What is 'public engagement'? What
importance might public engagement projects have for the local community
or the region? How can we create research with partners outside
academia? How can we ensure that the knowledge generated is genuinely
meaningful to the public we seek to reach out to? What can we do to
ensure public engagement initiates two-way conversations that enhance
our research as well as deepening public understanding and interest?
This AHRC-funded project seeks to address these questions and more
through offering an innovative combination of workshop-based training
and practical, hands-on experience.
'People
and Place' is concerned with how a sense of place informs and is
informed by academic research within local, regional and communal
settings. We want to explore the relationships between the higher
education sector, culture and heritage organisations, and their
surrounding communities here in the North East, in order to ask how
public engagement projects might nurture and benefit from those
relationships. However, we also want to address the practical side of
public engagement: how do you assess the need for a particular project?
What sorts of projects work in what contexts? Who do you approach, and
how do you approach them? Where can you find support for your project?
What collaborations have been successful in the North East, and why?
This
project comprises two strands which address both these theoretical and
practical elements: a public engagement workshop series, open to all,
and featuring representatives from culture and heritage and higher
education institutions from across the region, and a public exhibition
exploring local industrialist Lord Armstrong's role as a philanthropist
and civic figure in the Victorian North East. The exhibition will be
researched and curated by a small group of selected postgraduate
participants working with local culture and heritage institutions, and
will provide an opportunity to put the skills and ideas gained at the
workshop into practice and use Lord Armstrong's civic activities as a
case study to interrogate the role of cultural institutions in the
construction of local identity.
'People
and Place' is a collaborative project run by PhD students Nicole Bush
(Durham), Kate Katigbak (Durham), and Beatrice Turner (Newcastle), and
is supported by an AHRC Collaborative Skills Award. We are grateful to
Durham University for additional support.
