THE WAY
WE LIVE
NOW
T H E A H RC 1 0TH
A N N I V E R S A RY
D E B AT E S
2 0 1 5 -2 0 1 6
DEBATES AT A GLANCE
Curating the Nation
11th June 2015
BP Theatre, British Museum
The Challenge of Change
15th October 2015
Faith and Education
21st October 2015
Cohesion, Diversity and the
Common Good
LBJ Auditorium, Austin, Texas
Beyond the Digital
11th November 2015
Future Cities for All
17th November 2015
Rethinking the Nation
25th November 2015
Books and The Human
December 2015
Machine World
Early 2016
Is British Culture a Myth?
Feb/March 2016
Newcastle Civic Centre
Cambridge University
November 2015
St Colum’s Hall, Orchard Hall, Londonderry
and UCL, London
Wills Memorial Building, Bristol
Imperial War Museum North, Manchester
Platform Theatre, University of the Arts, London
London
Cardiff and St Andrews
PLUS – other anniversary activities, see pages 14 & 15
Curating the Nation 11th June 2015 BP Theatre, British Museum
Books and The Human December 2015 Platform Theatre, University of the Arts, London
The Challenge of Change 15th October 2015 Newcastle Civic Centre
Machine World Early 2016 London
Faith and Education 21st October 2015 Cambridge University
Is British Culture a Myth? Feb/March 2016 Cardiff and St Andrews
Cohesion, Diversity and the Common Good November 2015
PLUS – other anniversary activities, see pages 14 & 15
LBJ Auditorium, Austin, Texas
Beyond the Digital 11th November 2015 St Colum’s Hall, Orchard Hall, Londonderry and UCL, London
Future Cities for All 17th November 2015 Wills Memorial Building, Bristol
Rethinking the Nation 25th November 2015 Imperial War Museum North, Manchester
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INTRODUCTION
The AHRC is marking its tenth anniversary
in 2015 through a number of activities to
showcase the achievements of the arts and
humanities research community over the last
decade, to look forward to the coming decade
and to celebrate the role of the arts and
humanities in all areas of our national life.
One of these activities is a series of ten debates held at universities
and cultural organisations around the UK over the next year. The
theme of the series is ‘The Way We Live Now’ and individual debates
will focus on more specific themes including The Future City,
Curating the Nation, the Challenge of Change, the Death of Digital
and many more.
These debates will examine key aspects of our human world, the
ways in which they are changing and shaping our lives, and explore
the ways in which the arts and humanities can help us understand
our changing world.
All debates will either be live-streamed or made available as video
recordings through the AHRC website. Please go to
www.ahrc.ac.uk/ahrc10 for further details. Or follow the debates
on @ahrcpress or #ahrc10
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CURATING
THE NATION
11th June 2015
BP theatre, British Museum
O
ur great national collections document a vast wealth of
information and experience – from our daily lives to the most
significant world events. They are as integral to our lives as individuals
as they are to our national life and as vital to our future as they are to
understanding our past.
The Royal Observatory, National
Maritime Museum
With an introduction from its Director, Neil MacGregor, the British
Museum will host a debate on ‘Curating the Nation’, the inaugural
debate in the AHRC Anniversary Debates exploring ‘The Way We
Live Now’. How do our great national collections continue to secure
access to national collections for future generations? What is the role
of the national institution in a global world? How should we capture
new kinds of gallery interventions such as live performance? How
can we meet the expectations of diverse audiences and involve them
in curating? And how should these cultural institutions respond to
regional identities within the UK?
These are just some of the questions that this debate will address.
This debate is a collaboration between the AHRC, the British
Museum, the Imperial War Museums and all the Independent
Research Organisations.
Left: Family activities at the National
Portrait Gallery
Right: Late Shift visitors at the National
Portrait Gallery
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THE CHALLENGE
OF CHANGE
15th October 2015
Newcastle Civic Centre
C
hange is part of the way we live. It defines history, politics,
technology, nature and our environment.
Many generations have thought of themselves as living in a period of
rapid transformation. Today, change seems to be happening in faster,
deeper and more disturbing ways, setting enormous challenges for
societies around the world.
Top: Newcastle University
Below: Newcastle Civic Centre
This debate will explore how we understand and meet the challenge
of change. How do the arts and humanities help us to understand
change? How do they enable us to identify, conceptualise and
represent it? Do the arts and humanities sometimes actually lead
change?
This debate is a collaboration between the Arts and Humanities
Research Council (AHRC) and Newcastle University.
With its focus on change, the debate contributes to the three-year
programme of events commemorating the 50th anniversary of
Martin Luther King’s visit to Newcastle to accept his honorary degree.
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FAITH AND
EDUCATION
21st October 2015
Cambridge University
F
aith plays a pivotal role in all areas of British national life, from
recent fears about home-grown Islamic extremism, to questions of
Christianity’s long-central role in public life, to the shaping of values
in an age of doubt.
Above: St John’s College Cambridge
Below: King’s College, Cambridge
This debate focuses on the place of faith in education, a question of
special relevance in the light of changing cultural dynamics of religion
and secularity in British public life. It asks whether the inclusion
of religion in curricula, and the funding or even existence of faith
schools, are more likely to foster inter-religious understanding and
contribute to an inclusive society, or to encourage division and to
undermine the goals of education.
Bringing together senior academics, policy makers and other
experts, this debate will offer speakers and audiences across different
sectors, faiths and communities an opportunity to engage in
thoughtful and critical reflection on some of the most important
questions of identity, diversity, and civic formation in contemporary
British culture.
This debate is a collaboration between the AHRC and the University
of Cambridge and is part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.
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COHESION,
DIVERSITY AND THE
COMMON GOOD
November 2015
LBJ Auditorium, Austin, Texas
A
s the USA and the UK grapple with the opportunities and
challenges associated with increasing transnational and
globalized connections, the need to understand communication
within and between diverse cultures is stronger than ever.
This debate will adopt a transatlantic perspective to explore the
challenges of rapidly changing demographics and examine the role of
the humanities in allowing us to explore a range of concepts such as
multiculturalism, multilingualism, tolerance, intolerance and national
identity. What is the role of the humanities in civic life? How can
they contribute to the development of new forms of community
and cohesion, and actively serve a common good shared by all?
And how do they engage the public in understanding some of the
most challenging issues and pressing concerns that characterize the
contemporary world?
Above: University of Texas Tower
(Photos by Sam Lambshead)
In exploring such questions the debate will consider the cultural and
linguistic impact of demographic change, its policy implications,
and issues such as the links between linguistic diversity and social
mobility and the status of community languages.
The debate will bring together academics, policymakers and
prominent public figures to answer these and other questions.
This debate is a collaboration between the AHRC, the National
Endowment for the Humanities and Humanities Texas.
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BEYOND THE
DIGITAL
11th November 2015
St Colum’s Hall, Orchard Hall,
Londonderry and UCL, London
Above: University of Ulster
W
e never refer to the electric light or the electric toaster,
and yet we continue to use the term digital to refer to our
newer technologies. This debate asks how can we develop a better
understanding of how our everyday experience is now embedded in
the use of contemporary technology.
It will explore the extent to which our technologies have become
transparent to us and integrated into our lives. Drawing together
experts from the academy, entertainment and business, the debate
will ask: what does technology ‘mean’ in our lives? How can we
embrace fully integrated technology in our lives, and what might this
mean for those on the ‘wrong’ side of the digital divide or indeed for
the notion of the digital divide itself?
The debate will involve pupils from two local Derry schools and
students from the Creative Technologies degree at Ulster who
will organise a pre-debate launch campaign at the annual
CultureTech Festival.
This debate is a collaboration between the AHRC and Ulster University.
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FUTURE CITIES
FOR ALL
17th November 2015
Wills Memorial Building, Bristol
T
he future is urban. By 2050 70 per cent of the population will live
in cities and towns.
But how do we make cities liveable places that offer education,
security, housing, work, a sense of place and a happy and fulfilling
experience for all? How we can make cities more than just places for
the wealthy? What makes an ideal city?
The debate will bring together academics, artists and writers to
debate what city living and working should be.
The debate is a collaboration between AHRC, Bristol Festival of
Ideas, Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, University of the West of
England, Bristol 2015, the Foresight Programme, Bristol City Council
and Bristol 2015. It is one of the launch events of Festival of the
Future City 17-20 November in Bristol.
Above: Wills Memorial Building, Bristol
Below: Photo: Jon.Craig.co.uk
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RETHINKING
THE NATION
25th November 2015
Imperial War Museum North,
Manchester
Above: Imperial War Museum North
Below: The University of Huddersfield
I
n the twenty-first century, competing nationalisms, the increasing
mobility of populations and globalisation are causing us to rethink
traditional ideas of nationhood.
This debate will explore contemporary issues of national diversity,
conflict and power in the context of changes to the idea of the
nation. Covering ground from war to dance, and from music to
democracy, it will use discussion, interviews, and live performances
to help us think about the way we live now, with each other, and how
we talk about our national lives, histories, and cultures.
‘Rethinking the Nation’ is an event at the Imperial War Museum
North that involves a conversation between academics, public
intellectuals and community partners. Public voices – those who
consider such issues from outside the realm of academic enquiry –
will be our cue to consider issues of ethnicity, mobility, immigration,
and changing constitutional relationships. It is also a chance to
consider the methods, relevance, and inclusiveness of research about
identity in the arts and humanities at a time of significant national
and international change, especially in an age of austerity that
potentially amplifies division and conflict.
This debate is a collaboration between the AHRC and the University
of Huddersfield.
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BOOKS AND
THE HUMAN
December 2015
Platform Theatre, University
of the Arts, London
T
he book in all its forms connects us to the past, captures the
present and looks to the future. The intimate relationship
between books and knowledge and between books and human
beings is fundamental and crosses times and cultures. In an age when
digital technologies and e-books in particular are challenging the
traditional forms of the book, how do these changes impact on our
relationship with it? What does the book as an idea, as a repository
of information and as a physical object mean to us any longer? What
does our changing relationship with the book say about ‘The Way We
Live Now’?
A distinguished series of speakers will approach ‘the book’ through
‘ the various lenses of philosophy, history, politics, literature and
creative practice (the making of books).
Alongside the debate, additional events will explore how books are
conceived, crafted, experienced and shared. Together these events
will question the intellectual, experiential, practical and public
aspects of books and how they shape who we are, offering us an
opportunity to reassess what the book means to us, as well as to
explore its future as an ongoing part of human culture and life.
This debate is a collaboration between the AHRC and the University
of the Arts.
Top: Platform Theatre
Middle: ‘Books and the Human Image’.
Image credit: The Medium is the Massage:
An Inventory of Effects, Marshall McLuhan,
Quentin Fiore, 1967
Right: Central Saint Martins, UAL, front of
building. Image credit: John Sturrock
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A MACHINE
WORLD?
Early 2016
London
A
ccording to some, the Internet will become more intelligent
than human beings by the year 2045. Even now, technology is
automating not just manual tasks in everyday life but mental ones,
influencing the way we live and the way we exercise choice.
From health to transport, education to consumption, decisions are
increasingly made by algorithms. Cars can be driverless; motorists
can be prosecuted for speeding without human judgement; shares
are traded on computer-driven stockmarkets at lightning speed;
crime can be predicted from data files; algorithms can select our
dating partners and ‘autonomous systems’ accomplish complex
surgery without human eye or hand.
For some the benefits of automation far outweigh its disadvantages,
bringing us opportunity, quality of life and broader horizons. For
others, overbearing technological change dims human experience,
reduces our curiosity, increases our dependencies on the owners and
operators of these machines, curtails our freedom, and in extreme
cases threatens our world.
This debate will ask if we are sleepwalking into a robot future where
human capabilities are outsourced to computers, or whether we
are only just beginning to realise the immense benefits of our own
inventiveness. In what ways are humans to live in a machine world?
The debate is a collaboration between the AHRC and the
Government Office for Science.
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IS BRITISH
CULTURE A MYTH?
Feb/March 2016
Cardiff and St Andrews
F
Above: University of St Andrews
Below left: West Sands, St Andrews
Below right: Cardiff Bay
ifty years ago British nationhood was a largely unquestioned given.
In the last twenty years this situation has changed dramatically.
Identity politics are on the rise. Not only has devolution transformed
the politics of Scotland and Wales, but in England too, with UKIP
emerging as an expression of English nationalism. On the other hand,
Britishness has also proved resilient. The pro-Union side decisively
won the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, Union Jacks are
more in evidence in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the UK,
and immigrant communities tend on the whole to identify more with
a British identity than with Englishness.
Is British culture a source of unity or division? Does it even exist? After
all, why do we speak of English literature, or Scottish literature, or
Welsh literature, but almost never of ‘British literature’? Is this true of
the arts as a whole? Moreover, why has indigenous multi-culturalism
been so long neglected? And what of invisible multi-culturalism – the
significant but unrecognised presence of internal migration within the
UK, most obviously the English presence in Scotland and Wales?
These are some of the questions the debate will address.
The debate is a collaboration between the AHRC, the University of St
Andrews and the University of Cardiff. It will take the innovative form
of a pair of live-streamed events held simultaneously in Cardiff and
St Andrews.
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OTHER
ANNIVERSARY
ACTIVITIES
Naomi Wood, holder of an International
Placement Scheme award, 2011, author
of ‘Mrs Hemingway’.
Naomi Wood’s ‘Mrs Hemingway’
has been translated into 19
languages, including Lithuanian.
Jenny Woodley, now senior lecturer
at Nottingham Trent University, one
of the first International Placement
Scheme award holders, outside the
Library of Congress in 2006.
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Essay competition
To help build a legacy around the anniversary debates, capture the
ideas expressed by speakers and members of the audience and
provide an exciting opportunity for doctoral students, the AHRC
is running an essay competition linked to the debate series. The
competition is open to any current doctoral student registered at an
eligible organisation. See www.ahrc.ac.uk for further details.
The AHRC Research in Film Awards
The AHRC’s Research in Film Awards are designed to showcase,
reward and recognise the best of the large and increasing number of
high-quality short films produced as outputs or by-products of arts
and humanities research. In addition, the Inspiration Award – open to
members of the general public – will recognise those films inspired by
arts and humanities research.
Follow-On Fund Highlight call
The AHRC Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement Scheme
provides funds to support innovative and creative engagements with
new audiences and user communities which stimulate pathways
to impact. Now closed, this highlight call looked to encourage
researchers funded by the AHRC in its early years to revisit the
outcomes of their research.
Cheltenham Festivals
The AHRC partnership with Cheltenham Festivals was broadened in
2015 to give opportunities to researchers at any stage in their career
to apply to present at one of the four Cheltenham Festivals in 2015.
The Jazz Festival events and the Music Festival events have already
been announced. Literature and Science event announcements will
follow later in the year.
Connected Communities Festival
The second Connected Communities Festival will take place between
the 15th and the 22nd June. Around 40 events will be held across the
UK. For further details please go to: www.ahrc.ac.uk
T H E WAY W E L I V E N OW 2 01 5 -2 01 6
Celebrating success
Key to the AHRC anniversary activities is the highlighting and
celebrating of the many successes of the arts and humanities
research community over the last decade. These successes are being
showcased in a number of ways, including:
Image from the AHRC-funded Picturing
China project which has made available
more than 8,300 images, dating from as
early as the 1860s
Image from the Hajj exhibition at the British
Museum in 2012, with research undertaken
thanks to AHRC funding
■■
An online timeline highlighting some of the major events over the
last decade and more
■■
A series of films designed to highlight projects and people funded
since 2005. The first film looks at the Oxyrhynchus Papyri project,
which has received AHRC funding since 2005. The second film
is Picturing China, and the third is Mackintosh Architecture. For
further information please go to: www.youtube.com/ahrcpress
■■
Case studies and feature articles to showcase the impact of AHRC
funding (see examples on these pages)
■■
A tenth anniversary publication to be launched in the Autumn
■■
A series of virtual exhibitions of anniversary-related images
displayed in the AHRC Image Gallery over the year.
See www.ahrc.ac.uk/gallery
For the latest up to date information, please go to:
www.ahrc.ac.uk/ahrc10 or follow us on Twitter on @ahrcpress
or #ahrc10
Get involved
A computer-generated image of the Portus
amphitheatre, excavated by AHRC-funded
archaeologists
The Fallow Deer project, a major
interdisciplinary project funded by the
AHRC from 2011, explored the origins of
fallow deer
Logos
If you would like to use the AHRC’s anniversary logo on your website
or your publication to highlight your link with the AHRC during 2015,
please see our style guide or write to [email protected]
Feedback or ideas
The AHRC has consulted widely over the last year to develop these
activities and are keen to ensure that this continues through 2015.
If you would like to give us feedback or to make suggestions for our
anniversary activities, please write to [email protected]
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Architectural plans for the Glasgow School
of Art, Rennie Mackintosh’s most celebrated
building, from the AHRC-funded Rennie
Mackintosh project
Published by
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Polaris House, North Star Avenue,
Swindon, Wiltshire, SN2 1FL
www.ahrc.ac.uk
©Arts and Humanities Research Council 2015.
Published June 2015.
Design by Rumba. Printed by JRS on paper
containing 80% post-consumer waste.
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