Programme
Below is the programme for Interfaces. To register for a session, please click on the registration link and enter your details. The confirmation email will include a link to join the Zoom meeting which you should follow at the relevant start time. To find out more about how we are running the conference and how to use Zoom please click here.
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Each afternoon has two sets of two parallel sessions for you to choose from. Please chose as many or as few as you would like to attend. These will be followed by a keynote lecture at 4pm. We will finish each day with a virtual drinks reception, so get yourself a glass of wine or cup of tea and come and say hi!
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You must pre-register for each session you would like to attend by clicking on the relevant links below.
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Most sessions have unlimited places available, but a few of our more interactive sessions may have a cap on numbers. These will be available on a first come first served basis, and we will note below if the session is fully booked.
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If you have any questions or need any help with registration please email Emma Ward at techne@rhul.ac.uk.
Day 1: Wednesday 13th May 2020
Before the Conference
Before we start, take a few minutes to watch our short welcome video from Professor Katie Normington (Techne AHRC DTP Director).
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13.00 to 14.15
Telling Your Story: the Art of Grant Proposal Writing - Anne Wilson
Successful grant applications depend on three key ingredients: intelligent choice of which funder to target; high quality information about the funder's priorities; and a strong account of your project and ambitions in the context of the funder's agenda. This interactive, participative session encourages you to reflect on your current process of bid writing and introduces a fresh approach, driven by the principles and techniques of good storytelling. We explore how to craft narratives that bring your project to life, as well as mirroring the selection criteria of the funding body to give you the best chance of success.
Those attending this session will have the option to sign up for a 1-to-1 follow up consultation with Anne on the following day.
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13.00 to 15.45
Publicising Your Research Through The Media - Tim Grout-Smith and Lily Poberezhska
This session will examine what makes a good story for the media, and how you can use that knowledge to present your research/practice as a media story and identify media-friendly elements. It will include looking at pitfalls to avoid, and techniques for taking control of the interview. This workshop is conducted by Media Players International, a partnership of two ex-BBC journalists with 35 years’ BBC experience between them.
Please note that this is a longer session than others on the programme, running for 2 hours 45 minutes.
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15:30 - 18:15
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14.30 to 15.45
Building A Collective Charter for Collaborative Doctoral Research - Veronica Pialorsi, Phoebe Kowalska, Jess Robins, Gemma Potter, Alexandros Kallegias, and Laura Wareing
A collaborative doctoral training programme, focused on design and creativity, ‘Transformation North
West’ (TNW) was launched in Autumn 2017 and is funded by the NWCDTP, from the AHRC as part of the
NPIF. This programme spans five Universities in the North West of England, and comprises of a cohort of
twelve doctoral researchers who are working together with businesses and organisations in response to
the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy. Research projects explore how design and creative techniques
can contribute to growth and prosperity, fostering impact in the region.
Members of the TNW cohort would like to invite AHRC students and industry experts attending Interface
to join them in a workshop to reflect upon the unique benefits, challenges and risks of working on
collaborative research and to contribute to a collective charter for collaborative doctoral research.
In 2018, members of the TNW programme gathered to collectively write a charter outlining how design
research and practice can actively respond to issues facing England’s North West, aiming to challenge
the status quo of traditional design research. TNW will open their charter and invite the arts and
humanities doctoral research community to explore and reflect upon how doctoral research can contribute
to change through collaboration through three themes: ‘knowledge’, ‘connections’, and ‘people’ . The
resulting document will provide a starting point for increased dialogue and collaboration between
academia and industry to help foster a decentralised, fairer and more balanced economy at a time of
great change.
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16.00 to 17.00
Keynote Lecture: Be careful what you wish for! On the joys and angst of partnership for impact - Professor Eleonora Belfiore, Loughborough University
The context for this paper is offered by one of the defining debates in cultural policy studies, namely the one around the tension between a desire to be useful to those who administer the arts and culture and the aspiration to preserve the cultural policy scholar’s critical distance from the object of analysis, intellectual autonomy and the freedom to critique. Whilst this tension is especially noticeable within a small and emerging field such as cultural policy research, it is not by any means only found there. Taking developments in the UK as the geographical focus of analysis, it is clear that increasing expectations that research, especially when publicly funded, should have ‘impact’ bring with them similar kind of tensions. Expectation that research ought to deliver ‘impact’, which is often understood as a contribution to policy development, have been hotly contested and resisted, yet an important set of questions still remain open:
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What is the ultimate purpose of critical policy research? Or in other words, what comes after critique?
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Is critique for critique’s sake a satisfactory goal for policy analysis or can we envisage a constructive engagement between critical research and policy debates that is not subservient to the needs of policy advocacy?
Reflecting on my experience as academic working collaboratively with the cultural sector, I’ll explore the possibilities and challenges that developing a collaborative approach to generating fresh policy thinking entail.
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17.00 to 18.00
Virtual Drinks Reception
Bring along a glass of wine or cup or tea and join us for some conference mingling. We hope this will be a space where you can meet and talk to other attendees as you would normally at an in-person conference.
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Day 2: Thursday 14th May 2020
13.00 to 14.15
1-to-1 Consultation with Anne Wilson (The Art of Grant Proposal Writing)
Following on from Anne's session on Day 1, she will be offering a limit number of 1-to-1 consultations. If you have signed up for the grant proposal writing session on Day 1 and would also like to sign up for a 1-to-1 please email techne@rhul.ac.uk. Places will be given on a first come first served basis.
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13.00 to 14.15
Jenny Waldman CBE, Director, Art Fund
Jenny Waldman CBE will reflect on her experience working at the interface of the arts, heritage, and government with a Q&A to follow. Jenny was Director of 14-18 NOW, the UK’s official First World War Centenary Cultural Programme. She was Creative Producer of the London 2012 Festival, the finale of the Cultural Olympiad for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Jenny has commissioned large-scale performing arts events for Tate Modern and Tate Britain and was for five years Director of Arts Centre Programmes at the Southbank Centre, the UK’s largest arts centre, where she was responsible for programming across festivals, dance, literature, outdoors and performance. As a senior arts management consultant her clients included the National Theatre, Young Vic, Punchdrunk, Manchester International Festival, Roundhouse, Film4 and Tate.
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14.30 to 15.45
Partner Panel: Collaborative Working in the Arts and Creative Economies
Joanna Jones (Dover Arts Development), Clare Smith (Dover Arts Development), Angela Chan (StoryFutures), Martin Cox, Frances Davis
Come along to hear from those currently working in arts and creative economy organisations about the opportunities and challenges they’ve faced negotiating working at the interfaces of academia, and industry. The session will be a chance to informally and collectively share best practice with other researchers, and also provide insight into negotiating some of the unexpected challenges that emerge in these unique partnerships. The panel will begin with reflections from the contributors before opening up to an extended Q&A discussion.
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14.30 to 15.45
Partner Panel: Collaborative Working in the Museum and Heritage Sector
Robert Heslip (Belfast City Council), Rhianne Morgan, and Frankie Kubicki (Kew Gardens and Dickens Museum)
Come along to hear from those currently working in museum heritage organisations about the opportunities and challenges they’ve faced negotiating working at the interfaces of academia, and industry. The session will be a chance to informally and collectively share best practice with other researchers, and also provide insight into negotiating some of the unexpected challenges that emerge in these unique partnerships. The panel will begin with reflections from the contributors before opening up to an extended Q&A discussion.
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16.00 to 17.00
Keynote Lecture: Title TBC - Professor Andrew Chitty, Professor of Creative and Digital Economy, AHRC’s first Creative Economy Champion
Professor Chitty will be reflecting on the conference themes of 'Collaboration - Interdisciplinarity - Impact' from his unique position as the AHRC's first Creative Economy Champion.
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17.00 to 18.00
Virtual Drinks Reception
Bring along a glass of wine or cup or tea and join us for some conference mingling. We hope this will be a space where you can meet and talk to other attendees as you would normally at an in-person conference.
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Day 3: Friday 15th May 2020
13.00 to 14.15
The good, the bad and the ugly: a whistle-stop tour of evaluation in the cultural sector - Marge Ainsley
Click here to register for this session
During this presentation Marge will share her practical experience of evaluation in museums, libraries, archives, galleries and heritage sites using real-world examples. She’ll outline the challenges that exist and address opportunities for improving this field of work – including how to strategically use data for audience development planning. Marge will demonstrate how an evaluation framework (logic model) is an essential roadmap (required by funders) which ensures organisations question what success ‘looks like’ and measure what matters. Expect a candid review of quantitative and qualitative tools used to measure audience engagement, as well as a range of practical tips for non-user research, audience analysis and sharing your story.
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13.00 to 14.15
On Influencing Policy - Jan-Jonathan Bock, Programme Director, Cumberland Lodge, Professor Kate O'Riordan, University of Sussex and Will Stronge, Co-Director, Autonomy Think Tank
Click here to register for this session
Interested to know how to make your research make a difference? This session brings together a range of experts involved in influencing policy at various levels of government to provide insight into working at the interface of government and academia.
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14.30 to 15.45
Communicating Research Across Audiences - Alex Blower and Jess Adams
This session is fully booked and can't take any more registrations.
Researchers seeking to make change in the here and now are frequently more entangled with the subject of their work. While these embedded approaches offer much greater access to the research subject, they also create significant ethical, methodological, and epistemological challenges. What happens when we become too embedded? What blindspots might it create? How can we create academic work that actually speaks to (not for) our subjects? What do we do when things go wrong? This workshop will highlight the way two different researchers understand their relationship to their research subjects, alongside substantive opportunities for participants to discuss their own research. Participants for this session are invited to bring challenges they face in relation to how their research operates in the world. The group will brainstorm and discuss these ideas with a view to formulating some collective solutions.
14.30 to 15.45
The REF, Impact and ECRs: An Introduction - Dr Chris Kempshall
Click here to register for this session
This workshop will seek to firstly introduce the general purpose and framework of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), and how it may impact the work and careers of PhD students and Early Career Researchers. Further to this it will examine the concept of ‘Research Impact’ and the ‘Impact Case Study’ and examine how research can achieve ‘impact’. This workshop will also examine the format, design, and requirements of an Impact Case Study.
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16.00 to 17.00
Keynote Lecture: Collaborative research: practice, frustration and inspiration, Professor Kate O'Riordan, Professor of Digital Culture and Head of School for Media Film and Music at the University of Sussex.
Click here to register for this session
Working on large scale projects with multi-disciplinary teams, across countries and sectors can be challenging and inspiring. It also involves structural challenges and learning from practices and experiences shaped in these contexts can help inform future research, as well shaping the possible outcomes of a project. Kate O’Riordan draws on experiences across multiple large scale collaborations in science and technology studies to explore the messy interfaces of interdisciplinary and inter-sector work
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17.00 to 18.00
Virtual Drinks Reception
Click here to register for the drinks reception.
Bring along a glass of wine or cup or tea and join us to round off the conference. We hope this will be a space where you can meet and talk to other attendees as you would normally at an in-person conference.