Taking inspiration from the 500th anniversary of the publication in 1516 in Latin of Thomas More’s Utopia, as well as a Connected Communities/ Care for the Future Symposium on ‘Utopias, Futures and Temporalities: Critical Considerations for Social Change’ held in May 2015, the 2016 Connected Communities Research Festival will have a central theme of Community Futures and Utopias.
Expressions of Interest (EOIs) are now invited to contribute to the Festival which will run from February 2016 through to June 2016, culminating in a major weekend-long Utopia Fair at Somerset House on 24th-26th June [DEADLINE for EOIs is 16/12/2016]. This call for EOIs will support participatory arts research and research co-production activities through two main strands of the 2016 Festival:
- A Programme of Local Festival Activities which bring together at a regional / local /community level researchers from the arts and humanities (and other disciplines where appropriate), research organisations, community groups, creative practitioners and other community partners. These local activities can take place at any time from February 2016 to late June 2016 and will be brought together as a UK-wide Festival programme of local activities
- Participation in the Utopia Fair, 24th-26th Junethrough the partnership with The Somerset House Trust as a part of Utopia 2016: a year of imagination and possibility. Building on local Festival activities EOIs are invited to include ideas for participatory arts research co-production projects which will produce creative, co-produced/ participatory, research outputs which can be showcased at a weekend Festival, The Utopia Fair, to be held in the Edmond J Safra Fountain Court at Somerset House in London which will take place on 24th – 26th June 2016. The Utopia Fair will bring together representatives of contemporary utopian movements, celebrating projects already flourishing in the margins and liminal spaces around the UK, and the importance of the spaces that artists create for dreaming. It will enable visitors to join in and taste utopia now, inspiring them to take a piece of utopia home with them and into their lives. 25 stands are available at the Utopia Fair to showcase creative community –co-produced outcomes from local Connected Communities Festival activities. As well as the stands, there are also opportunities to showcase other outputs, such as film screenings or performances, at the Utopia Fair
There are two strands available:
- Standard awards, worth up to £5,000 each, to support local research activities co-produced between researchers, communities and other partners;
- Augmented awards, worth up to £15,000 each, to support more ambitious local research co-production actions involving the use of creative practices or participatory arts research approaches, and leading to community co-produced creative or artistic research outputs.
For full info visit the AHRC website HERE
