Ruth Webber reflects on a film she made on participation and heritage in West Bowling
The film’s title, West Bowling Together, was inspired by sociologist Robert Putnam’s seminal book Bowling Alone (2001). Putnam describes declining ‘social capital’ in the United States since the 1950s, and proposes the importance of civic participation and social interaction for developing and maintaining community. Continue reading
Jill Ebrey talks everyday participation and the British weekend on BBC’s Thinking Allowed
This programme, first broadcast in 2010, introduces the weekend as a subject for debate. Featuring Jill Ebrey and Richard Reeves (Director of the think tank Demos), it traces a history of the weekend from its origins in the nineteenth century Saturday half-day holiday, through a high point in the second half of the twentieth century to its possible demise in the deregulated twenty first century. Based around Jill’s research with supermarket workers in Salford, it considers how everyday participation in the social and collective life of the weekend is constrained by working on Saturdays and Sundays. Continue reading
Ruth Webber invites you to follow her journey into understanding everyday participation in Glasgow by way of her new blog
Govanhill Community Baths – where I met with Jim, who told me about the 13 year long struggle to regain community ownership following its closure in 2001. It has now been opened again for 2 and a half years. He showed me around this majestic (and cold!) building and talked to me about plans, projects, including a vision to eventually have community allotments in the cubicles under the huge glass roof, where people would be able to grow and eat their own food
To continue reading Ruth’s blog, click here: In Dialogue with Glasgow
Jill Ebrey reflects on her journey in North East Scotland
In May 2014, with two suitcases, I boarded a train in Manchester bound for my new home in Aberdeen for two months. Through ethnographic work, I was hoping to learn the kinds of things that go on in Peterculter (also known as Culter), a village on the edge of the city. Continue reading
Delyth Edwards offers some reflections on her time spent in a Cheetham Hill charity shop
At the CRESC 2014 conference I presented a paper on the ethnography I carried out as a volunteer in a charity shop in Cheetham Hill, North Manchester. The subject of the conference was Power, Culture and Social Framing. It made sense to focus on the concept of charity and how it was in itself a discourse that had been framed and (re)framed over the centuries leading to the creation of charity shopping as we know it today. Continue reading
By Abi Gilmore
Why should there be public funding for the arts? What role does cultural participation play in people’s lives? There has been an ongoing policy debate about the value of the arts to society which asks what kinds of returns policy makers should expect from public investment in arts and culture. ‘Raising our quality of life: the importance of investment in arts and culture’, explores Continue reading
I came to the Performing Place symposium with a view to hearing more about how to carry out research in a creative, experimental and fun way. My background is in Visual Anthropology so although I have been exploring creative methods which play with representation, focus on reflexivity and encourage a collaborative approach, I haven’t Continue reading
What are the key features of everyday leisure participation amongst different geographically located and demographically defined groups in Glasgow and how does is this participation activity linked to other spheres of an individual’s life? Continue reading
My PhD research fieldwork consisting of two ethnographies will be carried out over the period of a year from 2015 – 2016 in Glasgow. I will be supervised by Dr Lisanne Gibson in the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Values (UEP) project. Continue reading
Susan Oman discusses Connecting Epistemologies: Methods and Early Career Researchers in the Connected Communities Programme – FINAL EVENT which took place on 28th October, 2014 City University London