75 research outputs found
Participatory collaborations between geographers and performance artists: Taking urban renewal histories to the street
Get PDFThis article explores how collaborations between geographers and performance artists can offer new ways for present-day communities to engage with the histories and legacies of postwar urban planning. Focusing on the development of site-responsive performances in Newport (Wales) codesigned by geographer Aled Singleton, Tin Shed Theatre Co and artist TEMMAH, the paper examines how artistic interventions can mediate contested planning documents, oral histories and lived experiences. Drawing on archival research, oral testimony and embodied performance, the project reimagined Newport's post-World War II renewal through performances staged in the streets, layered with both real and imagined voices from the past and subsequently turned into online and digital formats. These interventions challenged official narratives of urban renewal and foregrounded alternative memories and experiences. The article reflects critically on the methodological, ethical and political dimensions of this work, arguing that participatory historical geography, when entangled with artistic practice, can transform how urban pasts are remembered, represented and contested, and opens up new possibilities for place-based, public engagement with the planning histories that continue to shape urban life
Gemma Carney & Paul Nash (2020). Critical questions for Ageing Societies. Bristol: Policy Press, 234 pp. ISBN 978-1447351580 (paperback)
Get PDFTricks, practicalities and ethics of teaching outdoor walking research, including interviews and group tours
Get PDFIn the context of a growing literature and practice around walking research, thischapter considers how to transfer such momentum into teaching outdoor walkingmethods within Higher Education. Presently there is a relative lack of teachingresources. This writing therefore offers reflections from three incremental andcomplementary techniques aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students.These include setting an assessed task from a 30-minute independent walk, usingthe psychogeographical dérive to structure group walking within a fieldtrip, andequipping postgraduates with the knowledge to scope out their own walking researchprojects. These approaches are largely grounded in ethnography and aimed at abroad disciplinary field. From these examples I summarise the logistical challengesand need to develop learning materials and courses
Urban research in film using walking tours and psychogeographic approaches
Get PDFThis article investigates urban change, making films from research approaches which use ethnographic walking interviews, public walking tours and psychogeographic techniques. The case study focuses on Newport, South Wales, UK. Using this example, I explore the longer-term impacts of the (mostly) state-led reconfiguration of British towns and cities from the late-1950s to the mid-1970s. Contemporary film for this period sets the context and links to Guy Debord’s concept of psychogeography, psychogeography in film, and associated walking techniques. This article builds a methodology from these principles, where one-to-one participant-led walking interviews – both outdoor and using online maps – reacquaint people over aged 55 with earlier periods of their biographies. These approaches reveal deeply-held memories and articulate feelings relevant to the present and future. This article develops and analyses practice, offering ways to film walking tours to sensitivity present and explore place narratives over time: firstly, working with community activists to reveal the politics of local housing; and secondly, a commission with a theatre company where three artists follow a specific walking route which explores urban change and rights to the city. As towns and cities face challenges these approaches offer visual methods to engage the public in place making
Using Walking Approaches and Site-Specific Performance to Reveal Layers of Feeling Attached to Place
Get PDFThis paper aims to meet the desire for dynamic and multi-dimensional aspects of studying feelings attached to places. Starting with a contemporary example of a place in crisis and whose affective history seems linked to the 1984–85 UK miners’ strike, this paper argues for methodologies that avoid drawing straight lines from feelings attached to the past into the present-day. Rather than following dominant emotions, this work pursues Kathleen Stewart’s approach to ordinary affects: feelings that start and end in social worlds, but which are equally personal and intimate. A case study from Wales, UK, uses the creative mediums of walking tours and site-specific performances to bring the public into the research, which in turn helps to interpret feelings of the past revealed from 13 interviews focused on older people. This writing considers future methodological developments, such as focusing on younger people, encouraging local stakeholders as co-producers, and deepening artist collaborations
Developing Walking Methods for Lifecourse Research
Get PDFThis chapter presents and analyses empirical case studies from the United Kingdom, where three different walking methods uncover memories and emotions connected to earlier stages of the lifecourse. Alongside conventional outdoor walks, this writing describes both an oral method and an online digital approach that help the individual to imagine their walking body passing through spaces such as the house, street, and neighbourhood. These three connected methodologies change the format of biographical accounts from chronological to geographical, and so reveal rich accounts concerning topics such as homelife, leisure, and mobilities. Moreover, this approach helps to understand others' social and economic contexts, particularly when biographies are (re)presented for wider consumption on curated public walks and through an artistic film project. This chapter offers ways for researchers of different chronological ages and backgrounds to the interviewees find common ground, thus offering Linking Ages methodologies to understand the relationships that contemporary children have with space and place
The long resolution? Responding to economic and social change in postwar South Wales
Get PDFThis article investigates the period between the late-1950s and the mid-1970s, a time when millions of people in Britain moved from towns and older industrial settlements to the urban periphery. South Wales offers a particularly interesting perspective as many moves were within twenty miles and seemed to be driven by high levels of state investment in industry, housing, and road infrastructure. This writing aims to examine the long-term impact of these decisions on later generations and to demonstrate the determination - or will – of political actors in Wales, often competing with other places. As well as adapting the well-known Raymond Williams work Long Revolution for my title, I use his structure of feeling concept to seek an understanding of how change was experienced. This is achieved by presenting four recent interview accounts gathered from people who lived in South Wales in the first three decades after World Ward Two
Analysing spatial data gained from walking interviews and psychogeographic group tours
Get PDFThis paper asks whether there is potential to complement existing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) practice by taking different routes through the Census and other data which relates to places. For example, my PhD research researched ageing, the lifecourse and emotional attachments to place by deploying a methodology which includes interviews inspired by walks and psychogeographic group walking tours. One output from this project is a collective narrative structured along a six-stage walk of 5.8 km. Mapped as a GPX line, could such threads be used to link with other data and therefore provide new ways of understanding the characteristics of places
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