David Walker Barker, University of Leeds, undertook practice-led research to produce an exhibition at Killhope Museum in Upper Weardale, County Durham. In Search of a Hidden Landscape included artworks that interpreted the history of the North Pennines and its lead and fluorspar mining communities.
Impacts included:
• Encouraging the local community to consider its past, to take pride in its mining heritage, and to reflect on the links between local culture and personal identity. This benefited community cohesion by encouraging visitors to value local links and connections.
• Allowing the museum to develop a new direction in representing the past, and so helping visitors to think differently about local history.
• Increasing the number of visitors to the museum and to the local area, and so leading to financial benefits for the museum and for the local economy, plus developing cultural and social benefits for visitors.
When the mines closed social and economic depression affected the area. Miners tended to be unwilling to talk about what had happened. More recently, as the ex-miners are ageing, there has been a desire to remember and record the stories of the area before they are forgotten. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the museum and involved interviews with ex-miners. It formed a record of a significant aspect of the community’s history, and was an expression of the local culture. The art provided a symbolic rather than literal narration, which provided a multilayered interpretation, emphasising connections and ambivalence. David Walker Barker considered that the project "opened up and defined a much broader purpose for my creative research because of the unusual venue and the much wider audience it reached, and on a personal level was like gifting something back to the communities and the histories that inspired it”.
Further details:
http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/About/Publications/Documents/Social%20Impact%20Exhibitions%20Web.pdf
http://www.land2.uwe.ac.uk/essay13.htm
Further information:
These short overviews have been produced as an aid to understanding some of the impacts arising from arts and humanities research. The examples are taken from existing AHRC projects, ranging from small awards up to large Research Grants and Centres. They are not exhaustive; impact from research takes many forms. It can occur at any stage of the research process, from its beginning to well after the research itself has finished.
The Research Councils define impact as the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy. This definition accords with the Royal Charters of the Councils and with HM Treasury guidance on the appraisal of economic impact. Impact embraces all the extremely diverse ways in which research-related knowledge and skills benefit individuals, organisations and nations by:
• fostering global economic performance, and specifically the economic competitiveness of the United Kingdom
• increasing the effectiveness of public services and policy, and
• enhancing quality of life, health and creative output
These case studies offer some, but in no way all, of the diversity and variety of those impacts. They are not, however, intended as guidance on completing the Impact Requirements sections on proposals, for which you should refer to the Je-S guidance for Standard Grant proposals and Fellowship proposals.
It should also be remembered that the impacts described here will not necessarily be replicated by undertaking the same activities. The pathways to impact are as diverse and varied as the impacts themselves. These examples can, however, provide some illustration of what can be achieved.