This event, part of the University of York's Impact Fortnight, featured a panel with speakers from the National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange, NCACE, and the University of York. The panel Q&A was followed by a workshop allowing participants to explore the issues raised in more depth. Participants included external partners based in York and University of York researchers and research support staff.
Suzie Leighton (NCACE)
Suzie Leighton is co-director of the National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange (NCACE). She previously co-founded the Culture Capital Exchange in 2011. Suzie also developed and directed a project called The Exchange co-funded by HEFCE and Arts Council England in 2016-18, and was a Co-Investigator on the Arts Council England flagship Boosting Resilience project. Her professional background encompasses dance and theatre production and management, a 5 year stint at Arts Council England as a Senior Officer and a secondment as a researcher to the DCMS Select Committee.
Emily Hopkins (NCACE)
Emily Hopkins is NCACE’s senior manager for research, evidence and policy. A PhD student in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, Emily’s work combines urban and cultural geographies to provide a relational analysis of arts-led regeneration strategies, specifically looking at the lived experiences of independent artists in Coventry, DCMS UK City of Culture 2021. Throughout her doctoral research, she has worked within DCMS and been an active member of the Cities of Culture Research Network.
Rachel Cowgill (University of York)
Rachel Cowgill joined the University of York as Professor of Music in 2019, having previously held professorships at Huddersfield, Cardiff and Liverpool Hope universities. Currently, Rachel is University Research Theme Champion for Creativity, and Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project, ‘The Internet of Musical Events: Digital Scholarship, Community, and the Archiving of Performance’ (InterMusE)
Dee Dyas (University of York)
Dee Dyas co-directs the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture and its new arm, Heritage360, at the University of York. Dee is professor of the History of Christianity. Her research is primarily focused on the history, experience and significance of pilgrimage from the earliest centuries to the present, and the interaction of Christian belief and practice with Western culture.
Kate Giles (University of York)
Kate Giles co-directs the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture and its new arm, Heritage360, at the University of York. Kate is a specialist in historic buildings and combines her work at the Centre for Christianity and Culture with her role as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology.
Following the panelists' presentations and the Q&A, attendees discussed the following key questions in breakout rooms:
What do place and placemaking mean for you?
How can the arts and culture sector and researchers collaborate effectively in placemaking?
How might your own work have impact in this area?
Explore the themes that emerged from these discussions
One of the points that came out of these discussions most clearly was that people and communities make places. As such, cultural and academic institutions involved in knowledge exchange need to understand each other's priorities, and especially those of the communities with whom they work. Building relationships on this basis can nurture organisations over the longer term.
Cultural initiatives can reframe how people think about places and help communities to rediscover spaces. Yet this placemaking role requires sensitivity. Places and their meanings are often already established at the grassroots level, and seeming to reshape these from the outside can be harmful. In York, doing community engagement in the suburbs and in spaces like community libraries rather than only in the city centre is important.