Summary of the interventions element of the AHRC-funded Cultural Intermediation in the Creative Urban Economy

1. The interventions
Phil Jones (UoB)
Yvette Vaughan Jones (Visiting Arts)

2. Work Package 5: Interventions
• Lead: Phil Jones
• Input: Yvette Vaughan Jones / Paul Heywood /
Andrew Dubber
• Case studies in: Birmingham / Manchester
• Aim: attempting to develop, commission and
test innovative modes of intermediation
• Commissions led by communities worked with
in the Communities Work Package

3. Using art as method

4. Participant creativity
• Researchers are now comfortable asking for
creative outputs from participants
• Art-as-therapy
– Different media to express the inexpressible
• Mental mapping (Gould & White, 1974)
– Differing representations of the same spaces
• Participatory photography
– ‘Empower’ participants to capture ‘their’ spaces
– (cf. Collier, 1957 on photo elicitation)

6. Lorne, 2011

7. Arts-based research
• Patricia Leavy (2009) Method meets art
• Pirkko Markula (2006) on dance
– Experimental, doesn’t always work in the way
intended
• Increasing acceptance that arts practice can
be used as a tool for researching ‘social
science’ topics

8. Creative engagements

9. Hybrid activity
• Using a practice-based approach to engage
participant creativity
• BUT it’s the participants who commission the
practice in the first place
• Most flexible part of the project
– Part of the budget not predefined except
earmarked for commissions by local panels
– One commission pre-allocated to further explore
the Visiting Arts Square Mile method