What is the role of ‘welcome’ in contemporary utopia?
We propose a co-produced, participatory arts research project which investigates what is the role of ‘welcome’ in contemporary utopia? Taking our starting point of ‘utopia’ as deriving from the Greek ‘ou topos’, meaning ‘no place’ or ‘no where’, this interdisciplinary, collaborative project will combine language research methodologies with visual arts and performance.
Language researchers from the School of Education at the University of Leeds (UoL) will work in partnership with Wakefield-based arts organisation, Faceless Arts (FA), local charities and third sector organisations, and undergraduate and postgraduate students. We build on the Translation and Translanguaging: Investigating Linguistic and Cultural Transformations in Superdiverse Wards in Four UK Cities (TLANG) project, funded by the AHRC under its Translating Cultures theme. TLANG aims to develop ‘new understandings of multilingual interaction in cities in the UK’ through investigating how people communicate across languages and cultures.
Keep checking this blog to find out what we’re doing! You can also follow us on Twitter: @JessMaryBradley @FacelessCompany – alternatively use the festival hashtag #ccutopias2016 .
Who we are:
TLANG Project Language researchers from the School of Education at the University of Leeds.
School of Education website: www.education.leeds.ac.uk
TLANG project blog and website : www.tlangblog.wordpress.com; http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/tlang/index.aspx
Faceless Arts
Faceless Arts website: www.facelessarts.co.uk
AHRC Connected Communities Utopias Festival
The Connected Communities Programme aims to build powerful collaborations between researchers and communities to generate distinctive research insights on the changing role of communities in sustaining and enhancing our quality of life and to produce legacies of value for both future research and for communities. The Programme is led by the AHRC in partnership with other Research Councils and a range of other organisations.
Taking inspiration from the 500th anniversary of the publication in 1516 in Latin of Thomas More’s Utopia, the 2016 Connected Communities Research Festival has the theme of Community Futures and Utopias. From March to June 2016 the Festival is supporting activities across the UK bringing together researchers and communities to creatively explore diverse perspectives on community futures and what ‘utopia’ means for communities in the 21st Century
The Festival is being undertaken in partnership with The Somerset House Trust as a part of Utopia 2016: A Year of Imagination and Possibility.
https://connected-communities.org/index.php/about/utopia-500/
welcomeutopia2016 