Royal College of Art, London September 18-19 2014
Call for Papers
Creative citizens make new things happen in their communities. Their activities are vital to civic life but also to the creative economy, where their contribution mostly goes uncounted. They invent new ways of delivering music, visual art, film and literature. They come together as fans; they make things, sharing space and place.
They ensure that community news is gathered and shared and that local authority plans and building designs reflect the ideas of those most affected. The conference is the climax of a 20 month multidisciplinary research project, Media Community and the Creative Citizen which explores the dynamics of creative citizenship in the context of digital media. We ask how social media are affecting the value and sustainability of creative citizenship and, with our community partners around the UK, we experiment with co-created media interventions to enhance networks of creative citizenship in Bristol, Birmingham & London.
We now want to widen our conversation, test our findings and convene a network of researchers and activists interested in developing research, policy and activism around the idea of Creative Citizenship. We are looking for conference contributions that include themes or topics such as:
- Definition of, and critical perspectives on, creative citizenship
- Research approaches and methods
- Cultural, economic, civic and social values of creative citizenship
- Creativity and innovation
- Co-production and design
- Representation and identity
- Inclusion/exclusion
- Practices and business models
- Role of media literacy and creative skills
- Research Ethics
- UK and international case studies
- The impacts of creative citizenship and its practices: critique, evaluation and measurement
- Policy and investment
Timed to coincide with London Design Week and the annual exhibition of the RCA’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, this multidisciplinary event will bring together leading thinkers to discuss the project’s findings and to contribute their ideas to this emerging field of study. Our speakers will include community activists, politicians and business people, as well as academics.
We are delighted to have keynote contributions from:
Paola Antonelli, curator for the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Antonelli is a leading thinker in design, she has taught design history and theory at UCLA and Harvard and is the author of Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design. In 2012, she led the move to acquire 14 video games for MoMA’s permanent collection.
Jean Burgess, Queensland University of Technology, one of the first researchers to focus on every day creativity and the digital Jean was the co author of the groundbreaking YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Her current work looks at social media, controversy, and new public spaces of debate.
John Hartley is Professor of Cultural Science and Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University (Perth, Western Australia). John published over 200 articles and 24 books in the field of Media & Cultural Studies, he has an incisive and original interest in the digital and public cultures. His recent titles includeThe Uses of Digital Literacy (UQP 2009), Digital Futures for Cultural and Media Studies (Wiley 2012), and A Companion to New Media Dynamics (co-editor, Wiley 2013). He is completing a book on Cultural Science with Jason Potts (Bloomsbury).
Geoff Mulgan is Chief Executive of Nesta. He is a visiting professor at LSE, UCL, Melbourne University and a regular lecturer at the China Executive Leadership Academy. He is an adviser to many governments around the world, and has been a board member of the Work Foundation, the Health Innovation Council, Political Quarterly and the Design Council. His latest book The Locust and the Bee was published by Princeton University Press in March 2013 and argues that the economic crisis presents a historic opportunity to choose a radically different future for capitalism, one that maximizes its creative power and minimizes its destructive force.
Ian Hargreaves holds The Chair of Digital Economy at the University of Cardiff. Professor Hargreaves’s interests include the impact of digital communications technology on: journalism, media, intellectual property issues and the creative economy. In 2010/2011, he led a review of intellectual property for the UK Government, published in May 2011 as Digital Opportunity: a review of intellectual property and economic growth. He is also the co author of the NESTA Manifesto for the Creative Economy (2013).
We are looking for conference contributions from arts and humanities and social sciences in the form of traditional papers (15 mins) as well as informal poster presentations from early career researchers and PhD students. The conference will have three tracks and several workshops; we will programme two tracks from this call. Please send your abstracts to creativecitizensproject@gmail.com by 5pm (GMT) on Monday 20th January 2014. Notifications in March 2014. Hold the date. Booking will be available in Feb 2014.
The Media, Community and the Creative Citizen project includes teams from six UK universities, organised in three workstreams: hyperlocal journalism; community-led design and creative networks. Our partners are Talk About Local; Ofcom; Nesta, the Glass-House Design; South Blessed and the Moseley Exchange. Our funders are the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Creative Citizens: the conference, 2014.
Helen Hamlyn Centre, Royal College of Art, Knightsbridge, London, September 18-19, 2014.www.creativecitizens.co.uk
http://creativecitizens.co.uk/events/
