PLACE Research Group

The School of Performance and Cultural Industries PLACE Research Group investigates the dynamic interactions between culture, people and places. The purpose of the group is to explore how perspectives of performance and the cultural industries offer distinctive understandings of place.

We are interested in how places and environments affect cultural activity and performance and vice versa, for example in how the work of artists and audiences is informed by the agency of place and how places are changed through arts activity. We are concerned with a range of approaches from arts-based and practice-led investigation through to questions of cultural value in relation to place and how cultural policy shapes (and is potentially shaped by) place and local ecologies. We are use a range research approaches, especially qualitative and creative methodologies.

Our research themes include:

• Performance with place/place as performance
• Transformation/contestation of place through cultural activity
• Affective and sensorial engagement with environments
• Creative methods for place-based research
• Cultural policy and place
• Local ecologies of art and entrepreneurship

Members

We welcome researchers from the University of Leeds and elsewhere at all career stages, including Postgraduate Researchers. If you would like to become a member, you can sign up to our JISC mail list

Meetings

We hold in-person meetings regularly through the academic year. Members outside Leeds can join online.

At member-only meetings we:

• share member’s work-in-progress for constructive feedback
• discuss key points of reference and readings
• plan open events

At open events, we invite academics, arts practitioners, policy makers and participants to discuss key topics concerning place, performance and the cultural industries and current debates in the sector.

For more information and enquiries, please contact the group convenors:

• Joslin McKinney (PLACE co-convenor)
• John Wright (PLACE co-convenor).