Briefing Meeting for Funding Call. Presentation by Gary Grubb, AHRC

1. Connected Communities Programme/
Care for the Future / HLF
Co-ordinating Centres for Community
Engagement in the Centenary of the
First World War
Briefing Meeting for Funding Call

2. Welcome and Introduction from
AHRC
Gary Grubb
Associate Director of Programmes AHRC

3. Timetable for the Day
9.30am Registration/coffee
10.00am Welcome, AHRC context and fit to the Connected
Communities Programme (Gary Grubb, AHRC)
10.20–10.40 Contribution to the Care for the Future Theme
(Prof. Andrew Thompson, Theme Leadership Fellow)
10.40-11.00 Overview of HLF WW1 Centenary activities & the
‘WW1: Then and Now’ Programme (Karen Brookfield &
Anna Jarvis, HLF)
10.50–11.20 Key Features of Co-ordinating Centres Call (Gary Grubb)
11.20-12.00 Co-ordinating Centres - Discussion / Q&A Session
12.00-12.30 Overview of AHRC-BBC WW1 partnership and Q&A
(Philip Pothen, AHRC)
12.30-2.00pm Networking Lunch & Informal
Discussions and Questions

4. AHRC Strategy 2013-2018
• Through themes fund transformative
research that takes a wider
perspective, develops cross-
disciplinary and cross-cutting enquiry,
draws on multiple perspectives and
stimulates challenge and exchange
• Public engagement – making explicit
the contribution of A&H research to
understanding national life in an
international context
• Developing partnerships (e.g. in civic,
cultural and heritage sectors)

5. • Themes
- Digital Transformations
- Translating Cultures
- Care for the Future
- Science in Culture
• Cross- Council Programmes
- Leadership of Connected
Communities Programme
• National Capability Areas
- Design
- Heritage
- Languages
• Responsive Mode Funding – over
70% of research funding
AHRC’s Priority Areas

6. Introduction to the Connected
Communities Programme
Gary Grubb
Associate Director of Programmes AHRC

7. Connected Communities Programme:
Connecting Research for Flourishing Communities
Programme Vision
To mobilise the potential for
increasingly inter-connected,
culturally diverse, communities
to enhance participation,
prosperity, sustainability,
health & well-being by better
connecting research,
stakeholders and communities.

8. Evolving Understandings of Community
Evolving approach but see communities as:
“dynamic processes through which groups come together, through
choice or necessity, to share some common bonds or values or to
co-operate and interact over a sustained period of time in pursuit
of a collective need or interest in particular issues or outcomes.
Communities may be real or imagined, may share a virtual or
physical environment and/or may share aspects of identity (such as
location, race, ethnicity, age, history, practice), culture, belief or
other common bonds, connections or interests but may also
transform over time, be culturally diverse and involve significant
dissent and conflict”.

9. Evolving Understandings of Community
• Importance of temporal as well as spatial dimensions
• Interest in the processes which constitute and ‘connect’
communities and the ways that they are enacted, ‘performed’,
experienced and change
• Recognise that there are many forms of community (e.g.
ascribed, elective, imagined, transient, etc.) & many different
forms of connection (language, place, virtual, practice, cultural
activity, etc)
• Consider both the positive and negative aspects
• Interested both in the relationships within communities and the
interactions between communities (past and present) and their
outcomes for broader society and economy.
• Applicants expected to explain the ways in which they are using
the term community and thinking about issues of connectedness
and to justify why this is appropriate for their proposed research

12. Examples of Current Activities
• 10 community co-creation and co-production projects where the
research teams are working with community partners in the first
stage to determine the research ideas to be explored in the
second phase
• 2 large grants with ESRC on Community Engagement and
Mobilisation
• Large grants on communities, cultures and creative economy (3)
and communities, cultures, health and well-being (3)
• 2013 Summit exploring project legacies & support for early career
researchers
• 2014 international conference planned

13. Researching Community Heritage
• As a part of the second phase of our collaboration with
the Heritage Lottery Fund’s All Our Stories Programme
we are supporting 18 research teams across the UK to
support hundreds of community groups that are
undertaking small projects to explore their community
heritage as a part of the All Our Stories Programme.
• We are also funding 11 new research projects to support
the co-production of cultural heritage research with
community groups.

14. Current Call
Communities & the Centenary of the First World War
• Builds on research for community heritage & partnership
with HLF but different structure reflecting the more
focused subject remit and on-going nature of activities over
6 years
• Capacity building, working with NCCPE and cross-
disciplinary aspects continue
• Opportunities for a more critically reflective approach
linking into Care for the Future and Connected
Communities issues and other centenary activities

15. Leadership Fellowships
• Prof George McKay (Salford Univ.) plays a
leadership role in relation to the Programme’s
cross-cutting theme on “Understanding
changing community cultures and histories and
patterns of connectivity within and between
communities”.
• Prof Keri Facer (Bristol Univ.) plays a
leadership role in relation to the cross-cutting
theme on: “Connecting research with
communities and other stakeholders”
Helping to bring together this large portfolio and map out future
directions and connections for the Programme we have appointed
2 Leadership Fellows:

16. Current Calls
Research Grants Highlight for Design & Communities
• Highlight notice to stimulate innovative
applications to explore the
contributions that design can make to
the Connected Communities
Programme and encourage proposals
that connect communities, designers
and arts & humanities researchers in
the co-design & co-production of
research
• Stimulus materials including case
studies and films of Connected
Communities ‘design’ projects
• Applications £50k- £1.5m (fEC)
• Highlight ends 15 January 2014
www.ahrc.ac.uk/cchighlight

17. Current Calls
Digital Community Research Co-Production in the
Arts and Humanities
£4m ‘capital funding’ for projects to harness the
power of digital technologies to engage communities
in the digital co-production of research. It aims to
develop cultural and creative digital research ‘assets’
(e.g. as new or enhanced databases, archives, galleries
and creative outputs) which will be a sustainable
resource and legacy for both future research and for
communities.
Closing date 27 June 2013.