Co-producing legacy: new research project

Centre Director, Dr Helen Graham, has recently started working on a new collaborative research project looking at the role of artists within the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Connected Communities projects.

Co-producing Legacy involves academics from universities in Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester and will explore how artists work within the AHRC Connected Communities programme, using recent projects as a starting point. The Connected Communities programme was set up to connect up research on communities, and to connect communities with research, bringing together community-engaged research across a number of core themes. The themes include community health and wellbeing, community creativity, prosperity and regeneration, community values and participation, sustainable community environments, places and spaces, and community cultures, diversity, cohesion, exclusion, and conflict.

One aspect of Connected Communities has encouraged arts and humanities academics to work in different ways with communities to co-produce research across a range of disciplines. Many academics have worked with artists to realize ideas and help with a community engaged approach to research. At the same time artists have framed, challenged and theoretically informed engaged research.

Through this new Co-producing Legacy project, Dr Helen Graham at the University of Leeds will specifically examine the role of art and design practice in one of her recent Connected Communities projects, Ways of Knowing, exploring how it enables ways of re-imagining and re-articulating participatory research with communities. The project experimentally explored the different ‘ways of knowing’ which emerge from collaborative, participatory or action research. It tried out various research techniques such as storytelling approaches, craft and making, and Socratic Dialogue, as a way of collectively reflecting on the ways in which we know about the world.

Dr Graham said of the research:

‘I’m really excited to be part of Co-producing Legacy. A really crucial part of the AHRC Connected Communities Ways of Knowing project was to explore the potential of art and design practices within collaborative and participatory research. This AHRC Connected Communities Legacy project has given us a chance to deepen our understandings of how ‘making’, 'art’ and ‘craft' work to create collaborative space and individual and collective articulation through looking across a wide number of projects and types of practices.’

Co-producing Legacy is led by Kate Pahl (School of Education, University of Sheffield), Helen Graham (School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds) Steve Pool (Artist) and Amanda Ravetz (Manchester School of Art). The team will work with a wider team of academics and researchers, alongside Castlefield Art Gallery, A-N artists network, Arts Council England.

The project is based at the University of Sheffield and runs to February 2014. For more information, email Dr Helen Graham: h.graham@leeds.ac.uk

Image: detail taken from a picture by Tessa Holland, reflecting on the Ways of Knowing project