Writing Landscape and Setting in the Anthropocene: Britain and Beyond
Editors: Philippa Holloway and Craig Jordan-Baker. Including contributions from Mark Brown, Martin Brown, Lisa Mansell, Mel Ebdon, Philippa Holloway, and many others.
Explores the role of landscape and place in creative writing, in a world deeply affected by human interventions
Includes case studies from Britain and beyond, as well as theoretical chapters examining creative practice and process
Responds to current debates about the writer’s practice and social conversations about our relationship to nature
The new book has been published by an international group of academics, including C3 members that focus on Stoke-on-Trent as a place. The book launch took place on 10/07/2024, and the recording will be linked soon.
This edited collection offers an in-depth exploration of the role of landscape and place as literary ‘settings’. It examines the multifaceted relationships between authors, narrators, and characters to their locales, as well as broader considerations of the significance of the representation of landscape in a world deeply affected by human interventions. Consisting of case studies of projects that engage with these questions, as well as research examining the theoretical underpinnings of both creative practices/processes and post-textual analysis of published works, this volume is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary in scope. In the context of the climate crisis and a pandemic which has caused us to re-evaluate the significance of landscape and the environment, it responds to the need to engage current trends within the academy and in broader social debate about our relationship to the natural world.
On 29 March 2023, Carola Boehm gave a talk at CHIME https://www.chime.ac.uk/ , bringing together some key thematic discourses from both higher education policy.
The recording from the first session of ‘Rebellious Research’ (Arts/practice-based research seminar series) is now available to watch online: ‘Tentacular thinking’ in Creative Practice Research as a Radical Intellectual Gesture by Agnieszka Piotrowska.
‘Tentacular thinking’ in Creative Practice Research as a Radical Intellectual Gestureby
Agnieszka Piotrowska (Reader in Film, SODA, MMU & Professor, Film and Cultural Studies, The University of Gdańsk). Wednesday 26th October 2022, 15:30-17:00 (GMT)
In this talk, Agnieszka Piotrowska considere the notion of what ‘knowledge’ might be for a creative research practitioner and how ‘high theory’ might be of assistance in inspiring ideas and creative strategies. She will share her most recent experience of working across disciplines with the new experimental film Wash (2022). It is a hybrid documentary with element of animation and drama dealing with serious issues of development in Zimbabwe, a country in which she has done much work over the years. The piece of work has been funded by Strategic England Research 2021 and the University of Edinburgh.
This partnership, recorded on 19 May 2022, was co-devised by colleagues at Keele University, Staffordshire University and Age UK Oxfordshire, as part of the Age of Creativity Festival 2022 and Creative Later Life 2025.
The keynote presentations and panel discussions around creative aging and placemaking, is now avaiable from the link above.
C3 Centre’s Professor Carola Boehm gave a talk on #Culture30Walks: How Creative is your Place?
Speakers included:
Professor David Amigoni FEA- Director, Keele Institute for Social Inclusion (KISI), Keele Deal Culture & ArtsKeele (chair)
Carola Boehm– Professor of Arts and Higher Education, Staffordshire University
Rose Gilroy-Professor of Ageing Planning and Policy, Chair of Future Homes Alliance, School of Architecture Planning and Landscape
Steven Millington– Director/ Senior Fellow at The Institute of Place Management and Reader in Place Management at Manchester Metropolitan University
Jason Jones-Hall– Director of Development, Five10Twelve
Neil Johnson– Engagement Project Lead, Liverpool City Region
It covers topics and case studies exploring the following:
How does creativity/ culture contribute to ‘vibrant’ places for older people beyond local tourism?
What constitutes a creative/ cultural ‘asset’ to older communities experiencing inequality?
What ‘value’ do we give creativity/culture and older communities experiencing inequalities in rebranding places?
What role does place based leadership have in making places both ‘Creative/ Cultural’ and ‘Age Friendly’?
How can inequalities be tackled by ‘making’ in place and is this place leadership?
Guest Speakers: Dr Jackie Reynolds and Colette Dobson who will talk about
This session focuses on research that leads to benefits beyond academia. It examines the challenges and opportunities for developing impact case studies based on practice-based research for the REF (Research Excellence Framework). Colette Dobson will discuss the impact of her collaborative research that addressed a need for better communication between patients and health care professionals about the sexual consequences of treatments for cancer. She will share her insights gained from the process of collecting impact evidence and developing a REF2021 impact case study.
Live Streamed from our APU partners in Malaysia, the International Women’s Day Edition of the ISUC Plaza Series presented three keynotes by women leaders, including C3 Centre’s Carola Boeh,.
Carola Boehm’s keynote, as part of the three keynotes presented, was titled:
Culture 3.0 saves the world: Sustainability & Diversity in an era of Co-creation
Abstract: Even before the pandemic, along with many other countries, the UK was beginning to see a shift in how we valued our engagement in cultural activities, culminating in the 2021 Arts Council England’s 10-year strategy of “Let’s Create” (ACE, 2021). For communities and individuals, it firmly focussed resources to support active participation in arts and culture. This represented a move of investment towards civil society engaging actively in cultural production, rather than merely being passive cultural consumers. In Luigi Sacco’s words, this is a cultural struggle between what he calls Culture 1.0 versus Culture 3.0.
In Sacco’s conceptualisation, Culture 1.0 is characterised by patronage, limited audiences, gate keepers, value absorption and limited structural markets (Sacco, 2013). Thus, Culture 1.0 is seen to be highly elitist and exclusionary, it has resulted in arts audiences and leadership of our European top cultural institutions to be predominantly white and upper middle class (ACE, 2019). And this is a problem, according to Sacco. With Europe being ‘hung up on Culture 1.0’, it is holding Europe back in its innovation and productivity potential (Sacco, 2011). The UK and the US has taken a slightly different path since the late 90s, influenced by its focus on the creative industries, with its emphasis on IP and copyright (BEIS, 2018; Flew, 2011; Cunningham, 2014). This is Culture 2.0, and I have written about how the UK and US are in turn hung up on Culture 2.0, supporting extractive and exploitative models that have inherent gatekeeping functions. This is in turn holding both the UK and the US back to allow its creative and cultural activities to benefit its societies in equitable, fair and diversity-supporting manner (Boehm, 2017, 2016). However, Culture 3.0 is fast becoming the dominant type of cultural engagement to make arts and culture more inclusive and more impactful. It is characterised by ‘everyday creativity’, co-creation, open platforms, ubiquitously available production tools and individuals constantly shifting and renegotiating their roles between producing and consuming content. This ‘doing away’ with gatekeepers supports access, diversity and is evidenced to simply make all our lives healthier, happier, more creative and more resilient.
Whereas having predominantly Culture 1.0 types of cultural engagement will result in elitism and exclusivity. Culture 2.0 creates a highly neo-liberal, worker-exploitative model. But Culture 3.0 has the promise of providing the balance and Sacco suggests the new power centres of this type of cultural engagement are emerging in Asia, and is characterised by mass production, unlimited reproducibility, large audiences, and significant turnover and profits. So in this presentation, using the lenses of Culture 1.0 to 3.0, I will explore solutions for shaping our creative sectors and industries in our creative cities towards becoming more sustainable, more fair and more diverse. (Boehm, 2022)
References
ACE (2019). Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case. A data report. ACE 2018 – 2019. [Online]. Manchester.
ACE (2021). Let’s Create: Our strategy 2020-2030 | Arts Council England. [Online]. Manchester, UK..
BEIS (2018). UK Creative Industries Sector Deal.
Boehm, C. (2016). Academia in Culture 3.0: a Crime story of Death and Rebirth (but also of Curation, Innovation and Sector Mash-ups). REPERTÓRIO: Teatro & Dança. 19 (27). p.pp. 37–48.
Boehm, C. (2022). Arts and Academia. Emerald Publishing. To be published in 2022.
Boehm, C. (2017). The end of a Golden Era of British Music? Exploration of educational gaps in the current UK creative industry strategy. In: R. Hepworth-Sawyer, J. Hodgson, J. Paterson, & R. Toulson (eds.). Innovation In Music: performance, production, technology and business. Taylor & Francis/Routledge.
Cunningham, S. (2014). ‘Hidden Innovation: Industry, Policy and the Creative Sector.’ Lanham MD: Lexington Books.
Flew, T. (2011). The Creative Industries: Culture and Policy. 1st edition. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Sacco, P.L. (2011). Web Page. Culture 3.0: A new perspective for the EU 2014 -2020 structural funding programming.
Sacco, P.L. (2013). Culture 3.0: The impact of culture on social and economic development, & how to measure it. Prepared for Scientific support for growth and jobs: Cultural and creative industries Conference. p.p. 21.
In this session, we consider existing strategies for cultural production that masquerade as avantgarde, while potentially in fact perpetuating an ideological status-quo. The role of the auteur is implicated in these strategies and examined in both presentations. The question is asked: what sort of art is really needed for our future societies?
In this session: Wednesday 2 March 2022, Room T101
Dr. Andrew Stubbs: Talent Managers and their Indie-Auteur Clients: Understanding the Conematization of Television
Becky Nunes: 15 Minutes of Fame. Andy Warhol, Facebooks and the Work of Luke Willlis Thomspn
Guest Speaker: Dr Charlie Tweed With the traditional publications still defining many academic careers, it becomes a challenging task for researchers working with practice-based methods. Luckily, the emergence of alternative platforms for dissemination makes this task more attainable and relevant to various non-conventional outputs. This session explores the possibilities and challenges of practice-based focused online journals and other platforms focusing on alternative forms of research-based in creative methods.
New Civic Imaginaries proposes a shared civil space of ideas that “belong” to society rather than to the individual or the institution. The presentations, chaired by Becky Nunes, collected here represent the fields of research that faculty of the School of DTA at Staffordshire University are currently engaged with.
In this session:
Wednesday 2 February 2022. 3.30-5.00 p.m
Dr. Maria Martinez Sanchez: The Fun Palace: Architecture, Theatre and Cybernetics
Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series (led by Agata Lulkowska at Staffordshire University)
Catch up on past events in this series, a place for inspiring discussions about art/practice-based research and methods. More details of the whole series: https://www.agatalulkowska.com/seminar-series
Session 4: Methodological quagmires in the post-disciplinary era
19th January | 15:30-17:00
Guest speaker: Prof. Carola Boehm
Although Practice-as-Research has been welcomed in the academic communities, it often finds itself in positions needing to justify its effectiveness. The resistance to new methodologies is common when looking at the evolution of interdisciplinary research enquiry, and practice-as-research is often inter- or even trans-disciplinary in its nature and thus encounters the age-old divide between those methodologies supporting theoretical enquiries and those supporting practically oriented lines of enquiry. And as our knowledge domains grew, this left additional tensions in the choice or acceptance of research methodologies. My presentation will foreground this in the context of ever-growing knowledge domains that are in need of new methodological developments.
