The association of stitching to health and wellbeing
The Co-Stitch Initiative is a co-produced research project bringing together academics from across the University of Bristol with civic partners, groups, individuals and the creative industries to explore what stitching does in communities. As part of the initiative, facilitators are working with participants in different communities across the Bristol region and supporting them with stitching… Continue reading→
The Co-Stitch Initiative and what it’s taught me about stitching
By Kate Bowen-Viner, PhD candidate and Brigstow Co-Stitch Researcher When I was 15 years old, I was an avid stitcher and sewer. I even sewed a silk dress for my then two year old niece and hand embroidered the decorations (see picture below)! I’m not sure exactly why, but I stopped sewing/stitching regularly after that… Continue reading→
What the “Co-Stitch” initiative shows us about research impact.
By Kate Bowen- Viner, PhD Candidate and Brigstow Co-Stitch Researcher According to the UKRI, research impact is the effect that knowledge generated in research has beyond academia. As such, and as Śliwa and Kellard (2022) point out, in academia it is often assumed that research impact is quantifiably measurable and happens after a researcher has… Continue reading→
Cross-Fertilising Ideas about DIRT: Climate Change, Storytelling and the Underground Circus
By Rachel Hare, from the Brigstow funded project Engaging Multi-Generational Audiences on Climate Change through Storytelling and Physical Theatre Climate change is perhaps the most significant challenge of the twenty-first century, but how do we open up conversations and inspire people to take positive action? Funded by Brigstow, our ideas exchange brought creatives and academics… Continue reading→
Creativity in Relearning Interdependence
Relearning Interdependence was an exploration into how we step back into a restorative relationship with our landscapes. How do we find a way of being that sustains ourselves and the landscapes we permeate? We knew from very early on that this exploration needed to be multifaceted. We needed to find multiple ways to ask and… Continue reading→
How do we relearn interdependence?
We set out in our project to better understand the process of relearning interdependence between landscape and community. Something all those involved in the project believed had been seriously degraded if not lost through rhetoric the separation that has seeped through all of our lives, our culture and world views. I saw this question as… Continue reading→
Woven Earth – reflections on our attempt to ‘relearn indigeneity’ in the dales
I am curled up in a hammock, swaddled in blankets on an early morning summer’s day in Brittany where I spend a few months each year with my partner. I’m in a pocket of forest and stream surrounded by industrial maize fields. The sun has just risen in a soft pink sky and I realise,… Continue reading→
Reflections on Cultivating interdependence with the land
I generally assume a shared story of division between wild and human, between divine and mundane, between self and other and in meeting one another we pick up at the point where our shared story diverges from the sense of ourselves as a person, as an individual. We start with our name and age, our… Continue reading→
‘Turning Tables on Research’
This week, the ‘Listening Table’ makes its public debut in Sparks Bristol, an enterprise co-created by the Global Goals Centre and Artspace Lifespace, re-fashioning a landmark retail space in the centre of Bristol to support creative communities and promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The table was developed with the support of the Brigstow Institute… Continue reading→
Brigstow creative technology researchers: mapping activity across the university
We are looking for three post graduate researchers, each based in one of the three new faculties (Arts and Social Sciences, Science and Engineering, and Health and Life Sciences), to undertake a short-term project to map existing and plans for future creative technology activity across all disciplines. This project would be particularly suitable for researchers… Continue reading→