City Lab

Event, 29 June 2024

Dr Jonathan Orlek

City Lab Research Area: Cities of Art

Contributors: Organised by Create London. Featuring artist films programmed by Abel Holsborough and Maria Anastassiou. With support from Cinema for All and the BFI.

Dr Jonathan Orlek spoke at A House for Artists, London, as part of London Festival of Architecture. The event included a screening of film and audio works by John Smith (Blight, 1996); Eva Sajovic, Rebecca Davies and Sarah Butler (Unearthing Elephant, 2017); Timi Akindele-Ajani (Nubia Way, 2023); and Martin Osman (AHFA sounds 1, 2023).

“The residents of A House for Artists invite you to join us as we gather for Artist Housing: a selection of works that resonate with this building, this project; its future and its context in Barking and London. The works document communities and their experiences of making, losing and fighting for what houses their lives and livelihood. […] Through conversation with some of A House for Artists' tenants, Orlek will help us consider questions around schemes of housing and the responsibilities of councils, housing providers and developers to their communities. How are communities built, nurtured and maintained and what are the ensuing forces that ‘make them or break them’?”

Events Programme, 19 April – 30 May 2024

Dr Jonathan Orlek

City Lab Research Area: Cities of Art

Contributors: Organised by Kate West, Dr Jonathan Orlek, and Dr Benedetta D'Ettorre

A programme of public events on art, housing, and archiving, organised by Kate West, Dr Jonathan Orlek, and Dr Benedetta D'Ettorre – to coincide with the publication of Artist-Led Housing: Histories, Residencies, Spaces, and the No Going Back exhibition.

At Home: Can the Archive Inform the Future?

Exhibition tour and discussion
20 April 2024
Convention House, East Street Arts, Leeds

A journey through 30 years of East Street Arts. Exploring the No Going Back exhibition and hearing all the tales of project planning and delivery, highs and lows, first-hand from the co-founders of East Street Arts. Karen Watson and Jon Wakeman led a discussion on how past initiatives have informed the creative direction of the organisation.

Speakers:

• Jon Wakeman, Co-Founder of East Street Arts

• Karen Watson, Co-Founder of East Street Arts 

Housing: Can artists offer a different perspective?

Presentations and Q&A
Fri 26 April
Convention House, East Street Arts, Leeds

Artists and activists presented their work and experience on setting up collectively owned spaces, artist-led houses and documenting change in a city of disappearing houses and public spaces.

Speakers:

• Alanna Reid (Chair), Culture Commons

• Nabil Al-Kinani, Privatise the Mandem

• Dan Sean Kelly, Two Queens

• Eva Sajovic, Artist (Elephant & Castle artist in residence)

Our Neighbourhood: What will be left?

Workshop with No Space Left to Play members
27 April 2024
Patrick Studios, East Street Arts, Leeds

Nabil Al-Kinani facilitated a workshop and strategy session with No Space Left to Play members, on the future of cultural spaces in Leeds and collective activism.

Artist-Led Housing and Community Ownership: Liverpool Visits and Discussion

Talk and discussion
30 May 2024

City Lab hosted an event to share learning from innovative artist-led housing projects in Liverpool. The event included visits to Homebaked (hosted by Josh Coates), Kitty’s Launderette (hosted by Grace Harrison), and Granby Winter Garden. This was followed by a talk and discussion at Liverpool School of Art and Design:

• Jonathan Orlek (LJMU) introduced Artist-Led Housing: Histories, Residencies, Spaces

• Tom Murphy (Coordinator and Secretary, Homebaked) gave a talk focusing on how Community Land Trust models can be combined with artistic strategies and approaches.

• Kate West facilitated a discussion with:  No Space Left to Play (Leeds), Mafwa Theatre (Leeds), and Abel Holsborough (artist, and resident in A House for Artists, London).

Further Information: https://eaststreetarts.org.uk/2024/03/12/new-exhibition-explores-the-role-of-artists-in-our-cities/

Exhibition, 19 April to 27 April 2024

Dr Jonathan Orlek

City Lab Research Area: Cities of Art

Contributors: Curated by Jonathan Orlek and Karen Watson

Dr Jonathan Orlek co-curated an exhibition exploring the role of art and artists in cities and civic practice, through the lens of East Street Arts’ archive. Displayed across a series of spaces in Convention House, Leeds, a 19th-century former nunnery, the exhibition presented East Street Arts’ archive as a living entity able to inform the future of the organisation, cohesively show the trajectory of programmes and activities, and share learnings. Focusing on five key projects between 1998 and 2003 – considered by Karen Watson as ‘no going back’ moments in East Street Arts’ 30-year history – No Going Back also created space for echoes of future projects to resonate across time. 

No Going Back focused on the following five key projects: Leeds 13 Going Places (May 1998); In-House (March-May 1998); Leeds Fringe Photography Festival (June-July 1998); A Christmas Pudding for Henry (October-December 1999); Demystifying Contemporary Art Practice (March 2002-May 2003).

Karen Watson said: “Like a lot of artist-led initiatives, we started East Street Arts because we perceived a gap and at the time we didn’t know where it was all going to lead us and for how long. There came a time, though, as we built our knowledge, understanding, reputation and communities of artists that it actually became harder to stop than to continue driving things forward. 

“Having stepped back from East Street Arts last year, after 30 years, I’ve had the space to reflect on what we’ve achieved and to work with Jon Orlek to articulate the significance that our past has had on our future. No Going Back is the most comprehensive exploration of East Street Arts’ archive to date, highlighting moments in our history where there really was no going back. Importantly, the No Going Back programme invites vital voices – both established and emerging – from across the sector to explore artists’ role in our cultural spaces and collective futures.”

Further Information: The exhibition was reviewed by Benjamin Barra for Corridor8.

Panel Presentation at LJMU City Lab Second Tier Port Cities Symposium, 1 Feb 2024

Dr Birge Yildirim Okta

City Lab Research Area: Port Cities

In the annals of history, deltas have emerged as ideal harbours, giving rise to flourishing cities around their perimeters. As cities expanded and industries grew, deltas were forced into urban areas, causing floods, sediment accumulation and contamination. This chapter examines how landscape urbanism principles can drive urban economic growth, using a project proposal called The Meles Wildlife Corridor for the Meles Stream Delta in Izmir as a case study. The Meles Wildlife Corridor uses small interventions and a continuous green corridor approach to restore the river's natural function. The project emphasizes the importance of ecological restoration by showing how the area has changed over time, from a natural coastal wetland to the man-made wetland system that exists today.

Further Information: https://oktaa.studio/portfolio-item/meles/

Conference, 2024

Yildirim Okta B. The Destruction of Memory: Ataturk Cultural Center World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Civil and Architectural Engineering, ICACE 2024: XVIII. International Conference on Architectural and Civil Engineering

Dr Birge Yildirim Okta

City Lab Research Area: Port Cities

In the annals of history, deltas have emerged as ideal harbors, giving rise to flourishing cities around their perimeters. As cities expanded and industries grew, deltas were forced into urban areas, causing floods, sediment accumulation and contamination. This chapter examines how landscape urbanism principles  can drive urban economic growth, using a project proposal called The Meles Wildlife Corridor for the Meles Stream Delta in Izmir as a case study. The Meles Wildlife Corridor uses small interventions and a continuous green corridor approach to restore the river's natural function. The project emphasizes the importance of ecological restoration by showing how the area has changed over time, from a natural coastal wetland to the man-made wetland system that exists today. The Meles Nature Parks Network uses sustainable, porous, and long-lasting designs. The Meles Stream Delta  Project serves as a comprehensive plan for cities aiming to achieve sustainable and adaptable development. It emphasizes economic prospects that are compatible with modern urban planning principles, such as eco-tourism and environmentally friendly businesses.

Further Information: https://publications.waset.org/abstracts/167456/the-destruction-of-memory-ataturk-cultural-centre

Research Day, June 2023; Pop-Up Exhibition, July 2023.

Dominic Wilkinson

City Lab Research Area: Hilbre Island

The Hilbre Arts, Science and Sustainability project combines research, teaching, consultancy, creative practice and generates partnerships between LJMU staff, arts charities and local civic organisations.

The ambition is to create a small specialist study centre capable of providing accommodation suitable for artists and scientists to work together, to enable those using the centre to explore the environment on and around the island as a creative and research focussed tool.

The unique nature of Hilbre Island, its special flora and fauna, its environmentally sensitive nature its extreme weather contrasted with its proximity to urban centres make for an unusual opportunity. The tidal separation adds both a peculiarity and creates logistical difficulties, both of which serve to reinforce the potential of the island as a place to study that is ‘away’ yet near.

Three charities, Friends of Hilbre, Hilbre Bird Observatory and the British Art & Design Association, have established a Community Land Trust which has secured a long lease on the abandoned buildings on Hilbre and will be working with City Lab to create a programme of events and research collaborations.

Second Tier Port Cities Symposium

City Lab Symposium
1 February 2024
LJMU LSAD

No Going Back Exhibition

Exhibition 
Curated by Dr Jonathan Orlek and Karen Watson MBE 
19 April to 27 April 2024 
Convention House, Leeds

Artist-Led Housing and Community Ownership: Liverpool Visits and Discussion

Talk and discussion
30 May 2024
Organised by Dr Jonathan Orlek and Kate West

APSS Urban Symposium, Friday 15 November 2024

LJMU City Lab is thrilled to announce the APSS Urban Symposium, scheduled to take place on Friday 15 November 2024. The symposium will bring together researchers across the faculty who are interested in diverse urban matters. We invite abstracts on a wide range of topics, but with a particular focus on one of the following thematic areas:

• Theme 1: The Lived Environment: People; Communities; Culture; Identity & Belonging; Meaning; Lived Experience; Health; Applied Practice; Urban History; Urban Arts; Personal Cartographies.
• Theme 2: The Built Environment: Architecture; City Planning; Policy; Urban Design; History; Climate and Sustainable Development; Planned Cartographies.

Presentation Formats

We want to encourage APSS staff members and PGRs to submit abstracts. This will be a friendly and collegial symposium, focused on sharing research projects, ideas and networking with like-minded researchers. We encourage submissions across two formats:

• 6 minute lightening talks: For early stage PGRs (pre CoR)
• 15-20 minute papers: For staff members and mid/late stage PGRs (post CoR)

Submission Guidelines

If you would like to present, please email the following information to Dr Maike Pötschulat;

• title of the paper
• abstract (maximum 300 words)
• the theme under which your paper falls (i.e. Lived or Built Environment)
• whether the submission is for the lightening talk or a full paper
• a short bio

Contact Information

For any queries, please contact the symposium organisers: Dr Gerwyn Jones or Dr Maike Pötschulat;

Important Dates

Abstract Submission Deadline: Friday, 16 August 2024

Notification of Paper Acceptance: Monday, 9 September 2024

Symposium Date: Friday, 15 November 2024

Dr Jonathan Orlek

Edited Book, April 2024

Available via: ISBN 978-1-906470-18-0

First published in the United Kingdom in 2024 by East Street Arts. Distributed by Printed Matter, Inc.

City Lab Research Area: Cities of Art

Contributors: Contributors: Jonathan Orlek (contributing editor), Jon Cannon (contributing designer), Jane Rendell, Karen Watson, Kerri Jefferis, Lloyd-Wilson, John Devlin, Lizzie Coombes, Mary and Jiem, Sophie + Kerri, Silvia Liebig, James Connolly, Julie Upmeyer, David Cleary, Frances Holliss, Laura Mark

The book Artist-Led Housing: Histories, Residencies, Spaces, edited by City Lab member Dr Jonathan Orlek, explores the role of artist-led organisations within the provision of housing. It investigates projects which have supported artists both in the development of their creative work and with accommodation, through residencies and public programmes. It locates artist-led housing within a historical context; positions projects by East Street Arts, including Artist House 45 in Leeds, alongside other contemporary examples; and expands on the critical and architectural opportunities of artist-led housing. With a wide range of contributions—and expanding out of Dr Jonathan Orlek’s embedded research and practice with East Street Arts—vital thinkers and practitioners suggest future trajectories for living together creatively.

Dr Birge Yildirim Okta

Publication, Date TBC (Accepted to be published)

Available via: TBC

City Lab Research Area: Port Cities

For centuries, river deltas have proved to be some of the best forums for booming port cities. But these areas have been significantly affected by industrialization and urbanization, resulting in pollution, floods and sedimentation. The parallel histories of the river and the city of ancient Smyrna, now İzmir, which has largely framed the urban development of the city, and has created various boundaries, thresholds, and environmental hazards and human constructs. This chapter will focus on the change of the region from an ecologically intact coastal marsh to a disrupted state driven by man. The chapter then considers the use of sustainability principles as a regional planning tool for İzmir, towards enhancing sustainability in port cities. It then presents and applies a framework for sustainable urban development rethinking the Meles River as an infrastructural landscape, integrating ecological restoration, socio-economic development, and placemaking to increase urban resilience.

Dr Birge Yildirim Okta

Publication, November 2022

Available via: doi: 10.58278/0.2023.1ITU A|Z • Vol 20 No 1 • March 2023 • 181-197

https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/19499/

City Lab Research Area: Port Cities

Contributors: Eda Nur DALGIÇ

Street names are part of our everyday lives. People constantly encounter street signs during their daily practices. Their visible position in the urban landscape makes street names suitable to use as visual/linguistic signifiers of cultures, histories, values, and ideologies. Renaming streets is one of the first actions of the new regimes to create their ideological hegemony in the territories they rule. It is essential to resolve the conflicts between urban memory and the sovereign’s history to legitimize their geographical claims by changing anything that does not match with their mental constructs in the urban landscape. This article provides a critical discourse analysis of the relationship between space, place, identity, urban memory, and street names by examining the alteration of street names in Üsküdar, a district of Istanbul, between 1927 and 1934. Even though Üsküdar was one of the regions where the minorities lived exceedingly in the Ottoman period, in the current Üsküdar identity, there are only a few traces left of its former inhabitants. Hence, in terms of redefining identity, Üsküdar can be considered a prominent example compared to the other regions the minorities lived in Istanbul. The primary source for this inquiry is Osman Nuri Ergins İstanbul Şehri Rehberi (Istanbul City Guide), which was published in 1934. Archival documents and newspaper articles about street name changes are also used in this research. The relationship between socio-political transformation in Üsküdar and changes in urban toponymy is investigated in this study.

Dr Maike Pötschulat

Article, 2021

Available via: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0038026120946677 (Journal Publication) 

City Lab Research Area: Port Cities; Mapping & Meaning

‘The student experience’ is a formulation that will be familiar to many reading this article; increasingly the term has come to stand in for an imprecise set of values and practices around higher education study. Despite the fuzziness that characterises its use, ‘student experience talk’ has gained traction in education policy and rankings, academic research, and amongst students themselves. After initially drawing from Raymond Williams to situate ‘the student experience’ as a keyword across policy, marketing and educational domains, we analyse contemporary usage of the term in: (1) students’ own accounts of their engagements with the city in which they study; and (2) academic social science. A membership category when used by undergraduate students, the term serves to obfuscate a market logic in which achieving the student experience is an aspirational endeavour linking disparate place-based consumption practices in their university city. Drawing on the Bourdieusian distinction between categories of practice and categories of analysis, we argue that the contemporary deployment of ‘the student experience’ across popular and policy spaces does not mean that academics should import it uncritically into their analysis. On the contrary: the reification of this category of practice is precisely what has enabled the scramble for its attainment and management. Rather than allowing the embedding and normalisation of terms such as ‘the student experience’, the role of critical social science should be to unpack these muddled categories to avoid calling into being and reproducing what they seem to only describe.

Dr Maike Pötschulat

Blog, 2020

Article, 2023

Available via:

Blog: Pötschulat, M. (2020) Visual Sociology and Urban Icons. The Sociological Review [Online] https://doi.org/10.51428/tsr.uipg8312 [blog]

Article: Pötschulat, M. (2023) Putting the ‘i’ in icon: An autophotographic study of iconicity. Area, 55 (1), 176-184. Available at: https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/area.12841

City Lab Research Area: Port Cities; Mapping & Meaning

This article addresses the potential of autophotography to generate new insights into the meanings of iconic sites. It draws on photographic and interview data collected as part of a broader study exploring the everyday urban sense-making of university students in Liverpool, UK. Iconic sites featured prominently in participants' images of meaningful city spaces as well as the spoken accounts in the photo-elicitation interviews. Visual depictions of urban iconicity are central to place marketing strategies attempting to attract visitors and investment. Yet on a local level, these icons and images have been criticised for alienating local populations and foregrounding lifestyles and cultures that are inaccessible to many urban residents. While we need to study icons critically, this article argues that we should not think of them reductively. The data generated here challenges understandings of icons as predominantly representational and establishes iconic sites as lived spaces that form part of everyday practices. Iconic structures are constitutive of ‘geographies of memory’ that are central to the development of a sense of place for university students. The autophotography method revealed that icons become symbols of elective belonging via which students highlight their connection to their university city beyond the more generic student infrastructure.

Dr Charlie Smith

Book Chapter, October 2023

Available via: Encyclopedia of Libraries, Librarianship, and Information Science Manage Elsevier 9780443157851 DOI Author URL

City Lab Research Area: Cities of Art

This chapter describes the smart systems, digital services and Web 3.0 technologies that constitute Smart Libraries and Library 3.0, and explores the roles that virtual spaces and physical places have in this next generation of libraries. Key points include that the Smart Library and Library 3.0 are increasingly user-centric and focused on personalization and content creation as well as collections, and that physical library spaces are becoming much more informal and socially orientated but remain crucially significant. The entry concludes by considering implications of smart services and new digital technologies for library professionals and outlines some projections for the future.

“...let every one of these short lives leave its sure record of some kindly thing done for others—some goodly strength or knowledge gained for yourselves; so, from day to day, and strength to strength, you shall build up indeed, by Art, by Thought, and by Just Will, an Ecclesia of [Europe], of which it shall not be said, “See what manner of stones are here,” but, “See what manner of men.”

– John Ruskin, lecture “The relation of art to ‘use’”, 1870

‘The Uses of Art – the legacy of 1848 and 1989’ is a five-year European funded project which sees a collaboration between existing members of L’Internationale Moderna Galerija (MG), Ljubljana, Slovenia, Museum voor Hededaagse Kunst Antwerpen (M HKA), Antwerp, Belgium, Museu d’art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain, Van Abbemuseum (VAM), Eindhoven, Netherlands, Museo nacional centro de arte Reina Sofia, (MNCARS), Madrid, Spain, SALT, Istanbul, Turkey and partners who have expertise to help realize the project: Grizedale Arts (GA), Coniston, United Kingdom, Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), Liverpool, United Kingdom, Koninklijke Akademie Schone Kunsten (KASK), Gent, Belgium, Universität Hildesheim (UH), Hildesheim, Germany.

‘The Uses of Art: The Legacies of 1848 and 1989’ Project saw L’internationale members collaborate with partner institutions to facilitate a range of exhibitions, shows, seminars, lectures, symposia and publications that sought to address the shifting and changing roles and functions of art institutions. By looking back to 1848 and 1989, the intention of the project was to reimagine and revision a role for art in the production of new forms of citizenship and participation. ‘The Uses of Art: The Legacy of 1848 and 1989’ project itself was officially launched in Madrid, at the Reina Sofia in May 2013. As part of this project, an L’Internationale Online Platform has also been developed www.internationaleonline.org.

John Byrne, Leader of City Lab was manager and co-ordinator of the ‘Constituencies’ Research Strand of L’Internationale Project ‘The Uses of Art: The Legacy of 1848 and 1989’. This Research Strand has to the publication of book ‘The Constituent Museum: Constellations of Knowledge, Politics and Mediation – A Generator of Social Change’ for publication in April 2018. This publication is edited by John Byrne (Lead Editor/Liverpool John Moores University) in collaboration with Elinor Morgan (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough), November Paynter (SALT, Istanbul and Ankara), Aida Sánchez de Serdio (Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), Adela Železnik (Moderna galerija, Ljubljana). The book draws on the accumulated knowledge and speculations of the many artists, curators, writers and institutions involved and includes a series of ‘Project Studies’ that evaluate a real world ‘toolkit’ for change.

The publication ‘‘The Constituent Museum: Constellations of Knowledge, Politics and Mediation – A Generator of Social Change’ was also developed through a series of seminars, conferences, exhibitions and publications that included an ‘Office of Useful Art’ at LJMU/Liverpool School of Art and Design (October/November 2015), A ‘Glossary of Common Knowledge ‘Constituencies’ Seminar held at LJMU in March 2016, and a ‘Constituencies’ Conference held in MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) in August 2016.

Van Abbemuseum
Eindhoven, the Netherlands 
7 December 2013 - 30 March 2014

Museum of Arte Útil team: Nick Aikens, Tania Bruguera, constructLab (with Alex Roemer, Bureau d’Études, Collective Works and others), Annette Eliëns, Charles Esche, Annie Fletcher, Gemma Medina and Alessandra Saviotti.

Initiators: Azra Akšamija, Lara Almarcegui, Artun Alaska Arasli, Joseph Beuys, Augusto Boal, Tania Bruguera, Santiago Cirugeda, Liz Christy, Paulina Cornejo, Eduardo Costa, Critical Art Ensemble, Sean Dockray, Electronic Disturbance, Theatre 2.0., Jalila Essaïdi, Claudia Fernández, Daniel Godínez Nivón, Rebecca Gomperts, Grizedale Arts, Núria Güell, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Institute for Human Activities, IRWIN, Djambawa Marawili, Memetro, Mike Merrington, Missdata, NSW Builders Labourers Federation and Victoria Street Resident Action Group, Ahmet Öğüt, Jeannette Petrik, Pino Poggi, Bik van der Pol, Provo, Publink, Luca Pucci, Laurie Jo Reynolds, Rolling Jubilee, John Ruskin, Ruben Santiago, Bonnie O. Sherk, Apolonija Šušteršič, Vivieternamente, WochenKlausur, Wooloo Artists from the Yirrkala region Yomango, Stephen Wright, Yao Jui-Chung+ Lost Society Document

Museo Reina Sofía
Madrid, Spain
29 October 2014 - 9 February 2015

Curators: What, How & For Whom/WHW

Artists: Brook Andrew, Ardmore Ceramic Art, Arte Partisano, Ariella Azoulay, Hicham Benohoud, Chto Delat?, Phil Collins, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Emory Douglas, Primitivo Evanán Poma and Asociación de Artistas Populares de Sarhua, Núria Güell and Levi Orta, Dmitry Gutov and David Riff, Adelita Husni-Bey, Iconoclasistas, Abbas Kiarostami, Runo Lagomarsino, Darcy Lange, Victoria Lomasko, Marcell Mars, Azzedine Meddour, Mujeres Públicas, Daniela Ortiz, Trevor Paglen and Jacob Appelbaum, Trevor Paglen, D. A. Pennebaker, Hannah Ryggen, Catarina Simão, Mladen Stilinović, Straub–Huillet, Subtramas, Traficantes de Sueños, Lidwien van de Ven, Cecilia Vicuña, Carla Zaccagnini, Želimir Žilnik

Van Abbemuseum
Eindhoven, the Netherlands
22 November 2014- 22 February 2015

Curators: Alistair Hudson, Steven ten Thije

Artists: Constant, Jeremy Deller, Fernando García-Dory, Liam Gillick, Renzo Martens, Antoni Miralda, Li Mu, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmuş, John Ruskin, Static and Akram Zaatari.

Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool, United Kingdom
2-4 March 2016

Curators: Zdenka Badovinac, John Byrne, Bojana Piškur
Organised by: Moderna galerija, Ljubljana and Liverpool John Moores University

Participating narrators: Nick Aikens, Marwa Arsanios, Zdenka Badovinac, John Byrne, Lia Colombino, Khwezi Gule, Anders Kreuger, Ahmet Öğüt, Meriç Öner, November Paynter, Alexei Penzin, Bojana Piškur, Raúl Sánchez Cedillo, Aida Sánchez de Serdio, Pantxo Ramas, Adela Železnik

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
Middlesbrough, United Kingdom
22-25 July 2016

Participants: Biniam Araia, Kathrin Böhm, Tania Bruguera, John Byrne, Sebastian Cichocki, Charles Esche, Annie Fletcher, Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, Núria Güell, Gemma Medina, New Linthorpe, Alessandra Saviotti, Rosalie Schweiker, Michael Simon, Kuba Szreder, Stephen Wright.

The Asociación de Arte Útil is part of an ongoing collaboration between Tania Bruguera, Grizedale Arts, Van Abbemuseum, Liverpool John Moores University and the Internationale confederation of European museums, as part of the five-year project ‘The Uses of Art: The Legacies of 1848 and 1989’. The Asociación de Arte Útil is co-directed by Tania Bruguera and Alistair Hudson (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) in partnership with the Van Abbemuseum.

Thanks to the initiators, volunteers and users of Offices of Useful Art in Liverpool (Tate Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University), Birmingham (IKON Gallery), Middlesbrough (MIMA), Istanbul (SALT Galata).

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
Middlesbrough, United Kingdom
8-10 September 2016

Participants: Biniam Araia, Burak Arıkan (Graph Commons), John Byrne, Jesús Carrillo, Céline Condorelli, Isabel García (Archivos en Uso), Anthony Gardner, Annie Fletcher, Kristine Khouri, Elinor Morgan, Alina Müller (The Silent University), Daniela Ortiz, Pantxo Ramas, Nikos Papastergiadis, Igor Španjol.

SALT Galata
Istanbul, Turkey
2 April- 11 June 2017

Abbas Akhavan, Refik Anadol, Amy Franceschini – Futurefarmers, Laure Prouvost
Conceived by November Paynter

A ‘what’s on for dementia wellbeing’ service can be accessed through the Welcome2Liverpool phone app – a free, real-time guide to events across the Liverpool City Region. Design principles for the service will be established through workshops with arts organisations, clinicians, app developers, and people living with a dementia diagnosis. A platform is also being developed to facilitate the submission of activities to the service.

Find out more

The Labyrinth Exchange was initially developed to gather experiences of living with dementia and explore the role of humour. In finding a fresh perspective of this challenging condition we aim to tackle the various forms of stigma experienced. By collaborating with people who are living with dementia we co-designed a labyrinth made of donated knitwear and postcards to communicate the stories gathered. The labyrinth itself extends the metaphor which links the shape and form with the brain, making for an aesthetically pleasing and inviting, but also thought-provoking experience.

In partnership with Liverpool Dementia Action Alliance and SURF (Service Users Reference Forum) the Labyrinth Exchange will be employed in primary schools to raise awareness amongst children of the symptoms and characteristics of dementia. Around 50% of grandparents in the European countries are providing some type of grandparental childcare at one point in time and this figure has remained relatively stable over time between 2005 - 2010. We recognise that children and schools can provide vital support in the development of age-friendly communities.

The project will continue to raise awareness amongst families in the hope of reducing health inequalities. By inviting discussions in an open platform we aim to break the stigma attached to mental health and ageing.

Beneficial outcomes:

• It highlights the possibility of living well with dementia
• It offers coping strategies for many who are living with dementia
• It raises the level of public awareness, provoking modifications in the perception of people living with dementia, that is, that people with dementia are a part of society and that they need to be given the chance to live well with dementia and key campaigners in the process of de-stigmatisation

We invite people to build the labyrinth with us by sharing their experiences of living with dementia. Playing, laughing and being active while accepting new challenges is a great way to keep the brain engaged. The labyrinth focuses on joyful moments to bring a smile or maybe a laugh and let people know that we can live well with dementia.

The collaborative workshops are led by a team of LJMU artists and students.

The project is currently being considered by the Association of Arte Utile as a replicable archive project.

LJMU City Lab is partnering with Liverpool City Council (LCC) and Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group (LCCG) on a Life Chances Fund Bid to improve quality of life amongst 70+ receiving 14 hours or more domiciliary care. LCC, in partnership with LCCG submitted an expression of interest to the Cabinet Office to secure funding, through the Life Chances Fund (LCF) to use payment by results (PbR) as a mechanism to improve outcomes for older people and specifically people with dementia to reduce or delay admission to residential care.

The Life Chances Fund has £80m to contribute to outcome payments through payments by results contracts to tackle complex social problems through the development of social impact bonds and the expression of interest proposed the introduction of a new model of domiciliary care which takes the best practice examples and evidenced-based interventions to drive flexibility of provision for service users.

The service will include a multi-disciplinary team delivering a wide variety of services and ensuring access to community-based provision where appropriate. We will be using an artful approach to health and social care in order to reduce social isolation.

The aims of the project are to:

• Reduce admissions to residential care
• Reduce length of stay in hospital
• Lower readmission to hospital after discharge
• Improved quality of life/wellbeing

We will be developing a training programme, one-to-one arts sessions and capacity building arts practice within the community.

'On Cloud 79’ is a 40-minute comedy play that will feature as part of the Royal Liverpool Hospital's Dementia Action Week. Dementia is certainly a tough subject for comedy, almost everyone is affected by it and knows someone who is living with it. In 2030, dementia is going to be the leading cause of death and disablement. There isn’t an easy way to explore something as tricky and challenging as dementia. As the late Sir Terry Prachett said, "If there is indeed an emerging sense – finally – that we’ve stopped pussy footing around dementia and can now bear to utter its name, we nevertheless find a cloud of unknowing persists.”

On Cloud 79 combines personal stories of dementia, amusing anecdotes with text analysis research. We captured emotions both sad, true and funny to explore people’s dementia journeys.

City Lab are presenting an abstract for the BSG conference in September.

The Health Systems Global Symposium is the leading community of researchers, policymakers, practitioners and advocates, and is held every two years. In 2018, it was themed on ‘Advancing health systems for all’ and held in Liverpool, for the first time, coinciding with another key UK event, the 70th anniversary year of the National Health Service. With the spotlight on Liverpool, we worked with two marginalised groups locally: the elderly and asylum seekers, using a participatory approach to explore social isolation and identify their priorities for health care. We brought these into the public arena and shared these stories alongside the lived experiences of health systems from around the world explored at this symposium.

We curated a global photo/text competition in collaboration with The Liverpool School of Tropical medicine which formed a large exhibition at the event. The exhibition has subsequently been shown at National Museums Liverpool and the Fabric District Festival: This Social Fabric in 2019.