Outside the Box: Open-Air Performance as a Pandemic Response

Case Study Theatre and performance artists innovated in their open-air practices during the pandemic, addressing the impacts upon the cultural sector and social isolation caused by lockdowns, alongside the ongoing protracted crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. Spanning theatre and management studies, Outside the Box: Open Air Performance as a Pandemic Response worked with […]

Online access to cultural activities for people living with brain injury

About the project The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns magnified the challenges that individuals with ABI experienced, with increased isolation and loneliness due to shutdown of services as well as increased risk of anxiety and depression. Brain Waves is a 12-week online performance arts programme developed for people with acquired brain injury (ABI) during the COVID-19 […]

Children, acceptable health risks and COVID-19: Ethical guidance for a fair policy response

About the project This project explored how the health systems response to the COVID-19 pandemic affected children and young people with long-term health conditions in the UK. It analysed the impact of the pandemic on healthcare delivery and access, the potential of innovative practices developed in response to the pandemic, and how service restrictions have […]

Mutual Aid Groups and Their Lessons for Post-crisis Community Care

About the project COVID-19 and accompanying restrictions on social and economic life has led to increased food poverty and vulnerability. This project examined how mutual aid was enacted during the pandemic, investigating who organised mutual aid initiatives and asking what helped or hindered their enactment of mutual aid. The project team consisted of academics from […]

Nature and Sustainability

Arts and Humanities research on Covid-19 often has a bearing on environmental sustainability and the relationship between the individual and their natural environment.  Research on how to help the creative industries weather the shocks of lockdowns has notably explored digital media as a low-carbon alternative to travel and designed digital platforms that enable new forms of virtual co-presence. Performance practitioners have also turned […]

Skills and Training

Innovation and adaptation, including the move to digital, has been a feature of individual and organisational response to the pandemic across the arts and creative sector.  Arts and Humanities research exploring this has exposed a need for wide-ranging skills development and training in the cultural sector to support future inclusion and accessibility and to ensure […]

Making it FAIR: Understanding the Lockdown ‘Digital Divide’ and the Implications for the Development of UK Digital Infrastructures

About the project This project examined how small museums can address the challenges of engaging with audiences online in lockdown and beyond, in such a way that new digital content generated is sustainable and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Resuable). Researchers conducted an action-based research study with a cohort of 8 small museums; they received training, […]

Outside the Box: Open-Air Performance as a Pandemic Response

About the project This project investigated the potential role of live outdoor performance events in sustainably “building back better”. It used a practice based approach, commissioning environmentally attuned outdoor performance events in the city of Exeter, held in accordance with pandemic regulations, and employed interview and survey research with artists and local authority events officers […]

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Masking uncertainty on the bus: risk and responsibility after ‘freedom day’

By Emma Roe*, Paul Hurley*, Charlotte Veal** and Sandra Wilks***. Project: ‘Routes of infection, routes to safety: Creative mapping of human-viral behaviours on the bus to understand infection prevention practices’ On a day heralded by some, including members of the UK government before it took a more cautious tone[1], as ‘freedom day’, the Prime Minister, […]

Models of equitable distribution of vaccines in international law

Case Study Our research project ‘Assessing the viability of access and benefit-sharing models of equitable distribution of vaccines in international law’ predicted that low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) would receive significantly fewer vaccines, and receive them far later, than their developed country neighbours. We sought to understand why this is the case, and, crucially, to understand if […]