Co-creative communities

Traversing a vast terrain including local and regional democracy, ageing, care, reproduction, sexuality, disabilities, and migration, we co-create the spaces and tools communities need to re-frame narratives, claim and defend rights, and forge powerful solidarities.

 

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Place, Community and Connection in the Fens

Contact: Dan Taylor
Partner: Partners listed through the project link

A 2-year long community research project and partnership with communities across the Fens, eastern England, to critically examine the role of infrastructure, connection and local democracy in supporting place-making.

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Wise Connections

Contact: Katerina Alexiou
Partners: Local Learning, Alive, and the Age of Creativity network (Age UK Oxfordshire). 

As we grow older, the opportunities to keep growing our creative capabilities and participate in social, cultural and economic life are reduced. Wise Connections is a project that aims to create ways to trigger socio-cultural interactions (‘seeds’) that grow ‘places’ within homes, public or professional spaces where people feel empowered to discover, integrate and develop what they value to do or be. 

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Cross-pollination: Growing cross-sector design collaboration in placemaking

Contact: Katerina Alexiou
Partners: The Glass-House Community Led Design, working in partnership with the Glasgow Urban Lab, locally-based partners in Merthyr Tydfil, and Clapham Junction in London.
Cross-pollination aims to scale up collaboration by providing spaces and mechanisms that can enable and empower placemaking actors (local authorities, civic sector organisations, community groups, academic institutions, cultural institutions and businesses) to incubate cross-sector collaborative design initiatives in local areas.

 
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Empowering Design Practices

Contact: Katerina Alexiou
Partners: The Glass-House Community Led Design, Historic England, Historic Religious Buildings Alliance

Empowering Design Practices is a five-year collaborative research project exploring how community-led design can help empower those who look after historic places of worship to create more open, vibrant and sustainable places that respect and enhance their heritage.

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Creative Citizens

Contact: Katerina Alexiou
Partners: South Blessed, The Moseley Exchange

Media, Community and the Creative Citizen was a project with three strands (Hyperlocal Publishing, Community-Led Design and Creative Networks) exploring the value of creative citizenship. The project was part of the Connected Communities Programme.

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Peace of Mind

Contact: Christothea Herodotou
Partner: The Verbal, Cedar, Inspire

An innovative youth mental health and wellbeing programme that will enhance emotional resilience in children and young people aged between nine and 25 in Northern Ireland and the border counties of Ireland.

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Scaling Up Co-Design

Contact: Katerina Alexiou
Partners: The Glass-House, Foss-box, The Blackwood Foundation, Silent Cities

'Scaling up co-design research and practice' is a research project that aims to unleash and build upon the intrinsic capacities of communities, community organizations and academic institutions in order to scale up their co-design practices and ultimately extend their reach and impact.

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Valuing Community-Led Design

Contact: Katerina Alexiou
Partners: The Glass-House Community Led Design, Architecture Centre Network

'Valuing Community-Led Design' is a research project that aims to collate, articulate and disseminate evidence about the value of community-led design and bring the relevant stakeholders together to share good practice and form a research agenda for the future.

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nQuire: a community citizen science platform

Contact: Christothea Herodotou
Partner: Full list of partners through the project site

nQuire is a community and citizen science platform you can use to design your own research or take part in research studies designed by others.

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Creative Interactions Research Group

Contact: Christine Plastow
Partner: Broad network of collaborators

The Creative Interactions Research Group explores the powerful intersections between academic research and creative practice. As a group, we explore the ways in which engagement with creative practice can enhance academic research, and vice versa; we seek to open up new avenues and opportunities for what it means to do ‘academic research’ and what ‘research outputs’ should look like; and we advocate for making collaboration with creative practitioners more accessible and easier in practical terms within existing structures for funding and administrating research.