The Exchange is delighted to announce the second tranche of award recipients for The Exchange Collaborative Research Awards. Full list below.

These collaborations will each receive seed funding of £5,000 to allow the academics and creatives to work together on their ideas / avenues of inquiry. 

If you are a creative, or an ECR from one of our Exchange HEI partner universities , and you are interested in putting forward an application for Round 3, the final funding round of the Exchange project, you will have the opportunity to apply in 2017.

Dates for 2017 will be announced shortly.

ROUND TWO AWARDEES

Project Name:  Artists in Tech Cities
Company:  SPACE
Director:  Anna Harding
Academic Partner:  Shin Joung Yeo and Toby Miller, Loughborough University

SPACE is a London-based visual arts organisation championing artist professional development. SPACE actively promotes creative and technological innovation and consolidates the positioning of artists in society. SPACE also delivers Learning and Participation projects for schools, young people and communities neighbouring SPACE studio sites, to promote engagement with creativity and the arts.

Shin Joung and Toby, Loughborough University, bring together political economy, policy analysis, participant observation, and textual analysis of the cultural sector. Their experience includes both scholarly research and work undertaken for the private and public sectors more generally, and collaborations with social movements and third-sector organizations.

Their collaborative research project ‘Artists in Tech Cities’ seeks to develop a better understanding of the social forces and processes that occur in the creation of technological hubs in spaces formerly occupied by artists. This project will look at examples of mixed-use tech hubs in regenerated areas nationally and internationally, to understand the dynamics and identify the roles that artists should play in creating a more just city — a “tech hub” where arts are valued and artists are supported beyond the market.

Project Name:  Creating new Fictions through Immersive Storytelling
Company:  Jotta
Director:  Ben James
Academic Partner:  Anna Kiernan, Falmouth University

Jotta brings installation design on an architectural scale together with emerging technologies and content creation to realise new possibilities within live and virtual environments.

Research partner, Anna Kiernan, Falmouth University, has a research focus primarily on writing culture and cultural value. With a background in book publishing, Anna is particularly interested in ethnographic participation with interpretative communities through interviews, social media and other forms of audience engagement.

Their collaborative research project ‘Creating new Fictions through Immersive Storytelling’ will manifest these overlapping concerns through a preoccupation with narrative agency, in which participants are invited to read a text and then work with the researchers to visualise the environment within the text as they see it using 3D design software. The project will be exploring the significant potential for enhancing engagement with literary texts through non-traditional media.

Project Name:  Granby Winter Garden: experiments in co-produced artistic programming
Director:  Maria Brewster
Academic Partner:  Sue Potts, Liverpool John Moores University

Maria Brewster is an independent arts producer with an established track record in working with communities to access the imagination, creativity and energy of artists; supporting them to produce their own cultural voice; or to provide creative approaches to urgent community concerns. Over the last year, Maria has worked with Granby Community Land Trust and Turner-Prize winning collective Assemble to conceptualize and raise capital funds for their Winter Garden, which will transform two derelict terraced houses into a beautiful, useful urban glasshouse and arts space in the heart of one of the UK’s most diverse and deprived communities.

Maria’s research partner, Sue Potts, from the Institute of Cultural Capital, LJMU, has been measuring the impacts of collaboration and co-production through conducting evaluative research with Liverpool Community Radio, Liverpool Culture Company, Merseyside Arts Foundation and Tate Liverpool.

Their collaborative research project ‘Granby Winter Garden: experiments in co-produced artistic programming’ will explore their shared interests in community co-production, and utilize their complementary skills and expertise to  design an artistic programme for the Winter Garden that has meaning and impact, socially and artistically, responding to the needs, desires and interests of local people.

Project Name:  Mulliontide,  part of ‘Miss You Already’
Company:  Louise Ann Wilson Company Ltd
Director:  Louise Ann Wilson
Academic Partner:  Dr Bryony Onciul, University of Exeter

Louise Ann Wilson makes multisensory site-specific walking performances that seek to articulate, reflect upon and transform significant ‘missing’ or significant life-events.

Louise’s research partner, Dr Bryony Onciul, University of Exeter, is a heritage and museums specialist. She focuses upon community engagement, the importance of place, tangible and intangible heritage, and how people cope and recover from the loss or removal of their heritage (due to climate change, coastal erosion, colonisation or cultural change).

Their collaborative research project ‘Mulliontide’ is a walking performance that addresses how art practice contributes to the consultation processes around managing sites of coastal heritage that are threatened by climate change. It is one of a series being organised by Golden Tree Productions supported by the National Trust. It will investigate the site of Mullion’s coastline and the harbour walls at Mullion Cove and research the social issues of dealing with material loss and engage with local groups.  Their investigation will be informed by the work of cultural geographer Caitlin DeSilvey (University of Exeter), which compares reluctance to accept the death of a loved one to the loss of a seemingly permanent physical feature. Mulliontide will be created in collaboration with local residents, historians, choirs, generations of fishermen, collectors of flotsam and jetsam, a botanical artist, surfers and lifeguards, school children, National Trust rangers, surveyors, and palliative care nurses. Participants will be immersed in the landscape animated by these people and visual installations.

Project Name:  Our Neck of the Woods
Company:  Larking Arts
Director:  Bridget Floyer
Academic Partner:  Dr Patrick Duggan, University of Surrey

Bridget Floyer is an independent producer with fifteen years experience producing community and contemporary theatre projects with arts organisations and individual artists. Larking Arts is a not-for-profit arts organization that Bridget has founded in Farnham to produce and promote contemporary theatre and other art.

Bridget’s research partner, Dr Patrick Duggan, University of Surrey,  asks in his research what performance is for and what it does culturally, politically, socially, aesthetically. Within this overarching frame, his research interests lie in critical approaches to contemporary performance and the relationship between performance and the wider socio-cultural and political contexts in which it is made.

Their collaborative research project ‘Our Neck of the Woods’ will map cultural activity in Farnham. Not just what’s on offer from formal institutions but whatever people do to be creative, from knitting to playing in the local band to doodling on a shopping list. Maps in various forms, works of art in their own right, will be created by local residents alongside artists. They might be anything: paper flowers in a garden or an illustration around all the walls of a room. They’ll be documented, and shared. This project aims to inform cultural planning with diverse voices, building more sustainable engagement, and challenge current notions of excellence, interrogating closely the impact of community arts engagement.

Project Name:  Reveal – coming out visually
Company:  Portraits of Recovery
Director:  Mark Prest
Academic Partner:  Dr Amanda Ravetz, Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University

Portraits of Recovery (PORe) is a UK based, international visual arts and education charity. Founded in 2011 by Mark Prest, the organisation’s work supports people and communities affected by and in recovery from substance misuse to open up new ways of knowing and looking at the subject by working with contemporary visual art and artists.

Research partner, Dr Amanda Ravetz, Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University, is a visual anthropologist with research interests and expertise in the interdisciplinary connections between anthropology and art/design; the theories and practices of observational cinema; and artist development.

Their collaborative research project ‘REVEAL’ will work with 3 artists to support practice-led, visual research into the diversity of 3 under-represented groups from within Greater Manchester’s recovery community. The project will seek to gain a better understanding of the specific needs, requirements or barriers to recovery for BME, LGBT & Disability Recoverist groups.

Project Name: Rearrangements
Director:  Caroline Horton
Academic Partner: Dr Jacqueline Taylor, Birmingham City University

Caroline Horton is a theatre maker, writer and performer, an associate at Birmingham Rep and BBC Birmingham Writer in Residence.

Caroline’s research partner is Dr Jacqueline Taylor, Birmingham City University, whose research critically examines relations between visual art, poetics and philosophy with a particular focus on the textual concept and practice of l’écriture féminine.

Their collaborative research project ‘Rearrangements’ is a critical, practical and creative interrogation of narrative, form and structure and how this affects meaning-making when encountering/interpreting artistic practice. ‘Rearrangements’ opens up a site of exchange between Caroline’s expertise as a theatre-maker who experiments with form in her work and Jacqueline’s academic specialism of l’écriture féminine, which proposes alternative linguistic structures, narratives and forms to create ‘other’ languages.

Project Name:  Resonant Spaces
Company:  Shelley James Glass
Director:  Shelley James
Academic Partner:  Dr Scott McLaughlin, University of Leeds

Shelley James’s current practice plays with the tension between the visible and invisible, fluid and frozen, ordinary and extraordinary.

Shelley’s research partner, Dr Scott McLaughlin, University of Leeds, researches composition through materiality of sounding objects in conjunction with extended graphic/textual notation. Scott works with experienced improvisers and experimental musicians.

Their collaborative research project ‘Resonant Spaces’ will see them create an immersive performance where light is projected through rotating glass structures to reveal the glass grain, which is then interpreted as a dynamic graphic score by musicians. They will use their experiences to date to inform glassworks that are purpose built for complex and interesting performance interaction, and work with musicians intensively to create a rich mapping between light and sound.

Project Name: The Creative Business  – Enhancing business practice in the arts-based creative industries
Director: Antonia Beck
Academic Partner: Jacob Salder, Birmingham City University

Antonia Beck is an independent artist and creative producer specialising in performance-based work that spans theatre, live literature, outdoor arts, live art and other interdisciplinary performance practices.

Antonia’s research partner, Jacob Salder, Birmingham City University, is an economic geographer and economic development specialist through qualification and experience. He has spent a number of years researching different sectors, including the Creative Industries, in various Economic Development roles for local and regional government.

Their collaborative research project ‘The Creative Business – Enhancing business practice in the arts-based creative industries’ will look at business practice in this sector, focusing on arts / performance-based creative industries (ABCIs) and examine this against orthodox understandings. They will consider how applicable these understandings are to ABCIs and how they can be refined to support business development in this sector. The project will produce key outputs in the shape of intensive guidance for a set of ABCIs alongside creating an analysis and support framework specific to this sub-sector, enabling creatives to develop their businesses.

Project Name:  The Museum of Us: Archiving Community Dance
Company:  People Dancing
Director:  Chris Stenton
Academic Partner:  Jayne Stevens, De Montfort University

People Dancing is the UK development organisation for participatory dance. People Dancing create and develop opportunities for people to experience dance in all its diversity. They have a 30 year track record of delivering programmes at scale.

Research partner, Jayne Stevens, De Montfort University, has expertise in qualitative research methodologies, including techniques for developing grounded theory and interpretive research of professional practice. She is a passionate advocate for community dance with knowledge of the sector and its history as well as an experienced creator, evaluator and user of learning resources and archival materials.

Their collaborative project ‘The Museum of Us: Archiving Community Dance’, will research issues concerning the capture, interpretation and dissemination of the community and participatory dance practices developed in the UK over the last 30 years, which have gained international recognition. Their long-term ambition is to develop a ‘living archive’ for such practices.