Work Package 2

Arts & Heritage Participatory Action Research with Older People 

The research will deliver Aim 2 by involving older people as co-producers and artists as co-designers in a programme of participatory action research to explore the barriers and strategies for accessing and using green and blue spaces. The research will build on the innovative work by the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA) to involve participants as co-investigators. We will use a socially engaged and participatory arts practice to counteract the narratives of decline and loss which permeate discourses around ageing. It will connect to the activities associated with Work Package 4 and provide a temporal dimension to complement the spatial assessments carried out in Work Package 5.

Planned outputs:

  1. A creative digital map identifying the case studies, project work and green and blue spaces engagement/non-engagement using the patch-corridor-matrix model. The map will also act as a digital heritage resource, capturing the storytelling, images, and oral histories offered about the identified, case study spaces. Work Package 2 will work closely with Work Package 5, the digital humanities team, and digital artists, and will draw on best practice.
  2. New policy recommendations and methodologies for integrating socially engaged arts practice into green and blue spaces, ageing and wellbeing agendas (including Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), “The Places Challenge: how culture and heritage can shape vibrant and healthy communities”).
  3. Exhibitions of project work (Whitworth Gallery and in community spaces).
  4. Database of Greater Manchester-based student artists interested in working at the intersections of Age Friendly Manchester and green and blue spaces.