Alex: Communities lie at the heart of what makes our special places meaningful, cohesive and successful.
Gaston: We all worked with very different communities, probably even with different definitions of what community and engagement means.
Áine: It represents authentic community voice and research, which is few and far between. And it demonstrates how grassroots creative research can change lives.
Georgina: It bridges the gap between academic research and public awareness of community health needs, creating a more accessible and supportive environment and reducing stigma.
Jim: I know the community here are glad to have this platform to share their creativity with a new audience.
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 we face 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.
Katy: Hello and welcome to our preview episode. This is a short introduction to our brand-new podcast. It’ll introduce you to some of the brilliant people and stories featured in the series, and it’ll give some sneak peeks of how the power of creativity and co-creation in research is supercharging social change in our communities. In this preview episode you’ll hear all about the programme, the big idea, and the Community Innovation Practitioners behind the scenes bringing the research and the podcast to life.
So, before we introduce you to our Community Innovation Practitioners, what exactly do we mean by a creative community? We use the term to describe a place-based research partnership. One that brings together communities, government, education, arm’s length, third and private sector organisations to tackle contemporary opportunities and challenges through culture, creativity and innovation.
This way of doing research might not be what you’d expect from so-called academics. They were often said to operate alone in the ivory towers of universities, far away from the so-called real world. But this collaborative research has really grown in popularity over the last decade, as the challenges faced by our society have grown more complex and the solutions to them cannot come from any single sector.
The Creative Communities delivery model is powered by co-creation, a collaborative approach. It’s a collaborative approach to working that centres equity for all partners involved in the innovation ecosystem. By taking a Creative Communities approach to research, we can create more relevant, inclusive forms of knowledge about our lives, and invent new solutions for how we might work to better respond to the challenges and opportunities facing us now and in the future.
The Creative Communities programme is funded by a groundbreaking investment from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, or AHRC for short, who are part of eight Research Councils that make up UK Research and Innovation. Let me introduce you to the Creative Communities funder.
Chris Smith: So, I’m Christopher Smith. I’m the Executive Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and we are the funding body which supports the Creative Communities programme.
Kristine: Hello, my name is Kristine Zaidi and I’m Associate Director of Programmes in the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which is in UK Research and Innovation.
And, as part of my role, I oversee some of our major programmes and investments, and that includes Creative Communities Programme.
Katy: So why is inclusivity in research so important for AHRC? How is their investment in the Creative Communities programme helping to deliver a research system that is truly by all and for all?
Kristine: I think inclusivity in research is vital for me, it makes research much better, much more relatable, and also solution focused. So by including different perspectives, different viewpoints, and, that are very much informed by where we come from, what is our background and, the places we come from so that the research becomes much richer and is much more focused on finding solutions that are bespoke to the areas, to the places and people and communities that this research is focusing on.
So, we are not approaching it as a blanket approach, but finding much more bespoke solutions and bringing in the different voices and hearing those voices.
Katy: They go on to tell me why Creative Communities aligns with AHRC’s vision for the future of research.
Chris Smith: We’re trying to be a good funder of research for everyone.
We study the humanities, which means we study humans, which means we should study as many humans as we possibly can. And we shouldn’t treat humanity as it were, as something over there that we look at behind the bars of a zoo. We’re all in it. We’re all part of humanity. And that’s I think really critically important for what humanities research is like.
What we do is you say, who am I? Where’s my positionality? What kind of person and what kind of position am I? And how does that help me understand and indeed hinder me from understanding other human beings? So Creative Communities is a great way of actually putting that into real practice in communities.
So thinking about what creativity does to a community, how it works, what you need to make it flourish, what gets in the way, what are the policies that need to happen in order to make creativity and Creative Communities work, what are the sorts of policies that stop it. So, I think that’s just basically what arts and humanities research should be about.
Kristine: More generally, but also from the point of view of the Creative Communities programme, that I think plays a really important role in exploring how culture can address regional inequality, for example. So, this is one of the areas that the programme is looking at in particular. And this is, of course, a very complex and multi-dimensional question.
There is a lot in programme activity that brings to the fore the understanding of social and economic value of cultural led regeneration that is inclusive, that helps reduce the divide, bringing a sort of diversity of voices and perspectives and particularly around knowledge co-creation. That supports addressing some of the challenges that communities face and in a more bespoke way, much more bespoke way.
And also, importantly, that is not done for the communities, but it is done with the communities. And I think this is paramount for addressing these multifaceted challenges in a sustainable way, looking into the root cause, and not symptoms and understanding what works for a particular place. I think there is a lot of value in it, but it takes time. It takes commitment, and resources, but I think the benefits of taking such an approach is much more long lasting.
Katy: During the first year of the Creative Communities programme, we reviewed the last decade of research that AHRC had funded on cross-sector co-creation of new culture with communities up and down the UK. We found some great examples of good practice, as you can see on the Open Access report on our website, but we also found some gaps and some cold spots too, including some geographic disparity in where this kind of research is happening and barriers in sharing good practice around the processes and partnerships that enable this way of working.
Our recommendations from that report went on to shape the Community Innovation Practitioner pilot, a brand-new funding opportunity to promote co-creation with cross-sector groups in communities across the UK.
Here’s Lauren from the Creative Communities team to tell you more.
Lauren: Hi, I’m Lauren Baker Mitchell, and I’m Senior Research Fellow for the AHRC Creative Communities programme.
I’m also the lead on the Community Innovation Practitioner Pilot, or the CIP Pilot for short. The purpose of the CIP pilot is to capture knowledge about the processes of co-creation and partnership in community-based arts and humanities research, and so the CIPs are doing that through a series of case study that documents what they’re doing and this podcast series.
So, we have five Community Innovation Practitioners, and each of them has been embedded in collaborative arts and humanities research for the last year, working with diverse partners and communities. And the CIP pilot is a real investment from the Arts and Humanities Research Council so academic funders, universities, and researchers and their partners can really have a better understanding of how they might take this collaborative, more engaged approach to research in the future.
So, each of our CIPs are working around different themes, they’re tackling unique goals and challenges, they’re working with different partners. So, it really brings home the importance of context in this research.
When it comes to co-creation and collaboration, there is no one size fits all way of working, so getting an understanding of these five very different Creative Communities will provide vital knowledge really that can help academic funders, but also academia and its partners on the conditions that are needed really to enable modern, more collaborative, connected and relevant ways of working that can create a more inclusive research environment.
Katy: The Creative Communities Programme funded five CIPs, one in England, Wales and Scotland and two in Northern Ireland. By letting the research team and their community speak for themselves, this new podcast series tells the stories of five very different Creative Communities from across the UK.
The Community Innovation Practitioner Pilot sits alongside other Creative Communities research, including exploration of the experience of partners who’ve taken part in AHRC-funded research in the past, as well as a series of policy labs where we’ve been co-creating arts and culture policy ideas. The CIPs and their podcasts are key to this mixture, as they tell a story of five very different Creative Communities from across the UK.
Who better to explain what they’ve been up to than the CIPs themselves? Let’s hear from our Community Innovation Practitioners.
Áine: Hiya, I’m Áine Brady, project worker in Queen’s University Belfast, working in communities as part of the Queen’s Communities and Place programme. My Creative Communities project is helping to tackle complex health issues at community level, like trauma and substance use, by using creative methodologies and experience led facilitation to deliver things like photography projects, drama and community co-creation.
Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Langlands, Associate Professor of History and Heritage and Co-Director of the Centre for Heritage Research and Training at Swansea University. My Community Innovation Practitioner project explores how co-creation with a diverse range of community members is breathing new life into heritage sites, rethinking the stories they tell, engendering new skills and fostering a sense of belonging.
Jim: Hello, my name is Jim Donaghey. I’m a research fellow at Ulster University. I’m working with the skateboard community in Portrush, a small seaside town on the north coast of Ireland. My Community Innovation Practitioner project is based on a series of creative interventions alongside key research partners, including Causeway Association of Urban Sport, who are a local group campaigning for skate park facilities in Portrush, and Slaine Browne, an independent videographer and long-time skateboarder in the town. The project draws on the rich heritage of skateboarding in Portrush and profiles that ongoing creative practice to argue that skateboarders should be taken seriously as legitimate users of public space.
Gaston: Hi, I’m Gaston Welisch, I’m a researcher from the Glasgow School of Art. I’m working in collaboration with the University of Glasgow and the cross-University partnership. My Community Innovation Practitioner project is using a design-led approach to knowledge exchange. I’m experimenting with creative methods for building innovative research partnerships in the arts and humanities.
Georgina: Hi, I’m Georgina Asgard, a cellist, music and health practitioner and researcher. I’m working in collaboration with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Liverpool. My Community Innovation Practitioner project explores the role of creative practitioners in local communities to support wellbeing and recovery. It shows how collaborative music making can transform lives through the power of co-production and co-creation in diverse community settings.
Katy: But what do the stories like the ones you’ll hear in the podcast offer us? The CIP stories and the change they inspire is not just important for researchers and communities, but for all other kinds of organisations too.
Here’s what some national leaders in culture, innovation and inclusion have to say about why research like this is so important. Here’s Neil Mendoza, explaining why people and place-based research is vital.
Neil Mendoza: My name is Neil Mendoza, I’m the chairman of a government body, Historic England. I think the idea of using place-based research on the ground, which is something that CIPs will be doing, is incredibly important. One of the areas I’m really interested in is the intersection between government and culture and communities, and what’s blindingly obvious when you work on this is that obviously every place is completely different.
Unless you understand that place – it’s not the same as having some overarching government policy like you might do on health or defence or climate. Culture is who we are, what our places are, where we’ve grown up, what our history is, and that is so important to people. I think it’s really important that universities around the country take on exactly the cultural research within communities that we’re talking about. We think broadly across the cultural sector that we’ve been under-investing for many years in culturally led research, and perhaps that’s because it’s not always been associated as the main focus of institutions. But we also know that culture, the creative industries are a giant part of our economy.
And if you look at the amount of research allocated to it compared to its size in the economy, it’s insufficient. It’s something that we need to do. I mean, clearly the big companies like Netflix or Amazon are doing an enormous amount of research and really understand their communities, even from a cultural point of view, so they can deliver their products in the right way.
But if we’re going to be able to do things, then of course, universities are the absolute bedrock and leaders in this area. So, the research that comes out of the university here is going to be really important. And looking at the project that the Creative Communities programme has put together, the way it’s carefully selected in every part of the United Kingdom, it’s obviously going to be incredibly fruitful, bringing out enormous quantities of research from local communities.
Katy: For Helen Golden, the key ingredient is understanding.
Helen Goulden: Hello, I’m Helen Goulden and I’m Chief Executive of the Young Foundation. We are a national charity, we work all over the UK, but we have our heart, if you like, in the East End of London and the simplest way of describing what we do is we’re a think and do tank.
We undertake research primarily with and alongside communities in almost every bit of work that we do. And so, we are naturally allies and fellow travellers with the Creative Communities team and the project and its ambition. So, the importance of community-based stories just can’t be underestimated. So often at the Young Foundation, we’re talking about stats and stories, so you can have the stats that tell you how bad things are and then it’s not until you engage in the story, particularly told by someone with lived experience of that story, that you actually have a deep, empathic, rooted understanding of what’s actually going on for people in their daily lives, in places, experiencing all sorts of deprivation and disadvantage or personal vulnerability in a whole range of different stories like that.
That’s not new, journalists do that, the best politicians do that, best authors and so on, and communicators blend those two things together. But the thing that we can’t ignore is that we do need to be more emotionally engaged with the live realities of people who we might not ordinarily come across or come across every day in some of our circumstances.
If we don’t have that, if we don’t have empathy, we don’t understand it, then we will only ever apply a fairly technocratic, notional idea of how to tackle inequalities. And that’s where I think those stories are often, spoken in plain language in ways that people really understand and can appreciate immediately.
Katy: And for Husna Mortuza, it’s all about power dynamics and change.
Husna Mortuza: My name is Husna Mortuza. I’m the Associate Director of Public Engagement at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. I work on narrative storytelling and movement building and part of my role means I get to look at both policy stories and mobilisation for change, and I’m an advisory board member for AHRC’s Creative Communities.
So, one of the things we look at, at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is who’s telling the story. And the reason that’s important is about who tells the story also holds the power and how you create structural and systemic change is about changing some of those dynamics. So, when you’re having inclusive research from people who don’t see themselves as part of the research or see themselves as being told they’re the subject.
It’s used the power of those people and those communities who are very proud of where they are from, but never seem to get the opportunities but rather the barriers facing issues and therefore the stories they’re able to tell themselves or get shown in the media. So, it’s really important not just to have people on front of the screen but also behind it and research is an integral part of that.
For me, that’s the really exciting bit about the CIP project. It’s about communities and practices getting together, getting to know each other, getting to understand the area. And actually, there’s a certain pride of place where you’re saying we’ve got loads of great stories, and here we have an opportunity to tell those stories.
But also, where you’re working outside of your own sector, sometimes when we’re trying to create change, we’re talking to our own people. So we’re talking to people who are working policy, campaigns, news, media, but to get people from different sectors working together for me is much more important because then you start shaping the way conversations are held, shaping people’s perceptions, challenging the perceptions, but also it’s much more powerful when people work together. So, you’re giving everybody an opportunity to learn, so we all come into this learning something new.
Katy: Research is often reported through the voice of a single author, in a report or review. By letting the CIPs and their research partners speak for themselves, and narrate their own stories of cultural innovation, the podcasts can better profile the diversity and range of research.
And for Christopher from the AHRC, podcasts and research enable us to think about ideas together.
Chris Smith: In Arts and Humanities, we really care about practice-based research, so we care about the fact that actually you can research through movement, or through a piece of art, or through music. So why not through a podcast?
So, there’s a process of thinking together that’s going on here. But I want to use that word ‘together’, really strongly thinking together. There is a notion that arts and humanities research can be done by a single individual, and there’s that the single authored monograph, which is a book by one person.
But then you open up the book and you look at the front and it’s the acknowledgements page – it goes, I want to say my Mum and my dad and my teachers and my friends and dog and a cat and all the village that comes together to make it possible for you to do research. And if you’re really honest and good about this, you say thank you to the library that made it happen, and the people who got me to the library, and all the rest of the people who looked after me and actually that’s thinking together, and we think better when we think together. So I think the great thing about co-creation that we’re doing here is that it just makes visible the fact that we all sitting around this virtual room, are thinking together about how to express something really important about research and about the questions that we need to ask ourselves and ask of each other to be good at thinking together.
Katy: For the CIPs, the task of creating a podcast with our research partners was a whole new experience. Here’s Áine.
Áine: My experience of co-creating the podcast was eye opening. Hearing from project partners, our participants and co-facilitators really made me think about research and working in communities in a different way.
The importance of embedding a research project over a long period of time, of co-designing a research project with our participants and delivering it with and by people in the community was just so impactful. What I’ve learned from the podcast is the importance of long-term embedded research, of valuing community voice and community experience, and of working with working class communities in a way that doesn’t see them as a problem, but actually sees them as an asset to be harnessed.
Katy: This is Alex.
Alex: Making this podcast caused me to listen in new ways and to learn things I would almost certainly not have learnt from the academic world. In my journey, I was able to see the passion and enthusiasm our Creative Communities commit to the work they do, and to share in their challenges and their ambitions for the future.
I’d been used to structuring stories around moving pictures, but doing this podcast gave me invaluable experience of thinking through how to tell a powerful story through sound alone.
Katy: Here’s Jim.
Jim: I’ve been using creative methodologies and diverse dissemination approaches for a while now on previous research projects.
Creating a podcast episode overlapped with this creative background in some ways, but the process of encapsulating the research within a narrative arc was new to me, especially in terms of the close attention paid to pre-planning the episode. One of the key lessons from the process was thinking about the various types of content that needed to be collected to construct the podcast episode.
Gathering interview recordings and scripting the linking sections was familiar enough, but those little pieces of ambient or wild audio are also crucial to making the episode flow. The familiar sounds of Portrush, such as the insistent calls of the seagulls or the doppler screams from the amusement rides, help to bring the listener into this place, just through their ear.
Other sounds, such as the drilling, sawing and hammering work of refurbishing the skaters’ ramps, or the clack, clack, clack, clack of skateboard wheels trying out those newly repaired surfaces, give audio life to our research interventions.
Katy: This is Gaston.
Gaston: Creating my podcast episode really helped me build my project. It gave me a structure with a clear outcome to work towards.
Recording sound at the workshops also meant that I had more material to work with and analyse, so it was a great research tool for me. And finally, it’s allowed me to experiment with sound as a creative material, and I’m looking forward to using sound more in my practice going forward.
Katy: And finally, Georgina.
Georgina: Creating my podcast episode was a whole new and enriching experience. Conducting interviews in community mental health care settings, such as the Life Rooms, provided an innovative platform for people to share their stories and for me to gather first hand data. This process allowed me to capture authentic voices, highlighting both the benefits and challenges of my research activities, although dealing with the technical aspects of recording and producing the podcast was challenging.
The co-production process and expertise from MIC Media offered invaluable skills and insights into podcasting. As a practitioner in action, I am eager to build on the podcast skills I have learned this year to explore community perspectives that other research methods might overlook.
Katy: So now you’ve had a taster of what the Creative Communities podcast is all about, there’s just time to offer a final pitch about why you should hit follow and download the series when it drops in October. Here’s what everyone thinks.
Áine: I think you should listen to the podcast series because it demonstrates the power of co-creation, and it will also show you the tools needed to do co-creation well. It represents authentic community voice and research, which is few and far between, and it demonstrates how grassroots creative research can change lives.
Alex: I think you should listen to this Creative Communities podcast series because communities like the heart of what makes our special places meaningful, cohesive, and successful. So, listen up to the podcast series to learn about the many innovative ways practitioners are working to deliver social, cultural, and environmental benefits across the UK. Listen to my episode because I have given a voice to the generous people who give freely of their time and work so tirelessly behind the scenes to enhance our rich industrial heritage assets for the greater good of all.
Jim: I can’t wait to listen to the other episodes in the podcast series. It’s been great to meet the other CIPs and hear about their exciting work over the last year. Seeing our five distinct yet overlapping research projects come together as a series will be really interesting. I think that some exciting insights will come out of this collection of creative innovation practitioner podcasts you should listen in.
I’m excited for people to hear my episode. The podcast is a fantastic opportunity to give voice, literally, to the skateboarding community in Portrush. They’re on the ground experiences of campaigning for facilities in the seaside resort town will chime with all sorts of other Creative Communities, I’m sure, but it’s also a great opportunity to refocus attention on the lack of proper skate park facilities here and the reasons for that. I know the community here are glad to have this platform to share the creativity with a new audience.
Gaston: I think you should listen to this podcast series to hear about what creativity can bring to engagement with community groups. We all worked with very different community, probably even with different definitions of what community and engagement means.
Georgina: I think you should listen to the podcast series because it uncovers authentic voices and people’s real-life stories through a practitioner’s perspective. My episode of this Creative Communities podcast informs and empowers listeners by demonstrating the powerful role of co-production and co-creation through music to support wellbeing and mental health in local communities. It bridges the gap between academic research and public awareness of community health needs, creating a more accessible and supportive environment and reducing stigma. The episodes not only enriches mental health research, but also enhances its impact and its reach.
Chris Smith: I’ll be listening because I’m just really fascinated by what this programme is doing, what the stories that you’re unearthing, the communities that you’re describing and engaging with. So, I just want to learn about what you’re doing, and I think it’s so engaging. So why should anybody else listen?
All that, but also maybe just to understand a bit more about what research can be. For so much of our lives, you know, research is something strange and weird that other people do, but actually we can all think, we can think better when we think together and the things that we’re thinking about it, it’s just us.
It’s just how we are. That’s what humanities research is and everybody’s view counts. So, somebody listening to this who feels like, actually, that’s not somebody else’s job, it’s part of my job too. I can be part of this. My voice counts. That’s why people should listen to this, because what we’re doing here is trying to lower the barriers to access, break down the walls, take out the silos, just say to people, come on in, talk to us, let’s think together, and let’s build the Creative Communities we want for the future.
We’ve got really tough times ahead of us, we’re in really tough times now. We’ll only get through all of this if we do it together, if we think together, and if we create together. So, I want everybody to listen to this and just go, yeah, okay, I can see this as part of my world, part of my life. And I want to be part of it more.
Husna Mortuza: I’ll be listening to the podcast because I’m curious about people and I’m curious about different skillsets. So, I want to learn things I’ve done differently in a different sector, and actually it will just enhance my own learning and development because I think we can’t all believe that we’re doing everything right because things would be in a better place. So, there must be things here for me I can learn from others in different sectors.
Helen Goulden: I want to see real warts and all stories. I don’t want them to gloss over the complex, messy, social aspects of working in collaboration, doing different kinds of work. I don’t want sanitised versions. If you’re like us, we know that it’s really tough to get a local authority around the table to think differently.
Working with a community that hates each other, which is not uncommon, lots of controversy and contestation in communities themselves. They’re not homogenous places. They’re also always not benign places. There are places where very difficult views can be held and have to be negotiated. So, it’s really tough work.
Neil Mendoza: I’m really looking forward to listening to every subsequent episode of this podcast, this is an important project. It’s such a treat. It’s so unusual to be able to hear from researchers in every country of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England, and on such brilliant array of different kinds of subjects from heritage to trauma, wellbeing, and the effect of music on our lives.
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, www.creativecommunities.uk. We’ve also included all the links mentioned in the episode in the show notes.
You can like, follow on your favourite podcast platform to be the first to hear all five episodes from series one.
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’ll be in Belfast with Áine, whose creative methodology and experience-led facilitation is delivering photography, drama, and community co-creation to help tackle substance abuse and break cycles around complex health issues.
Episode preview: Most of us, in one way or another, we’re living with the impact of addiction.
Poor mental health and trauma on our lives, we would never in a million years have spoken about it this openly to one another, let alone anyone else in the market. But in no time at all, we ended up looking forward to coming to the community centre every Wednesday night, and we opened up about some of the most painful parts of our lives. And to be quite honest, I wasn’t expecting this project to impact us in the way it has.
What I loved about it, every week it was something different. One we were doing a bit of acting and drama, the other one we were doing photos.
I would have never done stuff like this. My family wouldn’t have done stuff like this.
I’d see when my auntie and uncle did come in, they were like, it was amazing, and they were texting me, “So proud of you, so proud of you”.
Katy: Happy listening!
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