From 2012-2013 the AHRC are funding 10 Pilot Demonstrator Projects aimed at showcasing the distinctive approach of the Connected Communities research theme. The projects are highly collaborative, involving cross-disciplinary research and significant community engagement. Members of the Temporal Belongings project will be heading up two of these projects, both of which will explore the interconnections between time and community in a variety of ways.
Time of the Clock and the Time of Encounter: Pathfinders for Connection
This project investigates the difference between the time of the clock and the lived time of experience. We live in a world dominated by the time of the clock, yet many aspects of life have a different rhythm and temporality. The time of community, especially, is very often more complex and differentiated that standardised clock time. A co-inquiry of researchers from a range of disciplines in the arts and humanities and practioners in community organisations will explore ways by which communities can acquire a more open and diversified relation to time; they will approach this question both from a theoretical point of view as well as from a practice- and intervention-based point of view. As such the project will make a significant contribution to developing a concrete ethics and culture of temporal diversity.
The project is a co-inquiry between researchers and community organisations and the impact therefore runs in both ways: we aim to develop interventions that will enable communities to reflect on common assumptions about time, but also recognise that like any other community, the research and knowledge production community itself is driven by certain assumptions about time which are in need of examination, and so this project will also explore what the research community can learn from its engagement with other communities.
Project Participants
Dr Johan Siebers (PI) | Prof Anne Douglas (Co-I) | Dr Chris Speed (Co-I)| Dr Michelle Bastian (Co-I) | The Holmewood School: London | Encounters Arts | On the Edge (OTE) Research | Woodend Barn Arts Centre | Orpheus Research Centre in Music (ORCiM) | Champ’D’Action | Ecoarts Scotland
The project is a co-inquiry between researchers and community organisations and the impact therefore runs in both ways: we aim to develop interventions that will enable communities to reflect on common assumptions about time, but also recognise that like any other community, the research and knowledge production community itself is driven by certain assumptions about time which are in need of examination, and so this project will also explore what the research community can learn from its engagement with other communities.
Project Participants
Dr Johan Siebers (PI) | Prof Anne Douglas (Co-I) | Dr Chris Speed (Co-I)| Dr Michelle Bastian (Co-I) | The Holmewood School: London | Encounters Arts | On the Edge (OTE) Research | Woodend Barn Arts Centre | Orpheus Research Centre in Music (ORCiM) | Champ’D’Action | Ecoarts Scotland
Memories of Mr Seel's Garden: Past and future food systems in Liverpool
The Memories of Mr Seel's Garden project explored how engaging local communities with the changing patterns of urban food production might contribute to current grassroots efforts within Liverpool to raise awareness around current food issues. The project was inspired by a set of plaques located around the corner from the main entrance to a Tesco Superstore on the outer edges of Liverpool ONE, a 42 acre regeneration area of the city centre. The plaques reproduce an 18th Century map of the area, with the description stating that this area was once 'Mr Seel's Garden'. Drawing the contemporary viewer into a lost past, the description states: "you are standing on what was the garden, represented by an asterisk". You are not all that stands on what was the garden, however, as the Tesco itself is also directly on top of the garden site. Yet, even while you might catch yourself becoming a little nostalgic - imagining a kindly Mr Seel handing you a freshly cut cabbage - the description lets you know that "Thomas Seel was an eighteenth century merchant. He made money out of the dreadful slave trade, but used some of it to pay for Liverpool's first infirmary".
The uncanny juxtaposition of current and historic food systems, made visible by this map, has been commented on by a number of Liverpool local food activists. The vivid experience it produces, draws together multiple elements - food, maps, history, time, power, cruelty, memory, intertwined local and global communities - to paint a complex picture of the changing nature of communities and the systems that connect them together. The project aims to engage with the productive knots and tangles woven together by 'Mr Seel's Garden' through a collaboration between a broad range of partners with a shared interest in time, food and community engagement. Using approaches from a range of humanities disciplines the researchers on this project will work with community organisations within Liverpool’s fledgling local food movement to explore the historical and comparative dimensions of changing patterns of food production, via oral history, archive research and site identification/documentation. We were particularly interested in engaging creatively and philosophically with the data produced by these activities to provoke broader questioning about ‘what might have been’ and ‘what could be’.
Project Participants
Dr Michelle Bastian (PI) | Dr Alexandrina Buchanan (Co-I) | Dr Alex Hale (Co-I) | Dr Niamh Moore (Co-I) | Dr Chris Speed (Co-I) | Transition Liverpool | Friends of Everton Park | Friends of Sudley Estate (now Growing Sudley) |
Final Project Report
The uncanny juxtaposition of current and historic food systems, made visible by this map, has been commented on by a number of Liverpool local food activists. The vivid experience it produces, draws together multiple elements - food, maps, history, time, power, cruelty, memory, intertwined local and global communities - to paint a complex picture of the changing nature of communities and the systems that connect them together. The project aims to engage with the productive knots and tangles woven together by 'Mr Seel's Garden' through a collaboration between a broad range of partners with a shared interest in time, food and community engagement. Using approaches from a range of humanities disciplines the researchers on this project will work with community organisations within Liverpool’s fledgling local food movement to explore the historical and comparative dimensions of changing patterns of food production, via oral history, archive research and site identification/documentation. We were particularly interested in engaging creatively and philosophically with the data produced by these activities to provoke broader questioning about ‘what might have been’ and ‘what could be’.
Project Participants
Dr Michelle Bastian (PI) | Dr Alexandrina Buchanan (Co-I) | Dr Alex Hale (Co-I) | Dr Niamh Moore (Co-I) | Dr Chris Speed (Co-I) | Transition Liverpool | Friends of Everton Park | Friends of Sudley Estate (now Growing Sudley) |
Final Project Report
| cc_discussion_paper_mr_seels_garden.pdf |
