A Walk in Their Shoes…

Hi, we just wanted to give everyone an introduction to our placement at Community Arts North West. Community Arts North West is a participatory arts organisation that helps hard-to-reach community groups get involved with arts and music production in Manchester. We are conducting a project researching the demographics of asylum seekers and refugees in Greater Manchester along with an account on social impact and destitution. The Home Office only releases limited statistics on asylum seekers and it is difficult to track refugees once they receive refugee status so it’s very difficult to find all the information – it involves interviewing lots of different organisations in the area – but it’s really interesting and we’re learning so much.

The report we produce will be used to support funding applications and to target resources and services effectively. It will be shared with other refugee and asylum seeker support organisations in the area as many of them lack the time and resources to conduct such research.

We absolutely love the office we work in, it’s like a jungle with all the plants and the office staff are a laugh – donuts are a weekly treat! During our research we stumbled across shocking statistics about the number of asylum seekers living destitute in Manchester – 2,000 in fact. Once they are refused asylum, the states cuts them off completely as if they don’t exist. They have to rely on charity to help them survive.

Charities like the British Red Cross and the Boaz Trust provide Manchester’s destitute asylum seekers with food parcels and a few pounds each week to get by. We figured that seeing as though it’s Lent and we want to raise awareness, we’re going to live off one of these food parcels for a week – of course we will buy the produce ourselves. So, starting on Saturday morning at 12am sharp (no sneaky slices of buttered toast at 12:05am) we will give up the usual luxuries…

You can keep up with our progress (and our tinned-meal-creativity) on our blog: http://amyconlock.blogspot.com/

Amy Conlock and Antonia King

Can’t wait to read more about everyone’s different placements!

Manchester Histories Festival kicks off!!!

The Manchester Histories Festival kicked off on Friday and so have the ICP’s events!

 

The Festival map is here! Click on the venues to see what’s on!

Everybody’s Histonauting! Keep following the clues and keep up with the leader board here. (p.s. keep your eyes peeled for other Histonauts at events over the 10 days and score mega points!)

Don’t forget the Manchester 100 Years Ago Tour! It’s happening Saturday 6^th March 11am – 1pm, sign up here!

And come see us at our stand in City Hall at Manchester Histories Festival Celebration Day also on Saturday 6^th March, 10am – 5.30pm!! We’ll have plenty of information on the work we do and there’ll be some live mapping with PHD student and UniverCity Culture developer Julian Hartley!

Get the low down on all the other fantastic events here!

Enjoy the Festival!!!

Institute of Cultural Practices & Manchester Histories Festival – 24th February-4th March, 2012

 

Like history? Like Manchester?

Then get ready to get involved!!!

Remember that fun run-around-campus-with-your-smart-phone game during Fresher’s week called Histonauts? Well, get ready for Histonauts Two!!! It’s part of our programme of events for Manchester History Festival 2012!

The festival runs between 24^th February and 4^th March. It aims to celebrate Manchester’s unique history and heritage through a huge programme of events and activities. The ICP is proud to be involved and, as part of the MMXII Mapping Manchester 2012 project, funded by CRESC Urban Experiments, has a number of opportunities to learn more about local history and how new technology can help us engage with our city’s past:

• We’ll be mapping the festival programme and linking events and activities to Manchester histories research from the University and beyond using the UniverCityCulture geotagging project.
• The Histonauts Two game will run throughout the festival. Get registered and play investigative ‘Histonaut’ to find Manchester’s secret histories and treasures through on-line clues. Have your results posted and see if you come out victorious! Click here for details and registration.  
• We are also working with Archives + and History Pin to put on a digital tour of the city 100 years ago, revealing what Manchester looked like in times gone by. It takes place on Saturday, 3 March 11 – 1pm. Find out more and register here.
• Finally, the ICP will be part of the Festival’s Celebration Saturday, 3 March in the Town Hall, all day. Come and join us at our exhibition stand, find out more about ICP’s work, and take part in the games and activities which are part of the Festival’s big finale.

There are loads of other really interesting and fun events to get involved in over the two weeks so check out the Manchester Histories Festival events calendar to find out more.

MMXII: Mapping Manchester 2012 Presentation

This presentation was given to the Museums Learning Group, at the Museum of Science and Industry, by Abigail Gilmore and Jim Ralley, on 24/01/12.

It focuses on the second phase of the UniverCityCulture pilot research project which is being funded through the CRESC Urban Experiments strand. The ICP is working with Manchester Histories Festival on several mapping, gaming, and engagement events.

You can sign up for the game element of the project, Histonauts2, here.

Histonauts Results

We ran the second iteration of the campus QR code game yesterday evening at Contact. The night was hosted by Larkin’ About, Manchester’s only pervasive gaming collective.

It was loads of fun, and we had a really positive response to the game. Everyone learned a bit about the history of the campus, and hopefully made some new friends. It was raining a little bit but that didn’t seem to bother people.

Teams followed a basic map to 4 buildings on campus that are named after famous academics from the University’s past. At each location there was a challenge: a maths challenge, a drawing challenge, a limerick-writing challenge, and a kind of interpretive theatrical tableau photo challenge.

Check out the results below…

2nd – Kyle and Friends with 49 points

3rd – @IanHayles with 48 points

4th – @marisensy with 44 points

5th – @play_ARK with 41 points

6th – @_jennabee with 0 points :’(  <— minor BlackBerry technical issues

Limericks/comic poems written about Samuel Alexander in response to this anecdote

“An eccentric, bike-loving, Australian-born philosopher, and the first Jewish fellow of an Oxbridge college, who worked in aesthetics and metaphysics. Once Samuel Alexander arrived, after a long bike trip during which he was caught in a storm, wet and muddy at the home of his friends who had invited him to dinner. When the maid answered his knock, he asked if he might have a bath. Since he looked every inch a tramp, the maid curtly turned him down and shut him out.”

@leengayu
There once was an old man from Australia
Whose theories on God were a failure;
He wrote lots of books
But his roguish good looks
Were masked by his trampish regalia.

Kyle and Friends
There once was a man from down-under
Who thought he could ride through the thunder
Asked the maid for a bath
She said “you’re having a laugh”
And she threw him outside for his blunder

@IanHayles
There was an aesthete called Sam,
Who had an aversion to ham,
On his bike he got dirty,
For a date at 6:30,
And the maid turned him out with a slam

@marisensy
Dear Uncle Sam,
Who cycling down under
Got soaking wet
And looked like a rambler.
The maid of the place
With a strange face
Turned you down
When you asked for a dry gown.

@play_ARK
There was a nice chap called Sammy
He was always cleaning his bike with a chamois.
He wanted a bath,
The maid had to laugh,
Because he got himself a bit clammy.

Ellen Wilkinson Challenge

Ellen Wilkinson was the first female Minister for Education, she brought in the 1946 School Milk Act giving 1/3 pint a day to all school children in the UK under 18. In 1971 Margaret Thatcher changed the act to only provide milk for children under 7. Teams had to take a photo of themselves acting out the notorious moniker “Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher”

Thanks to everyone who played, and to Contact and Larkin’ About who were great hosts.

Mapping Manchester’s Histories – MMXII

MMXII is a new ICP project based on the geo-annotation methodology developed by UnivercityCulture.  The project is seed-corn funded by the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change (CRESC) through its Urban Experiments strand.

Using free-to-access social media tools, maps and gaming activities we are working with the Manchester Histories Festival to develop public engagement with socio-cultural research on Manchester’s histories. We will be working with a range of cultural partners – galleries, archives and museums – as well as academics to run public workshops during the Festival, which takes place 24 February – 4 March 2012. So we’ll be getting giddy with excitement over the next couple of months about plotting, mapping and revealing stories and people from Manchester’s past through the research and knowledge resources in the city.

Full project details downloadable here MMXII Project Summary.  Watch this space for further updates!

Spinning Jenny - Quarry Bank Mill

What is UniverCityCulture?

A short video explaining what the UniverCityCulture pilot project is and how it works…

Website

Twitter

YouTube

Facebook

Campus Obscura Results

SECOND PLACE is @vivii3006 with 70 points

JOINT THIRD PLACE are @_jennabee and @ICP001 with 60 points

‘Campus Obscura’: A digital gaming tour

‘Campus Obscura’: A digital gaming tour
by UniverCity Culture

When: Tuesday 20th 11am-1pm
Where: meet at Mansfield Cooper Building, room 4.10
Who: for new University of Manchester students

Explore the University campus and find out the hidden stories of University life, buildings and people. The tour starts from Mansfield Cooper Building, room 4.10. Come along and if you have a smartphone, please bring it with you.

Bryony Bond on Alchemy at the Whitworth Art Gallery

Bryony Bond is currently the Curator for Temporary Collections at the Whitworth Art Gallery. She worked on the Alchemy research project with Manchester Museum and the University of Manchester, aiming to initiate and facilitate access to the Museum’s collections.

We spoke to her in a dark and noisy gallery at the Whitworth about her work with Alchemy, the project’s legacies, and what she’s up to now.