The Brigstow Institute has awarded Ideas Exchange funding to thirteen new interdisciplinary research partnerships.
The Ideas Exchanges will explore the themes of: “Covid and Structural Inequalities”; “Research and the Creative Industries”; and “Living Well in the 21st Century”.
We are delighted to announce that we have funded the following projects:
Bristol Carescapes
Involving Matthew Lariviere (Policy Studies) and Morgan Tipping (Artist).
Encompassing experiential, explorative and collaborative approaches to imagining care futures, this project draws together local creators and people with lived experience of different forms of care (e.g. carers, people with disabilities/chronic illness, frail older adults). The aim is to enable those involved to imagine how they would like to experience care in the near and distant future.
How to open a print shop
Involving Jennifer Batt (Humanities), John McTague (Humanities), Rhiannon Daniels (Modern Languages) and Rachel Marsh and Angie Butler.
The Centre for Material Texts has recently acquired a couple of printing presses and other materials with the aim of creating a multidisciplinary and collaborative print shop. Academics and students from the university and beyond will take part in a number of pilot projects and experiments that aim to create new knowledge through the process of making together.
Child Sexual Abuse and Oral Healthcare
Involving Viv Gordon Company (Artist) and Angela Hague (Bristol Dental School).
Adult child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors face barriers accessing oral health care and performing oral self-care. This project will involve a series of conversations to explore approaches to listening and responding to CSA survivors experiences of oral health care in order to establish priority areas for multidisciplinary research, a research framework, and ethical considerations when working with survivor co-researchers/participants. Longer term, the aim is to understand and embed trauma-informed approaches to oral health care in dental training and clinical practice, utilising creative methods.
Navigating Time in the Anthropocene
Involving Paul Merchant (Modern Languages), Nicola Thomas, (Modern Languages), Bergit Arends (Humanities), Blake Ewing (University of Oxford/Anthropocene Times Network) and Kaja Marczewska (V&A).
This project will explore how culture, creativity and ‘critical making’ can promote richer understanding of temporality in the Anthropocene, an age in which humans are leaving an indelible mark on the fabric of the planet. Specifically this project encourages thinking about time differently, as something that we make and that also makes us. The focal point is the involvement of the V&A and its ‘rapid response’ collection that navigates multiple temporal scales. The ambition is that this awareness might lead to better decision making and action in both public and political spheres, as well as enhanced well-being and self-understanding.
Individual actions add up: Finding inspiration in everyday citizen actions to address inequalities in post-pandemic climate and nature emergency responses
Involving Ed Atkins (Geographical Sciences), Ian Townsend (former Bristol Green Capital Partnership CEO and sustainable cities consultant) and Eastside Community Trust.
This project will bring a group of city partners together to consider an identified knowledge gap around the role of citizen-to-citizen engagement in responding to the climate and ecological emergencies. In particular, it will showcase the ways in which citizens’ everyday actions in the community, which might be overlooked, constitute environmentally-positive behaviour that can provide an inspiration for others to act. The aim is that this project will identify pathways to increased and more inclusive engagement in the ‘Just Transition’.
Walking and Re-creation
Involving Eleanor Rycroft (Theatre), Suzanne Audrey (Bristol Medical School), Laura Howe (Bristol Medical School), Jan Connett (Bristol Health Partners) and Angie Belcher (Artist).
‘Walking and Re-Creation’ is an interdisciplinary conversation which brings together the worlds of performance and public health, history and the contemporary moment, practice and theory. It takes a long historical view of walking as a form of exercise, transport, healthy activity, and leisure to merge past and present, with the aim of discovering what walking then can tell us about walking and wellbeing now, in the age of coronavirus.
Living well through the menopause
Involving Jessica Hammett (Humanities), Lisa Nash (Artist) and Narinder Bansal (Bristol Medical School).
How have women found information and advice about the menopause? Is it understood and discussed differently within different families or social and cultural groups? How can creative activities and storytelling help people explore and communicate their experiences of the menopause in different ways, and improve wellbeing? This project will explore how different women think, talk and feel about the menopause, and the kind of activities that women want to engage in as they live well through menopause.
Developing a methodology for the empowerment of teachers-as-researchers in the context of Sustainability and Climate Change Education
Involving Julian Brown (Education), Shaun Hatton (St Brendan’s Sixth form College), Kat Steentjes (Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, Cardiff University), Lee Knight (Beechen Cliff School), Elisabeth Barratt-Hacking (University of Bath, Education), Fiona Carnie (Bristol Education Partnership for Bristol Learning City), Lorraine Whitmarsh (Psychology, University of Bath), Dave Rees (Ashton Park School), Emily Barr (Bristol Grammar School), Paul Howard-Jones (Education), Rafael Mitchel (Education), Justin Dillon (University of Exeter) and Claire Hoolahan (University of Manchester).
This project aims to develop a novel approach for engaging teachers-as-researchers in their own schools, assuring their views and experience is represented in debates around future educational policy and practice (at local and national levels). Specifically, this has been prompted by a pressing need to understand current UK practice in relation to climate change education, necessary for “accelerating the wide scale behaviour changes consistent with adapting to and limiting global warming” (IPCC, 2018). Despite its low profile in the National Curriculum, over 70% of teachers in England already engage with students on this issue (Howard-Jones et al. forthcoming). However, teachers know little about the nature and efficacy of each other’s efforts in this area.
Mind the Gap: State directives, Orthodoxy, and living well in 21st-century Britain
Involving Karen Skinazi (Humanities) and Ben Kasstan (Bristol Law School).
Recent controversies in the UK signal a gap between urgent state directives and their uneven implementation in religious communities, revealing that language, which is intentionally non-specific, coupled with an incommensurability of worldviews, can be dangerous. This project will begin to explore how the gap between generic government language around inclusion (e.g. ‘British values’ discourse), and the burden of responsibility and agency on religious minority groups to navigate legislation, can be better navigated.
South West Agroecology Network
Involving Jaskiran Chohan (Bristol Veterinary School), Rob Owen (Holistic Restoration), Matthew Tarnowski (Biological Sciences), Rosa Beesley (Centre for Agroecology Water and Resilience), Jim Scown (Cardiff University) and Oluwatosin Shittu (Play Wooden CIC).
This project will support a network of academics, agroecology practitioners and non-academic experts to work towards a common goal: increasing the uptake and ease of agroecology in the south west of the UK through co-created research. Activities will include mapping a network of agroecological practitioners and researchers in the south west, and sociocratically develop a specific methodology for co-creating research within agroecology.
Eating Disorder Stakeholder Group
Involving Helen Bould (Bristol Medical School), Lucy Biddle (Bristol Medical School), Ian Penton-Voak (Psychology) and Jon Bird (Computer Science).
Eating disorders affect up to 5% of the population, and population studies find that symptoms suggestive of likely eating disorders affect as many as a quarter of women aged 16 to 24 years. As only half of people with an eating disorder make a full recovery, this project aims to undertake a qualitative analysis of the views of people with the aim of co-creating effective, novel interventions using VR with a stakeholder group involving those with experience of eating disorders, including adolescents with lived experience and clinicians.
Who’s in Our Food
Involving Robert Skinner (Humanities), Lydia Medland (Sociology, Politics and International Studies) and Lauren Blake (Bristol Veterinary School).
This project aims to explore creative approaches to investigate the systems and inequalities that determine the food that sustains us as individuals and communities. The activities will focus on the research of the Food Justice Network, a growing group of academics and researchers concerned about disparities, social inequalities and environmental problems inherent in industrialised food systems.
Resilience through international networks
Involving Keir Williams (Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), Zibah Nwako (Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship) and Ben Carpenter (Bristol City Fellow).
This project aims to engage with young entrepreneurs (creative, social, commercial) who face structural inequalities in Bristol, UK, and Enugu, Nigeria, in order to understand their needs for support and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. This would present an opportunity for them to collaborate with other like-minded young people, and to participate in creating a community that addresses their current realities and develops possibilities for improved lived experiences.