Researching Rural Housing: With an Artist in Residence

Abstract

This article presents a unique amalgam across artistic research and rural sociology. We draw on a collaborative art residence programme between a University and an arts organisation in England, which invited an artist to respond to a highly contentious topic in rural England: housing development. The ambition for the residency was, firstly, to provide new perspectives on rural housing research, and, secondly, to provide a space for engagement between the local community, planners and academics. Through our interdisciplinary collaboration, we explore how Sander Van Raemdonck’s artistic process worked towards these ambitions. The artistic practice involved a walk with the local community, a peripatos, in a post‐industrial site proposed for housing development. Drawing on the artistic practice, the interdisciplinary team developed then a second walk, a ‘walkshop’, to mediate between housing/planning experts and reflect on the experience of the artistic practice. Following those artists and social scientists that already utilise walking as a method, we argue that the artistic peripatos can support a multi‐sensory way of communicating, a way to get ‘under the skin of a place’. More critically, we argue that artist in residence programmes provide rich opportunity to develop interdisciplinary research with artists.

How to Engage Reflexively with Messy Presents and Potential Futures: An Audio Walk for Planners

“…This topic is already extensively dealt with in literatures on art-planning collaborations (see e.g. Dang, 2005;Gkartzios & Crawshaw, 2019;Rannila & Loivaranta, 2015;Sarkissian, 2005;Vasudevan, 2020), including our own previous work (see e.g. Sachs Olsen, 2017).…”

“…Recent years have seen a growing interest by planners in the potential of art to develop forms of citizen participation that is (more) open to new voices and perspectives. Here, planners gain insights from, among others, artistic walking practices (Gkartzios & Crawshaw, 2019), community-based arts practice (Dang, 2005;Sarkissian, 2005;Vasudevan, 2020), film (Lundman, 2016;Sandercock & Attili, 2010) and theatre (Rannila & Loivaranta, 2015). Yet, as Holsen (2020) observes, a weakness with many of these studies of participation is a lack of understanding of the planning system in which participation is embedded.…”

Experimental Heritage as Practice: Approaching the Past through the Present at the Intersection of Art and Archaeology

“…In recent decades academic researchers in many fields have begun to approach artistic enquiry, and together with artists have been exploring the possibilities of new combined efforts to understand the world (Ehn 2012;Gibbs 2014;Larsson Pousette 2017;Gkartzios and Crawshaw 2019). An important attraction between science/research and art is the possibility of reaching the hitherto unknown about being in the world, with the hope of restoring relationships between humans inhabiting this world and all its forms of life, and to enhance respect for the world as a whole.…”

The role of art colonies in local development through the example of Cered Art Colony

“…Art can't be separated from the surrounding socio-economic background (Becker 1982), art colonies and their geographic neighbourhoods are in a tight interaction. This connectivity is tried to be used by the rural development policy consciously in job creation, tourism and local business development (Bujdoso, 2004;Bujdoso et al, 2015, Gkartzios andCrawshaw 2019).…”

“…The consequences of their activities transform the environment of the settlement to a great extent. For example, in the rural areas of Northern England the activities of the local art colony were used to reveal local housing challenges, additionally artistic solution ideas were created as well (Gkartzios and Crawshaw 2019).…”