once familiar and unfamiliar. The ambition is to produce a freely available online resource that challenges pupils (aged 14-18) and their teachers, and supports their classroom curriculum.

Bringing this virtual resource to life during the course of the project will be a series of live poetry performances and events that take the contents and poets of Out of Bounds 'on tour'. These events include scheduled performances run in conjunction with leading regional and national arts organisations/libraries (the British Library, Manchester Literature Festival and Scottish Poetry Library) to showcase the project and the poetry it is working with. Other events are designed to engage in highly original ways with local landscapes across Britain. For example, tours will include 'Blue Plaque Events' (various UK locations); a 'Land, Water, Air' mini-series (coastal, 'nowhere', regenerated and urban sites in Yorkshire and Lancashire), with recordings of sampler sounds; relay readers punting boats of poetry through Cambridge; and 'Shetland Muse' (Highlands and Islands). These events will be publicized to both local schools and newspapers to raise the project's profile among the wider public. Recordings of these performances will be archived by the British Library, and form additional raw materials to augment our online resource for schools, allowing us to exploit poetry as a visual, aural and place-based event.

The project will result in 2 main digital outputs, both embedded within the same website: (i) a bespoke set of resources that takes place-poetry beyond the page (ii) a rich geographical gallery of filmed performances and events that brings together for the first time previously unseen footage of leading poets in the anthology (supplied by Bloodaxe publishers), and newly commissioned performances by Out of Bounds poets. Our aim is to create a one-stop resource that will serve as a highly visible archive stimulating future learning activities, and new projects wishing to re-write, or re-design, the poetic map of Britain.

This project's impact agenda is driven by (1) the critical reception of and reader responses to the PI's and CI's poetry anthology, Out of Bounds; (2) current popular discourse on migration and diversity; and (3) the Out of Bounds project team's and partners' commitment to and expertise in exploring Britain's transnationality via creative practice. This project identifies innovative ways to present place poetry by black and Asian writers for new audiences.

The prospect of harnessing print forms of poetry to the latest innovations in digital technology speaks directly to the digital citizenry of young people in Britain. 180 pupils and 10 teachers drawn from six schools in central Scotland and the North East England will join an extended project team made up of 2 literature academics, 1 poet, 2 digital humanities computer scientists, the British Library, the Scottish Poetry Library, Bloodaxe Books, and Commonword, an Arts Council organisation for promoting new writers.

The project activities will benefit a range of communities:
1) Young people: The 2 study days on poetry by black and Asian writers will address creative, digital and critical practice and aid the development of Scottish/English curriculum skills in reading, writing and citizenship. The 6 workshops within the study days will focus on poetic mapping, digital humanities and student-centred curriculum development. An immediate benefit will be pupils' increased confidence and intellectual excitement at the intersection of literature and new technologies. The allied activities of student blogging, crowd-sourcing, and peer-group dissemination will develop independent creative skills. The ultimate aim is to create resources that reflect, share and shape young people's understanding of cultural heritage and innovation, and their self-understanding within the national borders of Britain today.

2) Teachers: By providing a bridge between academics, schools and UK culture industries, the project will enable our partner teachers to work within and reflect on the uses of interdisciplinary methods in the classroom. It will afford them an opportunity to assess the best forms of continuing professional development that creative practice and digital humanities can offer for them as practising teachers. The resources we develop will register positively that the focus of learning can be emergent and still answer the needs of contemporary classrooms. The wide online dissemination of resources will ensure that teachers beyond the project benefit from our presentation of poetry as a provocatively transnational and multidimensional form.

3) Poets: The project will provide an enhanced profile for the poets in the original Out of Bounds anthology, introducing their work to a large cohort of pupils and teachers. A wide-ranging group of poets will also contribute to the workshops and poetry 'tours' of Britain organised by Vahni Capildeo. The events will be recorded and edited for an online audience, with the poets helping to design the archiving practices for their work. The multimedia opportunities of online delivery will capture, often for the first time, the written, musical, vocal and performative aspects of this work within a single space.

4) Audiences beyond schools: the project will attract new audiences for poetry by promoting the work of black and Asian writers within established venues (such as the British Library), incorporating poetry performances within public spaces, and targeting local press and social media to stimulate interest in place, poetry and diversity.

5) The third sector: The delivery of strategic priorities of the British Library, Commonword, Scottish Poetry Library and Bloodaxe will be strengthened by this project. As the Partner Letters attest, our attention to reader and writer development and to the importance of innovative archiving of poetic and teaching resources makes this project an important part of their portfolio of activities.