Projects

We are all part of a project called ‘Taking Yourselves Seriously: Artistic Approaches to Social Cohesion’. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, through their Connected Communities programme, and our project will draw upon initial research on what artists do in communities in order to explore the potential of the arts for working to support social cohesion.

The project team will use findings from a project that explored what artists did in community projects (‘Co-producing Legacy’), alongside other research methods, to demonstrate how community based research is a process that actively generates living knowledge.

Aims:

    1. To extend existing partnerships with a focus on social cohesion to explore innovative artistic methods in the context of participatory research.
    2. To develop new partnerships to create programs that support young people in communicating with one another effectively across different social and ethnic divides.
    3. To create resources for use by future community researchers whose work is collaborated with ARVAC, to be available on their website.
    4. To reflect upon, and distribute these ideas with a focus on how arts and humanities methodologies can be applied into the field of practice.

Objectives:

The objective is to create a set of resources that community researchers can use in collaboration with ARVAC, our partner organisation. Community partners will be involved in making these resources relevant and co-produced. This process will involve:

    1. Expanding ideas about artistic practice so these become useful in applied contexts, such as in schools and communities.
    2. Developing creative and linguistic methodologies to support young people. The three contexts in which we will be working are as follows: an adventure playground; a school; a community project.
    3. Developing in-depth resources to support social cohesion that draw on everyday voices and forms of knowledge using creative methodologies including film, poetry and the visual arts.

All in all, this project will clarify and promote national strategies and frameworks with a sustainable legacy that intends to inform future projects that are aiming to build collaborative spaces for exploration, change and creating knowledge.