The responses a city makes to specific challenges are critical to the life of that city. Dr Stuart Andrews and Dr Patrick Duggan have been researching performative practices for recovery after lockdown in Bristol, Glasgow and Newcastle.
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The art and performance of city strategy in a pandemic (National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange)
In November 2020, we began working on an AHRC/UKRI funded, COVID-19 Rapid Response research project: ‘Social Distancing and Reimagining City Life: Performative strategies and practices for response and recovery in and beyond lockdown’. We are both academics from performance studies: an area of research that focuses on artistic and everyday performances, and we are both particularly concerned with performances of place and crisis. Our current project focuses on three UK cities, Bristol, Glasgow and Newcastle; the councils of each city are formal project partners. We are investigating the ways that theories and practices of performance might be helpful in developing new and nuanced city strategies for sustaining social distancing in and beyond these cities.
In undertaking this work, we are interested in the importance of creative practices for city living, and to the ways we might take account of arts thinking and practice in developing responsive urban strategies. This is not a project that seeks to deploy artists to ‘fix’ social practices in instrumental ways. Rather we are bringing together strategists from... Keep reading on National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange.