Planning Creativity: Participatory Heritage and Decision-Making
Lead Research Organisation:
Keele University
Department Name: Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences
Abstract
Planning Creativity will transform the potential impacts, audiences and legacy of the AHRC Changing Landscapes network grant, 'Decommissioning the Twentieth Century' (AH/T005971/1). An innovative digital platform will reveal the cultural capital of decommissioned sites to mathematical modelling, spectacular co-created art alongside high-quality print material will empower communities to engage with and challenge assumptions about the heritage value of large industrial complexes, and a legacy network of stakeholders in sites of decommissioning will build the capacity of communities to understand, participate in, and where relevant challenge planning processes.
Digital humanities - industrial heritage - decommissioning - 3D modelling - participatory research - co-creative - interdisciplinary - data-driven planning - empowerment.
We will build an online, interactive 3D model of Chatterley Whitfield Colliery as a proof-of-concept to engage communities, speak to the mathematical models now often used in landscape change decision-making, and offer a new tool for heritage organisations managing inaccessible or dangerous sites. As well as enabling a virtual tour of the physical site, the online model will enable us to digitise and map at a structure-level the data derived from the original project, relevant historical documents and records, and online submissions of memories, documents and images by wider public stakeholders in the site. This process will encourage community participation in planning by making such participation more accessible, but also results in a flexible and data-rich research tool which retains the complexity and diversity of arts- and humanities-derived material, yet enables, for example, the use of heatmapping or culturomics to derive data suitable for data-driven decision-making. We are aware that such processes have the potential to disempower communities or replace genuinely participatory planning by 'black-boxing' decisions within models that appear arcane. In order to reverse this possibility, the project first seeks to increase the capacity of community stakeholders in decommissioning to understand, participate in, and challenge decision making by building a legacy network of such communities, brought together, alongside decommissioning contractors, heritage representatives and planning experts at a large 'Creative Decommissioning' event in June 2021. Second, we will demonstrate how publicly-exhibited co-created art can encourage and deepen community participation in planning processes. Working with co-creative artists, we aim to project original artwork derived from the data of the original project onto the remaining structures of Chatterley-Whitfield Colliery, and produce a high-quality artistic pamphlet to bring the outputs of workshops at Fawley Power Station and West Burton B Power Station. The process and projections will be photographically documented and exhibited at the 'Creativity in Decommissioning' event, alongside the interactive 3D model.
Digital humanities - industrial heritage - decommissioning - 3D modelling - participatory research - co-creative - interdisciplinary - data-driven planning - empowerment.
We will build an online, interactive 3D model of Chatterley Whitfield Colliery as a proof-of-concept to engage communities, speak to the mathematical models now often used in landscape change decision-making, and offer a new tool for heritage organisations managing inaccessible or dangerous sites. As well as enabling a virtual tour of the physical site, the online model will enable us to digitise and map at a structure-level the data derived from the original project, relevant historical documents and records, and online submissions of memories, documents and images by wider public stakeholders in the site. This process will encourage community participation in planning by making such participation more accessible, but also results in a flexible and data-rich research tool which retains the complexity and diversity of arts- and humanities-derived material, yet enables, for example, the use of heatmapping or culturomics to derive data suitable for data-driven decision-making. We are aware that such processes have the potential to disempower communities or replace genuinely participatory planning by 'black-boxing' decisions within models that appear arcane. In order to reverse this possibility, the project first seeks to increase the capacity of community stakeholders in decommissioning to understand, participate in, and challenge decision making by building a legacy network of such communities, brought together, alongside decommissioning contractors, heritage representatives and planning experts at a large 'Creative Decommissioning' event in June 2021. Second, we will demonstrate how publicly-exhibited co-created art can encourage and deepen community participation in planning processes. Working with co-creative artists, we aim to project original artwork derived from the data of the original project onto the remaining structures of Chatterley-Whitfield Colliery, and produce a high-quality artistic pamphlet to bring the outputs of workshops at Fawley Power Station and West Burton B Power Station. The process and projections will be photographically documented and exhibited at the 'Creativity in Decommissioning' event, alongside the interactive 3D model.
Planned Impact
The key goal for this network project is to engender a long-lasting impact upon the process of decommissioning large industrial sites for all stakeholders. It will enable policy-makers and planners to use virtual 3D modelling and participatory engagement tools to analyse local community views and needs much earlier in the process than at present. Specifically, it will impact on the following groups:
Academic beneficiaries
1. Mathematical modellers, especially those within the broader UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund (SPF) Landscape Decisions programme.
This project will use digital mapping software alongside digital heritage as a proof of concept to a) render data gained from the original project into a format that can be manipulated and utilised by mathematical and geographical modelling tools and b) increase the representativeness of such data by reaching new stakeholders.
2. Heritage Studies and Digital Humanities. The interactive 3D site model provides a proof-of-concept for local community engagement in inaccessible heritage sites.
Industrial historians of the 20th and 21st centuries. The digitisation of archival material, and collection/production of supplementary material will provide a valuable archive for historians interested in large industrial infrastructure and its decommissioning.
3. Co-creative art study. Co-creation is a relatively new area of artistic research to which this project contributes.
4. Environmental Studies. The project seeks to bring to light the interactions and connections of local people to the past, present and future of carbon culture infrastructure.
5. Digital geography. The project proposes new applications of well-developed expertise in 3D modelling within this field.
Non-academic beneficiaries
1. Planners responsible for landscape change decision-making for brownfield and decommissioned sites.
This project will promote co-creative and participatory democratic process as a means to more effectively manage decommissioning amongst stakeholders such as decommissioning contractors, local authority representatives, site developers, land owners, and offer a new digital tool through which planners can consider the cultural capital of such sites.
2. Local communities involved in planning decisions.
The proof-of-concept mode of data collection will offer a relatively inexpensive, flexible tool for collating the complex and varied engagements of diverse communities with large infrastructure as it becomes heritage, in a way that encourages the co-creative production of heritage and participatory decision-making.
3. Communities associated with sites at risk of decommissioning.
See 2. In addition, the project aims to establish a knowledge-sharing network of these communities in order to increase their capacity and ability to deal with the challenges posed by decommissioning and the decision-making processes that accompany it.
4. Heritage organisations, especially those responsible for inaccessible or dangerous sites.
The 3D model provides one way in which such organisations could engage public visitors in such sites, as well as reaching out to those who might not be able to physically visit others.
5. Historic England.
The project will provide a vision for how a series of HE's strategic recommendations might be fulfilled: to 'facilitate introductions between stakeholders in different places that face and have addressed similar issues', to use engagement with the historic environment to increase 'engagement with the planning system', 'engage local communities in place-making', and to to 'invest in digital technology to develop more innovative ways of engaging the public'. It will also raise the profile of one of the most significant sites on HE's heritage at risk register.
Academic beneficiaries
1. Mathematical modellers, especially those within the broader UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund (SPF) Landscape Decisions programme.
This project will use digital mapping software alongside digital heritage as a proof of concept to a) render data gained from the original project into a format that can be manipulated and utilised by mathematical and geographical modelling tools and b) increase the representativeness of such data by reaching new stakeholders.
2. Heritage Studies and Digital Humanities. The interactive 3D site model provides a proof-of-concept for local community engagement in inaccessible heritage sites.
Industrial historians of the 20th and 21st centuries. The digitisation of archival material, and collection/production of supplementary material will provide a valuable archive for historians interested in large industrial infrastructure and its decommissioning.
3. Co-creative art study. Co-creation is a relatively new area of artistic research to which this project contributes.
4. Environmental Studies. The project seeks to bring to light the interactions and connections of local people to the past, present and future of carbon culture infrastructure.
5. Digital geography. The project proposes new applications of well-developed expertise in 3D modelling within this field.
Non-academic beneficiaries
1. Planners responsible for landscape change decision-making for brownfield and decommissioned sites.
This project will promote co-creative and participatory democratic process as a means to more effectively manage decommissioning amongst stakeholders such as decommissioning contractors, local authority representatives, site developers, land owners, and offer a new digital tool through which planners can consider the cultural capital of such sites.
2. Local communities involved in planning decisions.
The proof-of-concept mode of data collection will offer a relatively inexpensive, flexible tool for collating the complex and varied engagements of diverse communities with large infrastructure as it becomes heritage, in a way that encourages the co-creative production of heritage and participatory decision-making.
3. Communities associated with sites at risk of decommissioning.
See 2. In addition, the project aims to establish a knowledge-sharing network of these communities in order to increase their capacity and ability to deal with the challenges posed by decommissioning and the decision-making processes that accompany it.
4. Heritage organisations, especially those responsible for inaccessible or dangerous sites.
The 3D model provides one way in which such organisations could engage public visitors in such sites, as well as reaching out to those who might not be able to physically visit others.
5. Historic England.
The project will provide a vision for how a series of HE's strategic recommendations might be fulfilled: to 'facilitate introductions between stakeholders in different places that face and have addressed similar issues', to use engagement with the historic environment to increase 'engagement with the planning system', 'engage local communities in place-making', and to to 'invest in digital technology to develop more innovative ways of engaging the public'. It will also raise the profile of one of the most significant sites on HE's heritage at risk register.
| Title | Fawley |
| Description | A film about the decommissioning and demolition of Fawley power station, and its impact on residents. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The film has emerged as a core focal point around which to discuss the power station. We were able to collect information about the memories of Fawley from around 30 people at viewings in March 2022, which will be used towards our Policy Paper (yet to be completed). In addition, the film won an award for Best International Short Film at the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2022. |
| URL | https://fawleyfilm.co.uk/ |
| Title | West Burton Creative outputs from Dana Olarescu |
| Description | A series of map-inspired prints documenting some of the responses to West Burton Power Station during the project. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The artifact was used extensively in the exhibitions carried out in the summer of 2022, especially in West Burton, where it raised awareness of the site and the ideas surrounding it for around 20 people. In addition, it played an important role in the 'Creative Decommissioning Event', attended by 37 people and intended to collect information for the development of our Policy Paper (still to be completed). |
| URL | https://chatterleywhitfield.online/documents/9/West_Burton_Artwork.pdf |
| Description | The main finding so far has been in the legal and intellectual copyright issues surrounding crowd-sourced heritage, with particular reference to the regulations on GDPR which have not been necessary to consider on previous examples of the technique. These have held up the creation of the website, but now that they are overcome, we can share our best practice example with others working in the same field. I addition, this award shares the findings of 'Decommissioning the Twentieth Century', with which it is connected via agreement with the AHRC: We have demonstrated the power of co-creative and co-produced art to allow people to tell different and diverse stories about sites as they enter into decommissioning. Our techniques have been varied, and we are still analysing our data, but each has specific advantages. The careful use of film in the case of Fawley allowed us to capture contested ideas about the potential role of heritage and memory of the site, and crucially, our screening of the film in a nearby village hall revealed that artistic productions like this could be a stimulus to productive discussions about the heritage of such sites in ways that standard consultations on their future can rarely be. Dana Olarescu's work at West Burton, which focussed on a series of artistic workshops at many different venues near to the site, demonstrated the ability of these forms of techniques to engage audiences whose voices are rarely heard in typical consultation processes surrounding decommissioning. Finally, Urban Wilderness's use of parody and character theatre 'flipped' the engagement by encouraging and allowing local people to position themselves as 'experts' over the heritage and memory of Chatterley Whitfield Colliery. Work continues into post-award but this research has already demonstrated the value of co-creative techniques in consultation surrounding the decommissioning of large carbon infrastructure. |
| Exploitation Route | The outcomes will already be utilised in a project on Decommissioning nuclear power plants funded by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and the project has contributed to regeneration plans, as well as further art community engagement projects in the Stoke-on-Trent area, in which Urban Wilderness are closely involved, and which also include a Collaborative Doctoral Award. In the next year, we hope to complete the Policy paper using our research findings, which we hope will be adopted by heritage organisations such as Historic England and the National Trust as a guide and/or toolkit to successful consultation on the heritage of decommissioned industrial infrastructure. A chapter in a British Academy Proceedings publication, based on some of the historical research that we were eventually able to complete, will influence how historians, planners and architects understand trajectories of decommissioning and contribute to wider debates on deindustrialisation and decarbonisation. Finally, the article to Landscape Research (or similar) will contribute to an ongoing debate on the value of creative research methods in landscape research, benefitting both academic researchers and socially engaged artists. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | http://chatterleywhitfield.online |
| Description | Aside from a general sense of impact on the development of a new vision for Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, the primary impact so far has been on our creative partners, Urban Wilderness CIC. We have been able to provide smaller supportive funding for this innovative and leading co-creative arts organisation through the crisis, by supporting the bid to the KISI Kapp fund for the Brownfields project (the product of which, the Urban Commons Charter document, has since been the inspiration for other successful funding bids from creative organisations in the area), and the Being Human Project. While Urban Wilderness also successfully gained other funding through the pandemic, our partnership has been an important part of their current position. Furthermore, the engagement of the organisation with the concept of 'commons' ownership, and with my research on trespass which has inspired much of my research, has altered and shaped their more recent place-based approaches. Over 2021, our research has been used in several other ways. First, officials of the Environment Agency have expressed an interest in carrying out similar research at Winfrith Nuclear research facility, and I have also bid for a new grant with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to fund work on Dounreay based on an expansion of the Decommissioning Projects.. Our findings regarding co-creative art in public engagement are also core to the QR policy support fund highlighted in the relevant Researchfish section. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Energy,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Retail |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Economic,Policy & public services |
| Description | Involvement in the New Vision for Chatterley Whitfield |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Membership of a guideline committee |
| Description | MA Creative Practice |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Chatterley Whitfield Lives Again! (later 'Memories of Mining'). |
| Amount | £2,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Being Human Festival |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Start | 11/2020 |
| End | 11/2020 |
| Description | Keele Institute for Social Inclusion KAPP Awards |
| Amount | £5,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Keele University |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2020 |
| End | 05/2020 |
| Description | North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership: Collaborative Doctoral Awards. |
| Amount | £81,527 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2023 |
| End | 02/2027 |
| Description | Postdoctoral Research Associate Bursary. |
| Amount | £145,839 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Nuclear Decommissioning Authority NDA |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2023 |
| End | 06/2024 |
| Description | UKRI: QR Policy Support Funding |
| Amount | £14,807 (GBP) |
| Organisation | United Kingdom Research and Innovation |
| Department | Research England |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2022 |
| End | 07/2022 |
| Title | Cost-effective crowd sourced heritage tool, with potential to integrate photogrammetric 3D modelling. |
| Description | Cost-effective crowd sourced heritage tool, with potential to integrate photogrammetric 3D modelling. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | We only launched the website last week, and the 3D model has not yet been integrated (it has been impossible to collect the data for during COVID19. |
| URL | http://chatterleywhitfield.online |
| Description | Brownfields International Network |
| Organisation | Staffordshire University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | I have collaborated with Dr Carola Boehm and Dr Anna Francis, along with colleagues from universities in Brazil and Finland, on funding grant applications on the history, heritage and contemporary uses of abandoned urban ('brownfield') sites. So far, our funding bids as a result of this network have not been successful; the most significant one was to the Trans-Atlantic Platform Recovery, Renewal and Resilience in a Post-Pandemic World. |
| Collaborator Contribution | I have collaborated with Dr Carola Boehm and Dr Anna Francis, along with colleagues from universities in Brazil and Finland, on funding grant applications on the history, heritage and contemporary uses of abandoned urban ('brownfield') sites. So far, our funding bids as a result of this network have not been successful; the most significant one was to the Trans-Atlantic Platform Recovery, Renewal and Resilience in a Post-Pandemic World. |
| Impact | 1. Funding bid to Trans-Atlantic Platform Recovery, Renewal and Resilience in a Post-Pandemic World (unsuccessful). |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Chatterley Whitfield Friends |
| Organisation | Chatterley Whitfield Friends |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | We have worked extensively with Chatterley Whitfield Friends over the last 1.5 years. The outcomes have been a new Being Human Festival Project (with Urban Wilderness CIC), involvement in a new regeneration bid for the site, and from 2023, a Collaborative Doctoral Award exploring the post-closure community heritage of the site through successive generations of local residents. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The CWF have been instrumental in keeping the project running over the last year, and are now our most active community on the grant. In addition, they have leant, and allowed me to copy, their entire digital archive of documents for the research on the project. The are now also our collaborative partners on the Collaborative Doctoral Award beginning in 2023. |
| Impact | 'Mining Migrations' Being Human Festival Exhibition, November 2020. The original funding bid for Decommissioning the Twentieth Century and Planning Creativity. The website and online Crowd Sourced heritage tool www.chatterleywhitfield.online - Interdisciplinary: Computer science, Geography, Heritage, History. Museum of Possibilities Artwork - Interdisciplinary: Art/History. AHRC North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership Collaborative Doctoral Award: 'Human and more-than-human pasts, presents and futures at Chatterley Whitfield Colliery', Supervisors: Dr Ben Anderson and Dr Pawas Bisht. Interdisciplinary: History/Heritage/Cultural Studies. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Potential Heritage Project at Winfrith |
| Organisation | Environment Agency |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | The PI (Ben Anderson) along with Adam Gutch and Chu LI Shewring (see Flying Ant Productions partnership) attended an initial informal information sharing event on a potential collaboration at Winfrith Power Station. |
| Collaborator Contribution | James Heavingham (EA) organised an informal information sharing event on a potential collaboration at Winfrith Power Station. James also attended project workshops for our two projects. |
| Impact | None. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Urban Wilderness CIC |
| Organisation | Urban Wilderness CIC |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | We have provided valuable support to Urban Wilderness through the epidemic in the form of funding to support their existing work, and in allowing them to use previous projects as examples to gain other external funding (such as the Wastelands Project. Two key collaborations emerged during this period. 'Brownfield Land and Social Justice: The Urban Commons Charter', in which I acted as an academic facilitator on a project led by UW, and funded by the Keele Institute for Social Inclusion at Keele University. This has now become a core aspect of Urban Wilderness's methodology, as well as providing the intellectual basis for at least one other successful funding bid from Stoke's arts and cultural community. Together with the Chatterley Whitfield Friends, we also produced 'Mining Migrations', funded by the Being Human Festival, and bringing together research from both myself and Urban Wilderness. The exhibition, which existed in situ during November 2020, is now available digitally on Chatterley Whitfield Online (see below). More recently, I have helped Urban Wilderness bid (unsuccessfully) to become a Community Research Network. |
| Collaborator Contribution | We have been working closely with Urban Wilderness since the beginning of our bid, but they are now at the centre of our COVID-19-friendly plans. I first worked with Urban Wilderness on the Being Human Project 'Feral Futures' in 2018. We had planned to involve them as creative consultants on Decommissioning the Twentieth Century, and in order to produce spectacular public art at Chatterley Whitfield in 2020 on it's sister project Planning Creativity. Now, with these two projects being run as one, Urban Wilderness are using their expertise to help us to commission a piece of large public art at each of our three sites of decommissioning. In the mean time, in 2020, we also worked together on the side project emerging from Decommissioning the Twentieth Century, the Being Human Festival Project 'Mining Migrations'. They have been instrumental in developing many of these projects; particularly the notion and process of creating public artworks and research for the Mining migrations project. More recently (2022-3) Urban Wilderness have contributed to teaching at Keele, and continue to be a prospective partner on funding applications (most recently to the Midland Innovation Fund). |
| Impact | There are other websites associated with this collaboration: https://urbanwildernesscic.com/networkoflearning ; https://chatterleywhitfield.online/mining-migrations-being-human-festival-2020/ . The collaboration combines history with artistic practice. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Chatterley Whitfield Heritage Open Days |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | These visits involved me taking part in and listening to discussions related to Chatterley Whitfield. On occasion, this enabled me to develop my own research, but were more important in building trust with the c. 30-40 people who were there each week (they meet every Thursday morning). The attendees were generally active members of the Chatterley Whitfield Friends. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021 |
| URL | http://www.chatterleywhitfieldfriends.org.uk |
| Description | Chatterley Whitfield Online |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We have just launched our website, chatterleywhitfield.online. Alongside information about the project, it is also a crowd-sourced heritage tool, providing a place for the collection of material on Chatterley Whitfield. We hope it provides a focus for research into the site and the collection of people's memories of it, but engagement is currently only a week old. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | http://chatterleywhitfield.online |
| Description | Claybody Theatre Dirty Laundry Podcast |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | As a result of connections made while developing Decommissioning the Twentieth century and Planning Creativity, I was invited to take part in the 'Airing the Issues' Podcast alongside other local figures, discussing the environmental history and heritage of the pottery industry in Stoke. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://claybodytheatre.com/dirty-laundry-podcast/ |
| Description | Creative Decommissioning |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Creative Decommissioning was our end-of-project event. It aimed to bring together representatives from all of the site-project teams in order to begin the process of devising the Policy paper. It constituted two physical parts - one half of the event was an exhibition, and the other half was a series of co-creative exercises designed to introduce participants to our research process and/or collect their views on what should be included in, and what the emphasis should be in the policy paper. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creative-decommissioning-tickets-254428190567 |
| Description | Exhibition tour. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Following Creative Decommissioning, we toured the exhibition element of the project to all three project sites, in part to 'give back' to the study participants, and in part to collect final details about changed minds regarding the future heritage of these sites. The Exhibition 'How to Say Goodbye to a Power Station', at West Burton (St John's Terrace, Gainsborough) on 16.09.2022 for 40 people; A screening of the Fawley Film at Quay Arts Centre, Newport, Isle of Wight, 22.09.2022 for 58 people; and Museum of Possibilities: Exploring Chatterley Whitfield, on 13.10.2022, for 38 people. Other URLs: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/artist-tour-exploring-chatterley-whitfield-tickets-423216410677 https://fb.me/e/23MtsakVn |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fawley-film-screening-talks-exhibition-tickets-400645570687 |
| Description | Fawley Film Project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Partnering with Adam Gutch and Chu Li Shewring, we have co-created a film based on the heritage of Fawley Power Station. Public engagement activities on this aspect of the project (there are an unreasonably large number to list separately, and many will have been informal and beyond the scope of the direct research), are currently limited to those related to actually producing the film - viewings will take place on the 26th March 2022, and will thus fall into the next Researchfish reporting period. Among the various activities that the filmmakers have undertaken have been around 10 site visits to locations including the power station itself, Southampton, the Isle of Wight, and specific installations such as beekeepers hives. In addition to this, a series of c. 10 interviews have been conducted by the filmmakers, some of which appear in the film, and numerous other individuals have provided imput into its contents, including participants from our other local partners, Friends of the New Forest. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| Description | Fawley Film Screening |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | In this workshop/research event, we screened our major co-produced artistic output for the Fawley site across three screenings on a Saturday. This enabled us to gain access to numerous different groups, predominantly nearby residents and past workers at Fawley power station, as well as engineers and those involved in the construction of the site. The designation of 'national' above belies the more local and regional character of the engagement - it is not, however, 'local' to Keele. After the film screening, we collected community memories and heritages of the site as defined by those who were there, which we will use to assess the usefulness of film as a means to promote community ownership and engagement with their own heritages. NB. The following section does not include an outcome/impact of this activity for situations in which engagement is also the research: the most important outcome/impact of this activity was the collection of research data. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://fawleyfilm.co.uk/ |
| Description | General Project Workshops, online. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Alongside our in-person engagement activities, we have held a series of six (so far) workshops. Initial workshops were related to planning, while the second group of three were related to each of the individual sites. We plan to hold a further three workshops either before or after a larger event on the 13th June 2022. Around 15 people have attended each workshop, and they have each led to other activities - increased interest in the local or national project, inspired new activities elsewhere (see Winfrith) or engagement with local artists. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | http://chatterleywhitfield.online |
| Description | Green Thinking: Energy. BBC Radio Three Podcast. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | I took part in a BBC radio 3 'Green Thinking' podcast, in a panel alongside Prof. Frank Trentmann. Much of the discussion was directly about the two DTC projects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0b2774q |
| Description | Mining Migrations Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This featured a series of six banners (still available electronically on chatterleywhitfield.online) exploring different 'migrations' to and from Chatterley Whitfield. QR codes on the banners allowed visitors to listen to audio commentary on the banners, and they were also invited to leave their own comments on them (10 responses were gained). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://chatterleywhitfield.online/mining-migrations-being-human-festival-2020/ |
| Description | Project Relaunch |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This short workshop introduced our newly-planned, covid-19 friendly projects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Twitter account |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We run a project specific twitter account (@ruralmodernism) which informs followers of our activities. It also reports on other projects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021,2022 |
| URL | https://twitter.com/ruralmodernism |
| Description | Urban Wilderness - Chatterley Whitfield Project. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Alongside commissioning and managing co-creative activities at West Burton and Fawley, Urban Wilderness carried out our most innovative forms of public engagement activities at Chatterley Whitfield. I have grouped them together in on heading here on researchfish for ease, but really, this constituted a series of co-ordinated engagement activities based on methods developed alongside professional French-style clown training. The method was accordingly to 'send up' figures of expertise at the site, as well as offering symbolic figures representative of local people's identity. The engagement activities were spread over several weeks and constituted: 1. appearing as the 'spirit' of coal and industrial labour in the Whitfield nature reserve adjoining the site, over the course of a week. Objective: establish appearance in the site for local people. 2. Appearing as workers in the reserve next to the site, undertaking apparently pointless manual labour (sorting rocks and coal), during a weekend. The objective here was to attract curious visitors to ask questions about activities, invite them to take part in the exercise, and establish a confidence of engagement to begin conversations about the meanings of the site. 3. Appear as heritage 'experts' (ie. historians, archaeologists), moving around the site, attempting, but comically failing to find any 'heritage' there, positioning visitors and locals as 'experts', able to tell incomers about the site and establish it as a narrative over which they have ownership. 4. Appearing as 'planning experts' attempting to carry out community engagement over an obviously fake plan to build a huge multistorey car park over the entire site. 5. Exhibiting the material in situ over three heritage open days. This workshop targeted local children and young people from the nearby Fegg Hays community. Exactly how many people were engaged is unclear because of the nature of the activities, but very poor weather for 1-3 meant that engagement was not as hoped - between 10 and 20 in total. Number 4 was indoors, and engaged 15 young people, with significant outcomes and finding for the project - particularly, the continuing importance of the site as an (illegal and dangerous) rite of passage for young people. The Heritage open days were more successful, reaching 38 people in total. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://urbanwildernesscic.com/ |
| Description | West Burton Project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The West Burton part of the project was commissioned to co-creative artist Dana Olarescu, and was, to date, the most successful of the three projects. It included 7 workshops at a variety of venues, such as primary schools, local village halls, and urban community centres - in total, about 50 people attended these, most of which included elements of co-creative art. In addition, Olarescu hired market stalls, carried out interviews with local artists, formed partnerships in the local community (see report below) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://chatterleywhitfield.online/documents/9/West_Burton_Artwork.pdf |