Community Maker and The Portland Inn Project
- Submitting institution
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Staffordshire University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Lists 48
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, UK; Spode Works, Stoke-on-Trent, UK; The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent; Public space, Century Street, Stoke-on-Trent.
- Brief description of type
- A collection of creative work and public engagement activity on a related topic that address different aspects of a single project and are collectively greater than the sum of their parts.
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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A - The C3 Centre: Creative Industries and Creative Communities
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Community Maker and The Portland Inn Project took 5.5 years (2015-2020) of sustained research effort. The research involved an iterative process of discrete investigations, where the outcome of one informed the next. This methodology was necessary to understand long-term approaches to community arts programming, and community development. This complex project resulted in a number of components including six exhibitions, and presentation at 13 conferences, workshops and symposia. As a result, the research is a multi-layered investigation resulting in a broad range of inter-related and inter-dependent outcomes.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Community Maker (2015-2017) and The Portland Inn Project (2016-ongoing) explore the effects of artist involvement on combined community redevelopment and urban renewal projects. The research has taken the form of community engagement events and skills workshops.
Community Maker focused on the Portland Street area of Stoke-on-Trent, where 33 derelict and abandoned houses were famously refurbished and sold for £1 each in an attempt to drive social regeneration. It used Asset Based Community Development methodologies, using local spaces, cultures, skills, and social relationships to create a range of arts-based workshops and social events for community members. Francis investigated how artist-led activities empowered community members to discover, discuss, and develop priorities for local change and for building relationships with service-providers and local government. Portland Inn tests and applies findings from Community Maker. It is a collaboration with the artist Rebecca Davies, who operates as a central figure within artist-and-community-led civic change. The project involves the community developing an architectural plan for the renovation of a disused pub into a permanent community space, and the use of arts events to identify priorities for local infrastructure and government services and to generate economic investment into the Portland Street area.
Francis has disseminated her research methodology and findings through a public programme of displays, arts events, and research workshops, throughout Stoke-on-Trent, and through exhibitions at the British Ceramics Biennial (2015, 2017), the Potteries Museum (2018) and the AirSpace Gallery (2015-ongoing). She has also disseminated the work through conferences throughout the UK and Europe, including The Social Art Summit (Site Gallery, Sheffield, 2018) and the Social Art Summit (Tate Exchange, London, 2019). The research has been documented in a Guardian online documentary (2018) and was used as a case study on participatory art in Francois Matarasso’s A Restless Art (2019).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -