AHRC Impact Award

This project will bring to life the eighteenth-century letters of the Canning Family Network (which include detailed references to Bath and the Assembly Rooms).

It'll do this  through creative writing and theatrical performance workshops with local creative theatre company Kilter Theatre for public visitors to the Assembly Rooms. 

Project team members:

• Rachel Bynoth, School of Design, Bath Spa University
• Bath Assembly Rooms 

This project will explore the development of an Our Town Corsham Community App intended to make it easier for Corsham’s population to locate the right service, project or community group for their needs, with special relevance for Corsham’s Deaf and Disabled community partners and visitors. 

Project team members:

• Tanvir Bush,  School of Education, Bath Spa University
• Corsham Town Council
• Same Difference
• Corsham Connections
• Praminda Caleb-Solly, Professor of Embodied Intelligence, Nottingham University
• Jason Leake, Smart Metrics Ltd

The Radical Trust project aims to work with Fairfield House to think critically about equitable models for partnership work, drawing on Fairfield House’s experiences to uncover and critique any assumptions and colonising modes of thought.

The project will experiment with different forms of relationship-building and knowledge exchange and develop a radically decolonised framework for engaged research and teaching.

Project team members:

• Sarah Morton, School of Writing Publishing and the Humanities, Bath Spa University
• Jenni Lewis, School of Writing Publishing and the Humanities, Bath Spa University
• Fairfield House

Three ‘listening events’ will be held with young people and families from disadvantaged and minority groups, in community venues in Bristol/Bath, Birmingham and Brighton.

The project will hear and capture individuals’ views on barriers they face and how we might reinvent schooling, education and skills opportunities to better support their employment needs in a postdigital society.

Project team members:

• Sarah Hayes, School of Education, Bath Spa University
• Alex Cole, CEO at TIN Ventures
• Michael Jopling, Professor of Education, University of Brighton
• Richard Watermeyer, Professor of Education, University of Bristol

Pavilion for Plastic Dialogues aims to create a plastic pavilion for public engagement activities in Bristol.

Situated in Knowle West Media Centre, the pavilion will serve as a gathering space for ‘plastic dialogues’ and workshops involving young people, residents, local businesses and creative practitioners, connecting participants with the ongoing UN draft Plastics Treaty negotiations.  

Project team members:

• Ben Parry, Reader in Art, Ecology and Social Practice, Bath Spa University
• Knowle West Media Centre
• Plastics Treaty Analysis Working Group

Objects Without Borders investigates the role of puppetry and object performance in connecting people across borders, boundaries and differences, with a focus on using digital spaces to connect people who would not normally be able to connect.

The project draws on the knowledge and experience of people living on and between the borders and boundaries of society including refugees and people from deprived communities.

This phase of the project includes the development of a mobile app embedded within workshops that will be designed to capture impact data. 

Project team members:

• Laura Purcell-Gates, Reader in Drama, Bath Spa University,
• Seenaryo (a UK NGO working with refugee communities in Jordan)
• Dafa Puppet Theatre (a theatre company that runs workshops with refugees in Europe and the Middle East, based in Prague)
• Theatre Orchard (a theatre company that runs engagement projects with deprived and refugee communities in Weston-super-Mare)

This project aims to empower girls in Nepali schools by supporting them to create collages highlighting gender disparities in Nepal's education system.

These will be used to engage policymakers in gender discussions.

The visual narratives presented in an art gallery setting will foster meaningful dialogue among policymakers about gender issues, ultimately advancing gender equity and societal progress. 

Project team members:

Vandana Singh, School of Education, Bath Spa University

Nangi Village School

This project will develop resources to support Key Stage 2 pupils in consolidating and elaborating science concepts to develop rich, interconnected knowledge.

It brings together primary teachers, primary science experts and BSU research led by Kendra McMahon to ensure that the design is suitable for professionals working in real classrooms and is grounded in research. 

Project team members:

• Kendra McMahon, Reader in Education, Bath Spa University
• Primary Science Quality Mark
• primary school teachers

Working in partnership with a Kenyan team of experts in agriculture, youth development, dairy production, decolonising, and futures literacy, this project will develop two Future Literacy Labs in Kinangop and Ol Kalou.

The aim is to reimagine the future of the dairy industry in Kenya and the roles community members (women farmers in particular) envision having.

Project team members:

• Caroline Kuhn, School of Education, Bath Spa University
• Dominic Kimani, community leader and conservationist, Kinangop
• Mary Warui, community leader and value chain expert, Kinangop
• Julius Gatune, UNESCO Chair in Futures Literacy for the East Africa Region at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology
• Fisayo Oyewale, UNICEF Foresight Senior Fellow
• Geci Karuni-Sebina, Associate Professor at the Wits School of Governance

This collaboration with the National Trust aims to create a KE dialogue on how curatorial and public engagement practice can help us think in an innovative way about women, nature, and well-being, encompassing both past and present.  

We will identify collections that would benefit from further research, as well as consider how these objects might be curated to improve public engagement. 

We will hold a one-day roundtable bringing together academics, creative practitioners, and heritage professionals, drawing on expertise from environmental humanities, the heritage industry, arts education, and feminist cultural history. 

Project team members:

• Dr Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi, School of Wrting, Publishing, and the Humanities, Bath Spa University
• Barbara Wood, South-West Regional Curator for the National Trust.

This project is based on Jenni’s research, which looks at how we enable inclusive cultures to develop in our university classrooms but also in the workplaces our students move into. 

It is a partnership between the National Trust team at Bath Assembly Rooms, an undergraduate student at BSU (who will act as a conduit to her peers), and an academic. 

Together they plan to create and pilot a set of materials for the Bath Assembly Room team that will enable them to engage with the wider community in a more inclusive way, and generate and support more sustainable, inclusive practices in their own work culture.

Project team members:

• Dr Jenni Lewis, School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities, Bath Spa University
• Andie-Marie Keough (BSU 2nd year UG student)
• National Trust Bath Assembly Rooms Team. 

Finding Commons provides collective space and sanctity for people challenged by the rising cost and pressure of living in today’s world. By coming together to share and discuss our inner and practical struggles, we work against the privatisation and personalisation of hardship and failure that characterise life in contemporary capitalist societies.  

Bristol and Bath are two of the UK’s most cramped and expensive cities to live in outside London. Each has a worsening lack of affordable or public space to exist in. Private housing is small and expensive to rent. Issues of gentrification, homelessness, and the forced clearance of informally tenanted public land are rife in both cities.    

This project invites those active and organising in support of the growing precariat from each city, whatever the nature of challenges they face, to participate in two large community-level workshops in Bath and Bristol. Creating space to find the commons.

Project team members:

• Dr Rupert Alcock, School of Writing, Publishing, and Humanities, Bath Spa University
• Nadia Idle, Communications strategist, workshop facilitator and community activist. 

We are a group of four diverse researchers and practitioners, coming from different countries (USA, UK, Brazil, and Colombia) and backgrounds, who will use the KE Dialogues scheme to explore diverse approaches to listening, presence, embodiment, and wellbeing within the broader context of diversities (e.g. neuro, ethnic, artistic, epistemic).  

We will hold four workshops, through which we will exchange knowledge on, for example, non-verbal communication, body movement, breathing, Deep Listening practices, migration, and co-regulation, as well as listening and sounding creative technologies.  

We will establish the foundations for a prototype Toolkit for Interdisciplinary Communities of Practice. We will also use the audio material to create and distribute a podcast documenting our process. 

Project team members:

• Dr Ron Herrema, School of Design, Bath Spa University
• Professor Amanda Bayley, School of Music and Performing Arts, Bath Spa University
• Silvia Carderelli-Gronau, Dance artist, researcher
• Dr Ximena Alarcón, Sound artist-researcher. 

The project brings together storytellers and grass roots environmental groups along the Dart to engage local communities with the natural history and local ecology of the river through reimagined oral history and folk tale.  

It aims to raise awareness of present environmental challenges facing the river and its communities, particularly pollution and poor water quality, and encourage participation in positive actions that benefit river health and ecology.  

They will do a series of storytelling events that focus on reimagined folk tales about the river and its nonhuman inhabitants to highlight how it has become degraded in recent history and what we can do as individuals and community groups to remedy the situation.

Project leader:

• Dr Charlotte Lancaster, School of Writing Publishing and Humanities, Bath Spa University
  

Project team members:

• Lisa Schneidau, South Devon Storytellers
• Kelly Rich, Dartmoor Preservation Association
• Ana Simons, Friends of the Dart 

The project brings together storytellers and grass roots environmental groups along the Dart to engage local communities with the natural history and local ecology of the river through reimagined oral history and folk tale.  

It aims to raise awareness of present environmental challenges facing the river and its communities, particularly pollution and poor water quality, and encourage participation in positive actions that benefit river health and ecology.  

They will do a series of storytelling events that focus on reimagined folk tales about the river and its nonhuman inhabitants to highlight how it has become degraded in recent history and what we can do as individuals and community groups to remedy the situation.

Project leader:

• Dr Coral Manton, School of Design, Bath Spa University
  

Project team members:

• Dr Birgitte Aga, Head of R and D and Innovation at MUNCH 

Having developed a series of automated painting systems that make public the role of care through a reliance on others for their activation, Dr Natasha Kidd will partner with Bath based support organisations Off the Record and The Carers Centre to shift the site of this work into two community settings. 

Working in collaboration with groups from the Carers Centre and Off the Record, a new series of automated painting machines will be built, installed, and cared for in these new settings with the aim of identifying, tracking, and evaluating the impact these artworks might meaningfully have on those involved.  

Subsequently, this project aims to establish a tangible method for recording and evaluating the emergent value of being with art works. 

Project team members:

• Dr Natasha Kidd School of Art, Film and Media, Bath Spa University
• Off the Record
• The Carers Centre

This project will develop a virtual ‘AI Wordsworth’; a visual and audial conversational agent to enable new ways of measuring the impact of Artificial Intelligence on public engagement with poetry and heritage institutions while considering ethical and creative issues. 

Visitors to Wordsworth Grasmere during the annual Wordsworth Winter School, held during February and March 2024, will have the opportunity to engage with a 3D AI generated William Wordsworth, based on an 1804 portrait by Henry Edridge, and will be prompted to engage him in conversation.

AI Wordsworth will use natural language processing to generate human-like responses, building on large language models. The impact of the experience for visitors will be measured to inform a future project. 

Project team members:

• Dr Amy Spencer, Research and Enterprise, Bath Spa University
• Jeff Cowton, Principal Curator and Head of Learning at The Wordsworth Trust (WT)
• Richard Godfrey, CEO and co-founder of Rocketmakers.

The project will assess the impact and transformative potential of ethnomusicological research by documenting and evaluating the changes and social benefits that have arisen from musical and other artistic collaborations in Kwando village, northeastern Namibia, in 2023. 
The idea of artistic activities being a catalyst for social change in the Kwando community arose from Amanda Bayley’s first visit in April 2023. The rationale for engaging young people in musical and other artistic activities is to divert their attention away from harmful behaviours such as substance abuse. 

The project will assess the extent to which providing opportunities for skills development in arts disciplines leads towards the strengthening of individual, community, and societal well-being (UN SDG3). Working closely with the community head, other community partners, participants, and researchers from the University of Namibia (UNAM), will demonstrate how music can help to build sustainable partnerships that drive artistic solutions for societal change.   
 

Project team leader:

• Professor Amanda Bayley, School of Music and Performing Arts, Bath Spa University

Project collaborators

• University of Namibia

This project will investigate how writers can extend their creative practice through the use of low-cost, widely available augmented and immersive storytelling tools. It will involve a one-day participatory creative workshop for 8 writers held at The Studio. This will be open to writers in the region, as well as those studying at Bath Spa University.

Project team members:

• Dr Amy Spencer, Research and Graduate Affairs / Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, Bath Spa University
• Dr Agnieszka Przybyszewska, University of Łódź, Poland
• Mitchell Wilson and Lilly Parr, Co-founders, Layerable.

Sound of the Seahorse is an immersive audio journey designed to amplify the relaxing therapeutic benefits of a massage. A prototype will be co-created that will connect the somatic experience of a massage with an immersive soundscape.

Project team leader:

• Dr Ruth Farrar, School of Art, Film and Media, Bath Spa University

Collaborators:

• Steph Winnard, Producer from All About Creative
• Nik Rawlings, sound artist
• Sam Kelly, BSU-in-residence massage therapist
• Andrew Cooke, composer 

Tulips and Tractors will focus on the development and delivery of a circular walk between Bath City Farm and Wares Nursery. Stories, artwork, local memories and wildlife data will be gathered to open conversations on place and belonging as well as on issues of land use, land ownership, horticulture and agriculture.

Project team leader:

• Dr Richard White, School of Art, Film and Media, Bath Spa University

Collaborators:

• Claire Loder, artist
• Brendan Wistreic, Director of Bath City Farm

The Ideas Bank aims to provide practical advice and guidance to individuals who want to translate ideas for their community into research and/or action. 

The project will include live, in-person engagements, presented as a faux bank that invites local people to deposit their ideas for the bank to invest in. They will be connected with academics who can collaborate on research projects, and given practical advice to realise their idea.

Project team member:

• Ruby Sant, Creative and Culture Development Officer, Bath Spa University

Collaborators:

• Jonathan Eldridge, Writer, Evaluator and Creative Researcher
• Louise Rennie, Street/Event Theatre Artist.

Haunting the Archives empowers young people to tell entangled social and natural histories of Bristol’s Ashton Court estate. Working with material held in libraries and museums across the city, young people reveal lost and silenced queer, colonial and working-class histories haunting the archives, and then work together with participatory artist Jack Young and theatre-maker Elinor Lower to devise an original creative production.

This collaborative work will reveal the labour behind the creation of Ashton Court’s wealth, and expose practices of colonial extraction which furnished its interiors and beautified its gardens. As historians and storytellers, young people lead the way in showing how history can be made exciting, accessible, and relevant as a way of looking at the present and imagining the future in critical and creative ways. Working with Dr Samantha Walton, the team then will create an interactive and dynamic community theatre toolkit to inspire other groups of young people to work with archives in their local area. 

Project leader:

• Dr Samantha Walton, School of Writing Publishing and Humanities, Bath Spa University
  

Collaborators:

• Jack Young, writer and participatory artist
• Elinor Lower, Theatre Maker
• Ashton Court.