Fraser: It’s about groups or individuals coming together and sharing what they have to try and create something better than the individual parts.
Katy: What happens when you unleash the collective power of diverse communities, partners, research and creativity? How can we unlock innovation across communities to build a stronger, fairer UK?
Welcome to the Creative Communities Podcast, a series platforming extraordinary examples of research partnerships. Using arts, culture and creativity to tackle the big opportunities and challenges facing our country today.
My name is Professor Katy Shaw and I’m Director of the AHRC Creative Communities Programme, a national project exploring the potential of culture and cross sector co-creation to deliver inclusive innovation in the devolved contexts of our four nations.
In this new series, we’ll embark on a journey across the UK and hear from communities who are using their unique talents and expertise to take on tomorrow. We’ll explore how creativity and cultural research can empower us to build a stronger, more resilient UK. Across the series, we’ll hear five stories of change.
One from each of our Community Innovation Practitioners, or CIPs for short. They’re based in Liverpool, Swansea, Glasgow, Belfast, and Portrush, and they’ll show us how cultural research and development is helping to level up their communities.
Each episode is packed with local voices, practical insights, and solutions that you can use to inspire and create change and co-creation in your own community.
And in this episode, we’re in Glasgow with Gaston. His design led approach to knowledge exchange is testing a user-friendly framework for building innovative research partnerships in the arts and humanities.
Gaston: Hi, I’m Gaston Welisch. I’m a Community Innovation Practitioner. I’m a researcher from the Glasgow School of Art. I’m working in a collaboration with the University of Glasgow in a cross-university partnership.
In this episode of the Creative Communities Podcast, you’ll find out how I use creative tools and methods in a knowledge exchange programme, called the Arts and Humanities Partnership, or just the Catalyst for short. I’ll take you on a deep dive into how these creative methods are applied and show you their potential for facilitating collaboration and engagement.
You’ll be hearing from the Catalyst team here at the university, from participants who have taken part in our workshops, and then we’ll head over to the Govan area in Glasgow. Where our latest Catalyst has taken place.
The Catalyst is a series of workshops hosted by our team at the University of Glasgow in partnership with the Glasgow School of Art. The workshops are designed to bring non-academic partners, like third sector organisations and industry, into the research and innovation processes within the University of Glasgow. Our aim is to make research more relevant, more collaborative and more engaging. To date, Catalyst workshop themes have included digital cultural heritage, food culture, mental health and wellbeing, and most recently place, through the Govan Old church. In my role as Community Innovation Practitioner, I’ve been developing and delivering creative methods of engagement for the catalysts.
Michael: So, in the middle there, the yellow circles were the assets identified related to Govan Old. The blue squares were the wider networks that you already have relationships with.
And then, you can use these coloured blocks to define, okay, what are the challenges that we’re trying to address here? And at this point, we’re left open the door for each of these to define their projects. And it works very well. So just for the sake of telling you guys to be really clear, what is it we’re bringing together? Why and how?
Gaston: I’ve been doing this with a design led approach, helping the team to reflect on and to refine our process of knowledge exchange. By using this design led approach, I really want to make workshop participation as engaging as possible for all partners in a way that traditional academic language, reports, and activities may not always do.
In the case of the Catalysts, a design led approach means using workshop methods to come up with new ideas and solutions that are practical. We want to directly address issues faced by participants. Like making heritage sites more accessible or connecting people to Scottish food culture. As a Community Innovation Practitioner, or CIP for short, I’ve been collaborating with the team of academics who originally conceived the idea for the Catalyst.
They have led the creation and delivery of the Catalyst workshops with our non-academic partners. Together, we’ve facilitated lots of different sessions. Each aimed at addressing key community challenges through creative and inclusive methodologies. Recently, I brought the whole team together to reflect on the catalysts that have taken place so far and to capture a range of ideas on what defines a catalyst. Here’s Neil McIntyre from the University of Glasgow.
Neil: It’s an exchange, it’s an exchange of knowledge, it’s an exchange of ideas, it’s an exchange of expertise and insights. I’m thinking something along the lines of like curiosity or inquisitiveness, that like embracing a certain level of ignorance.
Gaston: So, the Catalyst is a knowledge exchange programme. It’s designed to bring academia out into the world and into communities. The main ethos of the Catalyst is to ensure that knowledge flows both ways, from academics to the community and from the community back to academics.
Lindsay: Is it like empowering different kinds of expertise?
Gaston: Here’s Lindsay Middleton, also from the University of Glasgow.
Lindsay: Our strength is in the ability to float in the liminal space between other people’s areas of expertise and bring them together productively.
Gaston: For Fraser Rowan, who started the project, it’s all about creating a space for collaboration.
Fraser: It’s about groups or individuals coming together and sharing what they have to try and create something better than the individual parts.
Gaston: During the Catalyst process, we connect researchers with people who have firsthand knowledge of the community’s needs. For example, we might pair historians with local heritage groups to preserve cultural history or match mental health experts with community health organisations to address health issues.
It’s almost like a matchmaking service, but for ideas and expertise. What’s involved in the sessions is a mix of interactive workshops, creative exercises, and facilitated discussions. Participants will use various creative methods like visual mapping and storytelling to explore and address the issues that they face.
In each catalyst, we start by identifying the key challenges that communities face. Then we use tools and techniques to brainstorm projects, map out resources, and plan actionable steps.
So how did this all start?
Fraser: My name’s Fraser Rowan. I’m the knowledge exchange and innovation manager within the college of arts and humanities.
I suppose, come up with the idea of the, the catalyst around about two years ago and started the partnership with Glasgow School of Art with Michael and yourself Gaston around about that time and I’ve developed three catalysts to date and we’re just about to start the fourth.
Gaston: Fraser starts by telling me that this was all born out of a simple idea, to bring research out of the university.
Fraser: It’s always been about how can we get the research out from the university and into society, making a difference. I wondered if we might think about doing something a bit differently and thinking about the non-academic sector first, if you like. And that got me thinking about how non-academic organisations might network between themselves and how they might be in a better position to identify what they need from universities rather than universities pushing their wares, so to speak. So, the idea was to create networks within given sectors and to identify what their key challenges are and then to identify the right expertise for them.
To address those challenges, whether that expertise sat within the University of Glasgow or sits within the partners within the networks already. But it was really about addressing some of the real big grand challenges that exist within the sector. So, we initiated the Catalyst to begin with by looking at the research strengths that we had.
Gaston: Our first catalyst was about digital cultural heritage. It brought together people from various archives, museums, and collections to focus on digital archives. For example, we looked at how to decolonise these archives, as well as making them more accessible to a diversity of people who might have an interest or a need for them.
We also tackled the challenges of digital heritage. of adapting to new digital tools and technologies, Fraser describes the second of our four catalysts, which was around Scottish food culture.
Fraser: The second catalyst in particular, sustainability, health, heritage, and tourism, that came about because our colleague, Lindsay Middleton, is researcher from within that field, and she also leads on an arts lab which is focused on food. Really, we could have started anywhere, but we decided that we’d look primarily where our strengths lay.
Gaston: The third catalyst was around mental health and wellbeing, and this is where I came in as community innovation practitioner. By leveraging my background as a designer with experience in creative methodologies, my role was to facilitate and design these sessions.
I worked closely with the team here at Glasgow University. and the participants to make sure that the tools and methods we used were both effective and engaging.
So, we’ve had three catalysts so far. Digital cultural heritage, Scottish food culture, mental health and wellbeing. But now we’re on to the fourth, which is Govan Old Church. This catalyst focuses on community heritage in Govan, and the use of Govan Old Church as a cultural and community hub. You’re going to be hearing more about Govan Old Church soon.
But first, how do we define something like the Catalyst? It was important for us to reflect on what our values were, to create a manifesto for ourselves. And it’s during one of our Catalyst team meetings where I asked the team, what are our values?
Lindsay: My name is Lindsay Middleton and I’m one of the Knowledge Exchange Associates for the College of Arts and Humanities here at the University of Glasgow.
Gaston: For Lindsay, community building forms a very important part of what we do.
Lindsay: I came to be involved with the Catalyst actually when I was still a PhD researcher, and I’d been wanting to get involved with more knowledge exchange activities based around food, which was my topic of study, historically speaking.
Community engagement, I think, is really at the heart of the Catalyst in various forms. In that, not only are we wanting to engage communities with knowledge and research that’s happening in the university, but we’re also actively involved in creating communities around different subjects. So, each of our catalysts has its own distinct theme, and we essentially are creating a community around that theme of experts of different kinds.
Neil: Hi, I’m Neil McIntyre, and I’m also a Knowledge Exchange Associate in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Glasgow.
Gaston: Neil describes the idea of being open to reviewing and refining our processes as we went along.
Neil: Transparency should be on here somewhere. We’re like very open to scrutiny, you know, tell us what you liked and didn’t like about the process, what worked and didn’t work. So, scrutiny or transparency. Scrutiny and review. And that takes a level of humility, almost like being quite content to be like, I may come across like I don’t have a clue what’s going on here, but that’s fine.
Gaston: What Neil is saying is that leading a project that aims at breaking down typical academic hierarchies can be tough. It means letting go of your position and instead sharing on a more flat level. Another value that Neil recognises in our work is a feeling of inclusivity by making the process more enjoyable.
Neil: I feel one of the things we do best is enthusing people in something. And I think that’s so important in any collaboration or project development.
It’s about that feeling of enthusing people. Like, they’re not turning up, dutifully but reluctantly, it’s like, this is something I actively want to give up my time and energy for, and I want to be part of this journey. Just because the subject matter might be complex or challenging, that doesn’t necessarily mean that our process then has to be like that. If we could find a way of doing something fun and exciting. It addresses difficult problems. That’s actually quite a powerful thing.
Gaston: It’s really great to hear Neil talk about things being fun and exciting. That’s really my job, making the process engaging and collaborative. Neil also highlights the importance of community in what we do.
Neil: And on the note of creating communities, I will use the mental health and wellbeing catalyst as the example where that really has quite a wide range of sectoral involvement. So, the thrust of this catalyst is the contribution that the arts and humanities and creative people, culture, leisure can have to good mental health and wellbeing outcomes, and this has brought people together who are maybe more medical practitioners or come from a medical professional background right through to, artists of various types and all people in between. And I feel this catalyst really has created a unique new community, as it were, where you’ve got people with these diverse skill sets, diverse range of knowledge, but we are now all pushing in the same direction. We all firmly believe in the importance of the arts and humanities and culture and creativity.
Michael: So, I’m Michael Pierre Johnson. I’m based at the School of Innovation and Technology at the Glasgow School of Art.
I’m a design researcher in the creative economy, which means I use design practices in mapping and modelling to support collaboration and network development, often in societal environmental challenge, context.
Gaston: Alongside myself, Fraser, Neil and Lindsay, Michael is another key part of the catalyst delivery team.
Michael is one of two designers on the Catalyst alongside myself. He brings his design research experience to this project. This means that he’s also interested in the theory behind how this all works. Michael and I work together to design the tools and the outline of each session. I ask Michael about this process.
Michael: So, part of the process with Catalyst is identifying challenges and making sense of them across a whole network of people, usually between twenty and thirty people in a room of different disciplines, both academics in arts and humanities or beyond, other disciplines as well, and wider society, businesses, enterprises, public sector bodies.
So, because we’re starting with these challenges, we want to break down what they mean in life context. So, we use the actor network mapping just to say, who are the cultural, social, cultural actors, people, organisations, and what role do they have in relation to the challenge and involves of leadership and roles of collaboration or disciplinary knowledge.
We want to break down what that challenge means in the knowledge associated with it, but also that the missing knowledge it started with some initial tools we knew would help start the journey, but actually it’s had a lot of changes and subtle nuances and understanding on how you facilitate that.
And it’s probably even changed the way you engage and talk to people in the networks between sessions as well. And if you’re really trying to bring non academics in to help define that space and link that, we needed to adapt ways that gave them that platform. So one of the ways we did that by the second catalyst was actually that you have these equal one to two minutes brief pitches so that everyone in the network got equal air time to state this is who I am, this is why I’m here and this is what I’m interested in doing and that early on sets this equitable tone that everyone has a stake in these challenges and then we just get them matchmaking talking to each other.
Gaston: Here’s Lindsay discussing what the workshop process feels like.
Lindsay: I don’t necessarily think it’s a passive process like I don’t think we’re just, it’s not an aggressive process but I think It could potentially be quite challenging, and when we have our actual meetings and stuff, it’s fairly full on. The way that we make people think about things and try and step out of their comfort zone.
Michael: A lot of the activity is about them building connections together.
Workshop: The first one looked at establishing the assets of the building and the type of people involved. From that we established briefs…
Gaston: Designing tools is a large part of my responsibilities. These tools really are needed to help participants articulate and visually share their ideas.
These help us make sure that everyone can contribute and engage with the collective brainstorming process effectively, regardless of their previous experience or their background. One of the tools that I developed is to think of the project brief as a theatre play. A project brief is really what we’re aiming for at the end of the Catalyst Workshops, with descriptions of projects that could be ready to start funding or launching out into the world.
What you’re hearing now is a catalyst workshop about using creative approaches and culture for mental health and wellbeing. Right now, people are presenting their ideas at the end of the workshop. This audio gives you a feel of what gets talked about in the workshops I delivered as a community innovation practitioner.
People are talking about the issues that they face when they’re working with communities. And they’re doing it in the form of a theatre play. We use the metaphor of a play as a way of presenting a narrative structure for people to share their ideas. It’s a great way to think about the issues that they face more playfully, and for people to communicate them.
That’s important, because it means that a wide range of people can contribute in a way that is accessible. Now, here’s Alessia Zanari from the University of Glasgow and Adele Patrick from Glasgow Women’s Library, talking about the kinds of challenges and the crisis of trust faced by people in their sector. Alessia and Adele’s group formed a manifesto and stood up to present it.
Participants: It’s about changing it up in a radical sense and forging a shared language with equitably shared resources to recognise it’s not the same in academia as it is in small organisations or for individual creatives or cultural organisations.
It’s an incredibly multifaceted terrain that we need to recognise who needs it the most, who’s sinking underneath the water, who are the easy to ignore in this, and where can resources be better deployed in order to even start to have these conversations.
Workshop: And so the investment here into people, potentially people that are employed as well as people that are volunteers.
Gaston: So how this works is that the narrative structure helps participants frame their project in a storytelling format with elements like setting the scene and inciting incidents. The cast coming together, and a denouement.
The denouement is the resolution of a play. It’s satisfying ending. We also use an ideas wall, where participants can visually display their thoughts and suggestions. This method is very physical and embodied. You can imagine large sheets of paper being put on a wall, and people having to move around the room, physically seeing each other interact with the ideas.
We gave people pieces of paper to write on when they arrived. So rather than sitting at the desk writing stuff, people were able to move around and then put them up for everyone else to see. It allows everyone to see and play with the collective ideas of the group. People can vote on ideas. It’s a dynamic way to prioritise and refine concepts.
So there’s a really nice flow of people being able to visually understand what each other is interested in. One of the other main tools that we use in the sessions to support this process is the innovation map, a concept designed by Michael.
Michael: So today when we’re borrowing something that’s called the double diamond, which is the visualisation of the design process, and with the blocks in the first diamond, that’s essentially doing how do you design the right brief for a project.
Gaston: The innovation map visually represents relationships in a catalyst, using concentric circles divided by axes, labeled culture, practice, social, and economic. It helps us plot not just the people, but also the organisations. The networks and the physical assets involved. This visual approach makes complex networks easier to understand and to discuss. By mapping these elements, we can see how different parts of the project interact and then identify key areas for discussion. I asked Michael to explain us more about this.
Michael: The innovation map is an expression of the whole methodology that tries to zoom in and zoom out on how you cultivate networks of collaboration.
Essentially, Active Network Theory tries to describe social structures of society, through the associations, interrelations of humans and non-humans. So, it’s the idea that you can’t understand our agency or the way the world works without understanding the role objects play. And especially with more and more complex technology, that’s a really important question, a really important question for designers to understand the things they’re putting in the world, how they’re influencing the world and shaping it. And the framework that has been translated into the innovation map.
Gaston: When it comes to workshops, which I do with Michael, we follow a framework, which I’ve developed during my time as a community innovation practitioner. This is the AAA model, assets, augments, and action. The structure helps us map assets, brainstorm around augmenting them, and then plan actions.
The first phase is about identifying and understanding existing assets, relationships and initiatives. Participants map these elements, and they talk about potential projects that fit the wider context. This first phase helps everyone get to know each other and share their practice and expertise.
Oftentimes we do this through quick presentations which helps build a network. The second phase is about brainstorming and connecting ideas. Participants work together to create future visions. and they discuss how to make these visions real. This phase builds on the initial ideas from the first phase, the assets phase.
We then look at how to best build on these assets, to find new ways of working, access resources, and start collaborating. The final phase turns the collective vision into detailed action plans or specific project ideas. Participants develop clear strategies and initiatives together. This phase focuses on turning the group’s insights and ideas into practical steps for real outcomes, what we like to call preferable futures. But within that structure, we like to experiment around the tools that we use, because we’re trying to make things as visual and as playful as possible. For example, using a play, as we talked about before.
We put people in groups at the end of a workshop, and we asked them to fill in the structure of a play to think metaphorically about their project ideas. Here’s Neil talking about the play metaphor.
Michael: I remember in the last Catalyst; it was the third one of the mental health and wellbeing we were getting.
Now that they had built familiarity of themselves and of the challenges they were wanting to address, we gave them to say, what would you collaborate on then? And you gave this framing narrative of around a play, and that beginning middle end in the broadest sense, although you added a couple of nice technical terms in there, but it really resonated.
It’s sometimes in design workshops, it’s difficult for them to use tools and methods to produce that material. They totally did with that narrative, they embraced it. And it’s just those different ways of approaching. What resonates, the storytelling that can achieve, that clarity, that vision of because it wasn’t just his, the idea, but it was also what constituted it.
Gaston: We often have drawings which represent what we learn. This means that I get to make doodles for our reports, but also that they are used in the sessions to communicate the learnings visually. and that they serve as symbols or anchors for the discussions. We do this because this is a knowledge exchange programme.
We are all about getting knowledge from academia, outside and easy for more people to understand, and we find that visual representations like this help with accessibility. But we also find that this challenges the academics to interact with people that they wouldn’t otherwise. For Lindsay, it’s all about shaking things up and trying to find ways of communicating that are more interactive.
Lindsay: So, I think one of the things I’m always conscious of is facilitating and engaging people in a way that makes them feel comfortable and aware of the fact that they are valued exactly the same as anyone else in the room, whether that’s a senior academic at the top level of the university or, whoever else it might be, it doesn’t matter.
For me, it’s about trying to create that even playing field. And I think the Catalyst processes and tools, are good at equipping that too because, it’s not something that anyone is really used to because this is a new thing within our practice as academics as well. No one’s coming in as an expert at Catalyst.
Actually, everyone’s coming into something that is a new thing for them to do and therefore they’re all coming in on the same level and their expertise and knowledge is being valued in the same way. And I think it has been recognised throughout from people who are involved as something that it’s a welcome change to the way that they might usually engage with Universities.
Gaston: Lindsay says that the tools like the innovation map that Michael and I have designed have helped create clear messages.
Lindsay: The tools are able to take quite a dense, potentially thorny, depending on who’s sitting around the table, conversation, and actually distill it into quite clear messages.
Gaston: For Neil, the tools are a vehicle to get us from A to B and to capture data at the same time.
Neil: The tools are always able to get us where we want to get to. They provide enough structure that the conversation kept on track and there is momentum and movement and we’re heading somewhere, but without it being so constricting or constrictive that it doesn’t allow for depth and detail as well.
But when Lindsay and I come back later, there is so much excellent data being captured both by the tools from the conversations that have been had, nothing gets missed, and that that is really, really helpful when we’re later trying to chart where we’re going to go next. And so not forgetting that, they are also for us as well to make sure we’re capturing that data.
Gaston: As Fraser explains, this is a new approach for the University.
Fraser: This isn’t something that we’ve done before in the University of Glasgow, and by employing the processes and Michael’s tools, if you like, into the way that we develop the catalyst, it enables us to maintain momentum. With the projects, it’s almost like we’re following a path, if you like, which has been forged by research. And it’s enabling us to constantly refine what we’re doing, to review what we’re doing, and it’s been shown to work as well.
Gaston: What about the people who came to the workshops. What was their experience of this way of working? I have a chat with one of the participants from the Mental Health and Wellbeing Catalyst.
Cheryl: My name is Cheryl McGeehan and I’m a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography here at the University of Glasgow.
Gaston: I asked Cheryl why she wanted to participate.
Cheryl: So, I think the Catalyst provides a really good opportunity to experiment with bringing community partners into the university and to have a setting where collaborative potential was offered and I think for me that really Spoke to the heart of my research, which is to collaborate and to find new collaborations and to think about how collaboration can be different or experimental. So, it offered me a really good opportunity for that.
Gaston: She says that the most valuable part of the sessions was the collective aspect.
Cheryl: So, I think the coming together was really important and I think it was facilitated really, really well. There was lots of creativity there, which I really appreciated us trying to think together and trying to think in a collaborative and collective way about what we were trying to achieve.
And I think having a goal and having an opportunity to think forward. So yeah, it was really good opportunity to challenge my perceptions of what I’ve been doing over the past decade but also to join in some conversations with people that were like minded and had common themes and common goals in their work.
Gaston: She also found that the visual tools of the Catalyst really added value. to the dynamic of the workshops.
Cheryl: Yeah, I really liked when we were working in groups and to have the participation from the art school, I thought was really genius and really important because I think having a visual mapping board, I’m not quite sure what the technical term is, but to have something visual, to work through as a group.
I think particularly help facilitate conversation between academic and other partners because I think sometimes if we’re always speaking just in words, it can sometimes be intimidating and it can sometimes be confusing. So, I think to have a visual prompt was really important and really encouraged us to think in a mapping way. So, I find that really effective and certainly something I would like to use going forward when I’m working with communities as well.
Gaston: Cheryl already collaborates extensively, but the collaborative environment and the creative tools that we used during the Catalyst workshop enabled her to connect with new people, working in the same context, but in different ways.
She appreciated the opportunity to collaborate with others outside of her usual circles, bringing fresh perspectives to her research, and expanding her network.
So, let’s hear about the fourth Catalyst, which is place based. The difference with this catalyst is that it’s happening on a short timescale of three months, within a context that feels more contained and pressing. Meeting in the university has always felt a bit odd for a project which is meant to get academia out into the world. Because of the place-based nature of the project, I’ve pushed for everyone to meet in Govan rather than in the university.
Gaston: Finally, I’m trialling a walk-based methodology, which means that we’re engaging with the place as a participant in our project.
Govan Old is a church located in Govan, which is just south of the Clyde River in Glasgow. The church houses medieval stones and artefacts and it’s positioned within an area called Glasgow Riverside Innovation District. This is a large area of primary investment for Glasgow City Council. The University is heavily involved in it.
Professor Stephen Driscoll is an inspiration for this catalyst. He has thirty years of experience working in Govan. We want to look together at how both Govan Old Church and the University can build connection with the wider community.
Stephen: Hi, I’m Professor Stephen Driscoll. And for as far as I can remember, I’ve been interested in archaeology.
In the nineties, when I would first started coming to Govan, I got the sense that quite a lot of the congregation were slightly mystified as to what the big deal was about the stones. Like, of course we have these stones, but why would anybody else be interested in them? They’re just our stones. So, there was a reluctance or a failure to acknowledge their significance and what they are a set of sculptures which relate to the moment when Govan, Govan Old was the main ecclesiastical centre of the Kings of Strathclyde.
Gaston: This historical heritage is key for the Catalyst because it’s a biographical record of the community. It’s a living heritage site that has seen continued use since the time of the Kingdom of Strathclyde. Talking about the future of this site amidst changes in Govan is a strong anchor for our conversations.
Stephen and the Govan Heritage Trust are now in the process of refurbishing the beautiful Govan Old Church. Their plan is to make it sustainable by using the building to generate income. This is where the Catalyst comes in to bring people together to think about how the building can serve the community, as well as showcase heritage and its cultural value.
In the early nineties, Stephen started excavating the site with students, members of a local history group called the Govan Reminiscence Society, and members of the church congregation. These early small-scale excavations made it possible to raise money to employ staff to manage the involvement in the community in more excavations.
At that time, the area was marked for regeneration, so Stephen wanted to place it firmly on the heritage map. Since then, Govan Heritage Trust have been very intentional about involving the local community in their ongoing fieldwork and research. But the difficulty they faced is in reaching diverse volunteers.
Particularly when doing archaeological digs, where Stephen really wants to involve people from Govan to engage with the heritage.
Stephen: It’s quite easy to run events which are going to appeal to the middle classes in Scotland. It’s much harder to ensure that people from more disadvantaged backgrounds can participate.
And we really want to reach the more local community because what we’re keen to do is to foster this sense of ownership and also expand the awareness of the knowledge of the importance of the place so that our goal is really to, for the archaeology and heritage resources more generally, to be a source of local pride so that people have a more positive sense of where they’re coming from and what could happen in Govan and what should happen in Govan.
Gaston: I’m a big believer in involving the communities we are researching, so it’s really great to hear Stephen’s enthusiasm for that. When people think about Govan, they think about its shipbuilding history, but Stephen acknowledges that this is a conventional, slightly downbeat narrative that focuses on Govan’s diminished industrial shipbuilding history.
But for Stephen, this is a limited view. He believes that a more comprehensive understanding of Govan’s past can be a source of local pride and inform a positive vision for the future.
Stephen: My hope would be that we can make a place that is dynamic and energetic enough that people come into it regularly, not just because their visitors are in from out of town and they want to show them these old stones, but it’s a place where stuff happens, and people want to come to.
So, in that sense, we’re trying to recreate something like the old parish and as a place of coming together of people.
Gaston: With Glasgow University’s role in the Glasgow Riverside Innovation District. The goal is to use academic activity to contribute to the community. This is where we come in with the Catalyst.
We are going to brainstorm together with people coming from, for example, Govan Workspace, Glasgow Life, GalGael or Linthouse Housing Association. We’re going to get these people together in a room to look at challenges and opportunities for the future of Govan Old and for Govan Old’s place within this future. I asked Stephen what he thinks the opportunities are.
Stephen: The opportunities for represented by the material here and the location and the setting are pretty compelling because physically it is in the centre of Govan. It is geographically in the heart of the place. So, it is physically central. So, it has the opportunity to be the major cultural asset of the community.
Gaston: So, this is where we are now. And with the Govan Catalyst, we’re going to deliver a series of free workshops with key stakeholders. These workshops will focus on envisioning the future of Govan Old and the wider Govan area.
Together, we’re aiming to build future visions and potential projects that reflect the community’s needs and aspirations. I hope that we can ensure that the heritage and cultural significance of Govan Old is both accessible and beneficial to all. While we have been working closely with key stakeholders like Govan Heritage Trust and Historic Environment Scotland, I recognise that our approach has not really fully achieved the inclusive bottom-up engagement that I aimed for.
So far, only three local residents have taken part in our workshops. I think this shows that we have a lot more work to do to ensure that the voices of the wider community are genuinely heard and actively shape our projects. I’m still learning from this and I’m improving our approach to create more meaningful and inclusive participation moving forward.
To wrap up here’s Cheryl again who explains how her experience of the Catalyst is going to influence her approach to research.
Cheryl: I mean, I think hearing some of the challenges from certain community sectors and particularly within the policy sector as well, it’s really clear that there is so many people doing similar work and have similar challenges.
And I think actually something that came out of the Catalyst for me was, it’s not about reinventing. something. It’s about working in partnership and actually just understanding the wealth of stuff that’s already out there, that’s already been done, that’s phenomenal. And actually, thinking about how can we connect or share good practice and share understanding.
So, I think for me, there’s something about wanting to be able to learn more about what people are doing and actively look for those connections before necessarily starting something.
Gaston: It’s not just about reinventing the wheel, but more about trying to understand the best approaches and what already exists.
Knowing what is out there, connecting and sharing. Let’s hear now from the Catalyst founder about what he thinks the success of the programme have been. Here’s Fraser Rowan.
Fraser: For me, the primary success story is a change of culture internally. And that’s something that’s really difficult to do. Changing the direction of a massive ship while it’s in transit is quite a tough thing.
And it’s not something that the majority of colleagues within the University of Glasgow were familiar with or used to, so there was quite a leap of faith, there still is a leap of faith because we have brought along maybe about forty or fifty academics with us so far. There’s plenty more to go, so changing culture has probably been the biggest thing for me.
Gaston: The Community Innovation Practitioner Award has enabled us to experiment with new design led methodologies and create more engaging collaborations between academia and non-academic partners. It’s accelerated our impact by providing the resources and platform to connect with diverse stakeholders.
Through this project, we’ve produced valuable insights, detailed action plans and potential projects. to enhance the cultural and community significance of Govern Old Church. We’ll continue our series of workshops, focusing on designing future visions and projects that hopefully better reflect and serve local needs.
This should involve working more closely with communities to ensure that the benefits of our work are felt widely. Finally, I’d like to thank the AHRC for their support in making this project possible. And thank all our participants and partners for their very valuable contributions.
Katy: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Creative Communities Podcast.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Creative Communities Podcast, please like, follow, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The more we can share these stories of resilience, collaboration, and creativity, the more we can empower other communities and cross sector partners. to get involved with research and development and create a more inclusive innovation system for the UK.
You can hear more about the work featured in this episode, get further information about the AHRC Creative Communities Programme and find out how to get involved by heading to our website, creativecommunities.uk.
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We’d love to hear your feedback via the website and watch out for an announcement about CIP round two coming soon. Because inclusive innovation matters and that means research that is by all for all.
The Creative Communities Podcast is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via the AHRC Creative Communities Programme at Northumbria University with podcast production and training by MIC media.
Join us for the next episode when we will be in Liverpool with Georgina, exploring the practitioner in action and how the power of music can support mental health and wellbeing in diverse community settings.
Participants: I don’t know what I’d do without music to I really do mean that, it’s a gift.
Without a doubt, we are reaching people who we would not otherwise reach at all.
New ways of communicating, new ways of giving, new ways of participating.
I felt embraced, encouraged, included, valued, listened to. So, I’ve been showing up every week.
We feel like real part of something else, something bigger than ourselves. And what that does for me, it takes me out of the negative.
If you are giving them the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, you’re saying you deserve the best. That’s hugely powerful for people who don’t have much in the way of hope.
Katy: Happy listening.
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