Being bold for change

This week various events are happening around Newcastle University campus and the city to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) on Wednesday 8th March under the theme of #beboldforchange which also prioritises the call to action worldwide for speeding up gender parity.

working together

The World Economic Forum (WEF) report on gender and inequality shows why the issue of parity still remains vital. The findings make for sobering reading, particularly the part that predicts that the pay gap won’t close entirely until 2186. This is highly dependent on region too. In Europe the gap for equal pay is 47 years however other figures are much worse. In North America, the statistics are in retrograde and in South Asia the WEF predict it will be 1000 years before the pay gap is closed.

The events happening across the North-East highlight the different ways that everyone can #beboldforchange and find motivations in different sources past and present. Tomorrow there’s a lecture on Inspirational Women of the North East by Prof Helen Berry, between 1.30-3pm at the Kings Hall.  On International Women’s Day itself Professor Karen Ross as part of her ESRC IAA project ‘NOT Acting Our Age: Older Women Challenging Gender Stereotypes and Celebrating Life’ will be organising a flash mob at 12 noon in Grainger Market. Later on there is a lecture at Newcastle Business School between 5pm and 7.30 entitled ‘Celebrating Women in the World of Work: Smashing the Glass Ceiling’, details of which can be found here. In Newcastle and Gateshead there are also a number of free events happening throughout the week, which NCVS has collated here.

On Thursday the Institute for Health and Society is featuring talks from the Angelou Centre and Riverside Project at a free event that starts at 2pm at the Medical School.  On the same day at 17:30 in the Herschel Building there will be a discussion around citizenship and equality as part of the Annual Tyneside Geographical Lecture (joint with Royal Geographical Society). Speakers Dame Vera Baird, QC, PCC Northumbria and Dr. Kaneez Shaid, MBE, Chair of Trustees, Citizens UK will explore identities of citizenship and equality that are forged in the public spaces of civil society.

As various conversations begin about #beingboldforchange this week (and beyond) there can hopefully be a turn from just talking into clear collective action…2186 is too long to wait for equality.

For more resources and information about holding an event please see the main website for International Women’s Day.

A full list of University events can be found here.

Upward and Outward: Considering the impact of creative and artist ‘hubs’

Tomorrow, the 4th March, the artist-led studios of the NewBridge project in Newcastle city centre will be emptied out in preparation for the demolition of the building later in the month. Over the past seven years the project has offered an inexpensive studio space to hundreds of artists both locally, nationally and internationally from diverse areas of practice, giving them the opportunity to create and develop their work, then exhibiting in the gallery on the ground floor and around other cultural venues in the city. From October 2016 until February 2017 researchers from Newcastle University documented the different conversations, practices, spaces and exhibitions within the studio building, Norham House, a project that soon became a piece of ‘rescue archaeology’ as the current tenants were given notice of their eviction from the building.

The completion of this project and indeed, the destruction of the building was marked by a research event on 1st March where Dr Martyn Hudson presented a short summary of the findings of his recent work (which can be found at the bottom of this post). He spoke of the constant ‘contest of ideas’ within the building, a project with a deeply ‘bottom-up’ structure that helped form a unique space of creative practice, which will hopefully be extended into the new home for the project when it moves to Carliol House.

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An assortment of chairs, like the contest of ideas found in the NewBridge project event

The presentation was followed by a thought-provoking panel discussion chaired by Newcastle University researcher Ed Wainwright (School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape) who has been working alongside David Butler (School of Arts and Cultures), Paul Richter (Business School) and Martyn Hudson to document the current organisation of NewBridge and the creative culture found within the building. The panel began by asking its members (Sarah Munro, Director, Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art; John Tomaney, Professor at University College London (UCL) Hans Moller, Director of Innovation at North East LEP; Julia Heslop, NewBridge Artist):

What is the impact of creative hubs and organisations like NewBridge on places, individuals, and the arts sector and on regeneration?”

The answers from the panel were varied and provoked a range of responses from different perspectives surrounding impact of cultural industries. Julia Heslop discussed the importance and impact of thinking creatively on wider communities beyond NewBridge alongside the availability of truly affordable space for artists in city centre locations undergoing processes of urban ‘regeneration’. John Tomaney noted that often impact in other industries is mapped in larger-scale economic terms, however the cultural sector operates very differently. He suggested a move away from a purely financial measurement model, instead thinking about civic impact and cultural gain at a micro or community level – focusing on the small changes that can make real differences to local life and the vitality of our cities.

Hans Moller brought an international perspective and saw the potential for creative hubs such as NewBridge to become centres for ‘innovation’, an approach used in his previous role as CEO of Ideon Science Park in Lund but currently less prevalent in the North East. He noted that the varied creative ideas which spilled out of NewBridge were incubated in this space which has a huge social impact on those outside the building, a process that universities must also be a part of.  Sarah Munro added that the clashes of ideas that happen in creative hubs are vital for new work to be both generated and tested in an ad-hoc way that larger organisations such as The Baltic rely upon. Sarah also emphasised how ideas of civic impact shapes their programming and exhibitions alongside their internal processes and organisational practices.

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The walls support practice in the soon-to-be-vanishing NewBridge studio space (Practice Makes Practice is a Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice funded initiative, in collaboration with the NewBridge Project, to support graduate artists with skills and training for professionalising their art careers)

The issues brought up by these different voices speak to the wider questions of how The Arts are valued more generally in society and how they can impact on a wide array of local communities. However difficulties still remain in trying to trace and evidence the way The Arts shape, change and support thinking outside these particular spaces. How can thoughts or feelings and the impact of ideas on individuals really be measured? The attendance at this particular event (the room was packed) speaks to how significant NewBridge is to the cultural landscape of Newcastle and beyond, and how these discussions around understanding value in the arts needs to be communicated to broader publics.

It seems appropriate that ‘Moving on Up, Moving on Out’ is the name of the final exhibit at NewBridge before it closes its doors, as this title neatly summarises the direction of travel when it comes to the ideas that are housed within the NewBridge walls. Where concepts come from the ‘bottom-up’ – from practising artists, they can grow outward into the local communities and could begin to feed into local governmental structures and on into other places and spaces around the region. NewBridge 2.0 will be housed around the corner in Carliol House, here’s hoping that it continues to challenge, disrupt and make an impact.

The Research Excellence Framework and the Vital North Partnership

Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities conference. Photo by Matt Blair..

In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), Newcastle University submitted an Impact Case Study about the Children’s Literature Unit’s work with Seven Stories: Promoting the preservation, presentation and public understanding of children’s literature with Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books.

This Impact Case Study received a 4* grading, defined as ‘outstanding impacts in terms of their reach and significance’. This contributed to Newcastle University ranking first out of all UK HEIs for impact in English Language and Literature.

REF2014 really highlighted the excellence of the partnership between the two organisations and what we could achieve together. Following this REF2014 success, Newcastle University and Seven Stories’ Vital North Partnership programme began in 2015, and aims to strengthen and scale up our collaboration.

So, how did this partnership lead to a REF2014 Impact Case Study, and what have we been doing since then? Well, I gave a paper on that very subject back in October as part of a panel on REF Impact and the Heritage Sector at The National Archives and Research Libraries UK’sDiscovering Collections, Discovering Communities conference. Take a look:

Of course, Newcastle University has a number of strong partnerships with the cultural sector, and Seven Stories’ weren’t the only museum mentioned in their REF Impact Case Studies. And this reflects the submissions of HEIs across the country: 837 of the submitted Case Studies mentioned ‘museum/s’ and 40% of all arts and humanities Impact Case Studies involved museums in some way.

The National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement, reviewing this data, reflects that there are opportunities here to widen both the discipline base, create collaborations in new areas of museum practice, and broaden the approach to impact; I think that the Vital North Partnership is really helping Newcastle University to grasp the range of opportunities that working with Seven Stories presents.

Now, higher education funders and institutions are looking to the next REF in 2021. Lord Stern’s independent review of REF2014 was published in July 2016, and the four UK higher education councils are currently consulting on detailed arrangements for a second REF. We don’t know the details of REF2021 just yet, but the focus on research having impact beyond the academic environment and assessing this through Impact Case Studies looks set to continue.

Excellence in children’s literature is central to the Vital North Partnership’s vision. And thinking about the collaboration between Newcastle University and Seven Stories from the perspective of REF Impact, it seems to me that sustained and embedded partnership activity is an effective way of achieving and evidencing this.

This post originally featured on Rachel’s blog, to find out more about the work being done at Seven Stories click here

To find out more about other case studies and the impact of research taking place across HaSS click here