Workpackage 5: Symposia/Festivals of Creative Research

In collaboration with local videographer Slaine Browne, the Causeway Association of Urban Sports, and the wider Portrush skateboarding community, this series of projects intervenes to develop understanding of the value of skaters as a Creative Community. Skateboarders possess an emergent cultural voice in a deeply divided context, and experience the detrimental social impacts of profit-oriented gentrification from a ‘street-level’ perspective. Drawing on the skaters’ tradition of videography, we co-produce film material with research participants. The video is a primary research output, but also serves as a tool for critical reflection on the skaters’ relationship to space and place.

This project led to the Islandmagee Witches 1711 Creative and Digital Project team, from Ulster University's School of Arts and Humanities and Belfast School of Art travelling to Dallas, Texas. The team showcased their creative products and technologically-driven solutions to dark heritage, at an international festival dedicated to expo-ing research-rich products that champion the marginalised, through exciting meaning-making practices by innovative researchers. Team members include Victoria McCollum from Cinematic Arts, Andrew Sneddon from History, and Brian Coyle and Sabrina Minter from Game Design.

Working with lawyer Diogo Cabral, the Brazilian Bar Association, the Federation of Rural Workers and Family Farmer sin Maranhao, the Human Rights Society of Maranhao and the UN AntiRacism Coalition, the team held a side event in Geneva to the Human Rights Council November session, also meeting the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. The project team drew attention to the impact of state violence on the enjoyment of economic social and cultural rights of Amazonian traditional communities. They screened a short film, produced in collaboration with the Boa Hora 3/Marmorana Quilombola community in the Amazon-Cerrado transition zone.

Bringing together cultural producers, researchers and creative practitioners, this project operates to creatively agitate and advocate for digital transformation in the heritage sector. Using research outcomes from Dr Jackson’s immersive technology interpretive projects, workshops seek to intervene in the major hurdles that operate across the cultural heritage sector to inhibit adoption of immersive technology interpretive solutions. With an overarching ‘digitizing heritage’ theme to create a strong communication channel in which researchers and knowledge users can translate research recommendations into practice or policy, sector engagement events will thus intervene in the space between corporate structure and creative agency, between platform infrastructures and curatorial business models.