Spaces of Hope aims to produce the first sustained history of community-led planning in the UK documenting the diverse and previously hidden ways in which people have come together to care for the future of their local environments and exploring what their efforts mean for contemporary approaches to planning and participatory place-making.
Jade Spencer has written an article entitled The People’s Plan for the Royal Docks for ERA magazine to find “inspiration in the current moment’: ideas for what Mark Fisher called ‘an alternative modernity’, piercing the neoliberal logic of development which risks defining our recent history”.
Kashmir is the centre of both a geopolitical struggle between India and Pakistan and an indigenous independence movement, one of the most militarised areas in the world. Since 1989 more than 80,000 people have been killed and everyday life is marked by the presence of military, curfews, stone-pelting and demonstrations. Children are particularly vulnerable in militarised areas and healing trauma is central for sustainable peace.
Hydrocitizenship was an AHRC-funded project which investigated and contributed to ways in which communities live with each other and their environment in relation to water in a range of UK neighbourhoods.
This 3 year project investigated and made creative contributions to the ways in which citizens and communities live with each other and their environment in relation to water in a range of UK neighbourhoods. The research asked a series of questions about what communities are, how they function, and the role of environmental (water) assets and issues in the coming together of communities, conflicts within and between communities, and progress to interconnected community and environmental resilience.
Active Energy: Three Mills formed part of the research in the Lee Valley.
Research Team
There were teams in Bristol, Lee Valley, Borth & Tal-y-bont (mid Wales) and Yorkshire, involving altogether eight universities.
Principal Investigator: Professor Owain Jones (Bath Spa University)
The Lee Valley Team was led by Professor Graeme Evans (Middlesex University)
Artist/consultants: Dr. Loraine Leeson and Simon Read (Middlesex University)
Culmination of an AHRC funded arts-community network project between UK and India addressing water scarcity in rural Rajasthan
https://rajasthanwater.weebly.com/
9:30 for 10am start – 4:00 pm
Friday 5th October 2018
M Shed
Princes Wharf, Wapping Rd
Bristol BS1 4RN
https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/m-shed/
This one-day seminar will reflect on the potential and role of the arts and creative practice to address critical global challenges:
Presentations by Michael Buser, Loraine Leeson, MS Rathore, Nina Sabnani,
Anurupa Roy and Neelam Raina
FREE, but places are limited
For further information contact Michael.Buser@uwe.ac.uk
An AHRC funded project in collaboration with social scientist Dr. Michael Buser at University of West of England and Dr. Manohar Singh Rathore, Director, Centre for Environment and Development Studies, Jaipur.
The project explores how participatory arts practice can contribute to increased understanding of, and present solutions to, water scarcity in Rajasthan, India’s driest state, where environmental scientists have been struggling to get across this information. Puppeteer Anurupa Roy of Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust and artist/storyteller Professor Nina Sabnani from the IDC School of Design Mumbai, worked with villagers in the desert regions. The aim was to retrieve and re-introduce into the villages local knowledge on water conservation that had been lost for a generation. Nina Sabnani engaged traditional painters from the Shekhavati region to produce a mural and a travelling scroll to re-tell its story of water harvesting and how this could be revived.
Anurupa Roy worked with children who liaised with grandparents to produce a shadow puppet show to take around schools to inform local communities.
