2019-20 Grantholders

Groundings: an exhibition to showcase Addaction service users’ artworks

Languages in Lincoln: a celebration of the languages that can be seen and heard around the city

Research/Background: There are increasing numbers of people who speak languages other than English within traditionally  single-language communities, and Lincoln is no exception. Navigating changes in linguistic demographics, particularly in the education system, has been the focus of Elizabeth’s research since 2011. Research shows teachers feel ill-equipped to talk about diversity in languages and uncomfortable with learning new languages, restricting their confidence and ability to reflect diversity in languages within the classroom. Pupils often do not hear their language, an important part of identity, meaning they may not know that their knowledge is valued. Furthermore, speaking languages other than English is not normalised so children do not build tolerance to other languages.

Engagement activity: Interactive workshop with displays

Activity aims: Develop resources and skills for teachers in talking about and learning languages. This will contribute to new research and develop confidence and classroom practice in linguistic diversity.

Audience: Teachers, community members and researchers.

Activity details: A workshop attended by local teachers, communities and academics will offer teachers an opportunity to develop confidence in talking about and learning languages, developing resources and ideas they can use in the classroom. During the project there will be the opportunity:

• for linguistic ambassadors, volunteers from the community, will be supported in  preparing mini language lessons, talks or activities.
• to visit  ‘stalls’ that participating teachers and academics can visit throughout the day relating to linguistic diversity and the benefits of bilingualism
• to build a network of linguistic ambassadors, teachers and academics that will continue after this event to build practice and partnerships in this area.

Evaluation: The event will be evaluated through the pre- and post- measures taken on participants’ arrival and exit. Photos and notes taken during the day will inform reflection for the organisers in developing future research and events. Attendees will feedback on their experience of the workshop, including how useful they found it, whether they liked engaging with the topic and whether they would like to continue to do so. 

Photo Gallery 

Happiness and wellbeing in the classroom: primary pupils’ perspectives.

Research/Background:

• Research indicates that the experiences of children in primary classrooms can be negative and they can feel stressed, pressured to achieve and, at times, unhappy.
• The Good Childhood Report (2018) identified ‘wellbeing’ and ‘happiness’ as a common factor in conversations with children and ‘school’ scored the highest level of ‘least happiness’ for two thousand 10 – 17 year olds.

Engagement activity: A series of interactive activities in Lincolnshire primary schools.

Activity aims: Provide an opportunity for children to talk about what makes them happy in the classroom and what they feel needs to be done in order to make it a happier place.

Audience: Local school teachers, students and parents

Activity details: This qualitative small scale study builds on previous research (ESRC Festival of Social Science project: Happy People Happy Classrooms, November 2017) to identify the perspectives of 5 to 11 year-old children at three Lincolnshire primary schools. A series of activities carried out in the schools will provide children with the opportunity to talk about what makes them happy in the classroom and what they feel needs to be done in order to make it a happier place, including:

• Icebreaker/social board games: provide the initial stimulus for children to think about how they feel about their classroom/school.
• Likert-scale voting boxes: children will vote with a counter in a box about how they feel about school and their classroom
• Graffiti walls: large rolls of paper and felt tip pens will be provided for the children to write and draw on, giving responses to the questions: “What makes you feel happy in your classroom?” and “What makes your classroom a happy place?”

The dissemination of anonymous responses from the activities to each school will provide opportunities for school leaders and teachers to reflect on children’s perspectives about happiness in their learning environments, and how this might be improved.

Identifying and Addressing Air Quality Issues on the School Run: A Workshop Series

Research: The University of Lincoln is collaborating with 6 primary schools in Sheffield that experience high levels of air pollution. Parents who regularly take children to and from school are given a personal environment monitor to use over a seven-day period. Surveys and interviews are then used to explore whether the resulting knowledge about personal exposure influences their attitudes and behaviours towards school-run transport and associated clean air initiatives.

Engagement activity: Interactive workshops and monitoring with six primary schools in Sheffield that experience high levels of air pollution

Activity aims: Inform schools, parents and pupils about local air pollution and encourage schools to adopt a clean air initiative, supported by parents.

Audience: Headteachers, governors, teachers, parents and pupils.

Activity details: Headteachers, governors and teachers will be invited to interactive workshops exploring  measures that schools can adopt to minimise exposure of children to air pollutants, and include strategies for integrating this information into teaching and learning activities. A set of resources will be created and developed through the workshops to assist with embedding clean air initiatives into practice, informed by findings from research.  

Following this, parents and carers of school children will be invited to three workshops taking place across the city,  capturing the boundaries of each school involved in the project. The workshops will share findings from the research on air pollution in Sheffield and provide information on how parents and carers can minimise the exposure of children to air pollution on the school run. These sessions will concentrate on discussing the feasibility, practicality and efficacy of a range of different measures, following which attendees will receive a resource pack to take home with them.

This project intends to encourage schools to either trial or adopt at least one clean air initiative, with the support and/or participation of the parents/carers of children at that school. 

Evaluation: Each of the schools will be contacted three months after the public engagement activities to establish the short- and long- term actions taken as a result of the project. 

MyRiver: a community-led social laboratory for climate change adaptation in the River Witham

Research/ Background: There is worldwide acknowledgement that the Earth’s climate is changing and that human beings are largely responsible for these changes. People will experience the impacts of climate change primarily by increases in the frequency of extreme weather and hydrological events such as floods, droughts, heatwaves and ‘snowmageddons’. In the UK and within Lincolnshire and Lincoln in particular, rivers and floodplains are where much of climatic weirding will play out and where individuals and local communities will come face-to-face to with what some have described as ‘the Great Derangement’ (Ghosh, 2016), ‘the end of Nature’ (McKibben, 1989) or in more common parlance ‘the Anthropocene’ – the new geological epoch of humankind.

Engagement activity: Development of a community-led social laboratory for adapting, locally, to climate change, launched by a one-day symposium.

Activity aims: Explore with communities how anthropogenic climate change will impact on their lifeways and local environment, leading to the establishment of grass roots, community-informed management and adaptation strategies at the nexus between the arts, humanities and science. Overall enhance understanding and appreciation of the unique archaeological, cultural, ecological, geological, historical, industrial heritages associated with the River Witham and its floodplain.

Audience: Local schools, including geography teachers; a local art gallery; local and national agencies and organisations responsible for the conservation and maintenance of local environments; environmental consultants; and the Diocese of Lincoln.

Activity details: Use the River Witham as a community, educational and interdisciplinary social ‘laboratory’ – ‘MyRiver’, in which to engage and explore how anthropogenic climate change will impact on people’s lives and the local environment.

MyRiver will be launched at a one-day symposium hosted at the University of Lincoln, on a Saturday in early autumn 2019. This event will comprise of a morning of short presentations by invited speakers, including University of Lincoln PhD students who are investigating, respectively, flood histories and emerging contaminants (including microplastics) of the River Witham and its tributaries, including the Fossdyke, followed by a question and answer session for the general public on the River Witham and MyRiver, facilitated by an invited panel of local artists, educators, environmental and heritage managers, and farmers. Following the symposium, a steering group for the MyRiver project will be formed; funds in addition to supporting the one-day symposium are requested to host a half-day meeting of the group at the University of Lincoln.

This initiative will bring together for the first time a wide and inclusive range of public groups and stakeholders. All of these are partners in some capacity with the University of Lincoln but this will be the first time that these organisations will be brought together in order to share new knowledge and best practice in relation to climate change impacts on lifeways and well-being.

The harp: tradition and innovation in the twenty-first century

Research/Background: Current research is investigating the cultural and musical position of the modern concert harp, and proposes new ways in which composers, players and audiences can engage with the instrument today. Current outputs of the research are a peer-reviewed article in Contemporary Music Review (forthcoming), a new solo composition (for harpist Oliver Wass), and a project with the Bristol Ensemble supported by St Hugh’s Foundation for the Arts (£5,000).

Engagement Activity: Interactive workshop with a concert and post-concert discussion.

Activity aims: 

• Inspire the public to engage with classical music as listeners, performers and composers.
• Introduce members of the public to the cultural understandings of musical instruments in an engaging and accessible way.
• Encourage young musicians to explore innovative musical ideas developed through research from their local university.
• Showcase the impact arts and humanities research has in day-to-day life experiences, and to encourage the public to see the University of Lincoln as an institution that has benefit to them.

Audience: Members of the public including audiences of the Lincolnshire International Chamber Music Festival , KS4/KS5 music students. The event will cater for approximately 30 school students and 40 members of the public.

Activity details: A workshop day which comprised of:

1. Interactive workshop –history and traditions of the harp and the opportunity to create compositional ideas.
2. Concert – pieces from the workshop will be performed, plus the world premiere of a new composition created in this project (see background)
3. Post-concert discussion – participants will discuss what they explored in the workshop and how this was translated into the concert performance. Feedback and ideas will be collected.
4. Filmed interviews – short filmed interviews with participants about the day, exploring what they have learnt and experienced.

Other outcomes: A film and audio recording of the concert to be made freely available online, an accessible online written precis of the research findings for a general audience, a set of classroom resources (derived from the research) to be used for KS4 and KS5 music teaching (freely available online).

Evaluation: The events will allow participants to give feedback and present ideas to the organisers and there will be the opportunity for participants to give feedback in filmed interviews. Three surveys will also be disseminated: for the public, students and teachers. The findings of these will be used to evaluate the project and understand its impact and potential for future public engagement. It will also help inform the creation of related resources.

Interactive event for understanding Victorian mental health care

Photo Gallery