{"id":40,"date":"2017-12-30T14:28:10","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T14:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fossbox.org.uk\/?page_id=40"},"modified":"2022-03-02T15:45:17","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T15:45:17","slug":"projects","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fossbox.org.uk\/?page_id=40","title":{"rendered":"Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fossbox works to foster partnerships and facilitate collaborations between academic researchers, creative, and community organisations. These are some of our recent research collaborations and impacts:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Exchange<\/h3>\n

Fossbox was commissioned in 2016 for a three-year project to provide digital platform support and impact measurement for The Cultural Capital Exchange<\/a> (TCCE) project The Exchange<\/a>. The Exchange <\/em>worked towards establishing a national network through which artists, creatives and researchers can develop mutually beneficial relationships and break down barriers to collaboration beween academia and creative industries. The programme was supported by Arts Council England<\/strong> and the Higher Education Funding Council for England<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Fossbox used an SaaS learning platform to customise a collaboration environment structured to guide early career researchers (ECR) through the collaborative research process and to capture reflections, outputs, and outcomes as the project developed. This was a groundbreaking approach to collaborative research from which we learned a great deal and which has been highly successful. Read The Exchange: Revealing Collaborative Values<\/em> report here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Surviving the Gig Economy<\/h3>\n

Fossbox partnered with Shiri Shalmy<\/a>\u00a0of the Artists Union England<\/a>\u00a0(AUE) who aim to represent visual and applied artists in order to negotiate fair pay and better working conditions for artists in increasingly precarious digital culture and media industries. Shiri worked with the student team to support them in preparing to enter \u2018the precariat\u2019 creative workforce. Tommie Introna and James Wreford, co-founders of the Black Shuk Coop<\/a>, worked with the group to create a multi-media information resource to help students in creative disciplines to prepare for future professional life. The student group was led by\u00a0Simon Patrick Miles<\/a> at UEL in association with the Director of Research, Stephen Maddison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our feedback from the UEL staff team was that the project helped promote an unusually high level of engagement on the part of the student team. This was partly because it helped bridge the team\u2019s own future in the workforce with community engagement \u2014 but also with migrant communities\u2019 wider experiences of \u2018precarity\u2019. The team\u2019s work and outputs will also feed into the research interests of the UEL team.<\/p>\n

The future of the creative skills pipeline<\/h3>\n

Fossbox partnered with the Council for Higher Education in Art & Design<\/a>, the National Society for Education in Art & Design<\/a>, the Open University, and Venture Thinking<\/a> in 2016 for a pilot funded by Canon Europe<\/a> to explore how best to support the future of creative education and the visual arts at secondary level. This followed on from the findings of NSEAD’s 2016 Survey Report<\/a> revealing a crisis in creative education in state schools. We wanted to explore what best could be done, given the limited resources available, to support school teachers with CPD in creative subjects.<\/p>\n

\"live-story-arts-education-workshop\"<\/a>
Live story from open policy workshop<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The pilot study found no shortage of relevant literature along with excellent tools and resources but there was a widespread failure of uptake \u2014 partly from the lack of a widely recognised resources repository but also because existing tools output from research projects had generally not effectively addressed the frameworks and requirements of different kinds of secondary provision, local authority and academy, for adopting resources. The partnership has now presented its findings to Canon and we are in the process of planning a national project with a view to roll-out across Europe. Rather than producing a static repository, Fossbox will be looking at the role that technology can play in developing more collaborative solutions and in improving dissemination and uptake.<\/p>\n

Surveillance, sexuality, and identity<\/h3>\n
\"soundbeam<\/a>
‘Soundbeam’ sonic installation by Charles C\u00e9leste Hutchins<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following on from discussions we had been having in 2015 with Furtherfield Commons<\/a> and collaborating on the Tactical Tech Collective Gender & Tech Popup Institute<\/a> we wanted to continue a more focused exploration of the issues around sexuality, gender and surveillance online.<\/p>\n

We teamed up with Autonomous Tech Fetish<\/a> (ATF) for a programme of workshops at the Common House and Furtherfield Commons in 2015 using film, music, and skills workshops to explore the sophistication of corporate surveillance in a way which makes sense to non-tech participants. Charles Hutchins composed a sonification of Mozilla’s ‘lightbeam<\/a>‘ extension which sonified how trackers connect you as you move through cyberspace \u2013 even we were a little astonished by the results! This was followed with workshops introducing techniques for taking more personal control of digital space. We presented on the outcomes at the Not Equal<\/a> Summer School at Swansea University.<\/p>\n

Flossie.org \u2013 Women in STEAM<\/h3>\n
\"flossie<\/a>
Volunteers at Flossie 2012<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Between 2009-2014, Fossbox brought together a group of women interested in co-design, digital arts, and coding to exchange knowledge, spark new ideas, and to support women in gaining confidence in using technology and code in art and design as well as art and design in technology. Flossie’s Annual Conference<\/a> ran between 2012 and 2014. As Creative Entrepreneur in Residence at QMUL School of Business and Management, funded by CreativeWorks<\/a> London KE Hub\/AHRC We were able to take this forward supported by QMUL, the British Computer Society (BCS), The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), Google and Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale. Working with a team of volunteers recruited from ECRs and creative industries we created a successful conference in the first year (2012) building in the second year to an international event with 80 responses to CfP and 200+ participants with presenters from throughout EMEA, Asia and Latin America. We also partnered with OU, Brunel, Bournemouth Arts and created spin-off hack events at TNMOC and BCS. This work made a significant contribution to EECS at QMUL’s Athena SWAN<\/a> award in 2012 and BCS is still running the ‘career tasters’. Flossie continued to run as a Meetup group until 2014.<\/p>\n

Starting from Values: Evaluating Intangible Legacies<\/h3>\n

The Starting from Values<\/a> project was one of seven recently funded in a call for developing different ways of investigating the legacy of Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Connected Communities<\/a> projects. The project has led to new ways of defining ‘legacy’, lending legitimacy and authority to previously unheard or less \u2018tangible\u2019 legacies of Connected Communities projects, and contributes to wider questions on shared values, authority and legacies in collaborative research projects. Fossbox’s Director was a community co-investigator on the project.<\/p>\n

Fossbox has subsequently used adaptations of the methodology to evaluate various projects including The Cultural Capital Exchange<\/a> Exchange<\/a> network funded by HEFCE and ACE which enables artists, cultural and creative SMEs and ECRs to collaborate on research and enrich the ecology between the arts, creative industries and Universities. Fossbox set up a digital collaboration platform which was used also to embed reflection on legacies and to provide data on participation as it develops as well as workshops to explore the less tangible legacies of the project for participating ECRs and creative SMEs. The final report\u00a0<\/em>Starting from Values: Evaluating Intangible Legacies<\/em> is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scaling Up Co-Design<\/h3>\n