Discussion
OK, open discussion as I'm at this workshop on it. When someone raises the idea of "impact" from humanities #academia, how do you expect that works in practice? What would you imagine impact *meaning*? Do you think academia does enough of it? Especially interested in views of non-academics on this & what you actually see of impact.
Boosts welcome/appreciated!
@JubalBarca (appreciate I know more about this stuff as a lapsed academic/university professional services employee! But I attended a series of creative writing workshops put on by my local/postgraduate university, based around one of their special collections 😊)
@alicemcalicepants Yeah, I'd love more of the discussion to be around this sort of thing and it's the kind of thing I'd like to do more of.
I think there are issues when we do it, especially with audiences, it can easily be "we go talk to some middle-class semi academic folk who were already sold on what we do" without real funding and work going in. Beyond a couple of standard "open day" events we don't have great routes for supporting such projects where I am (at least that I know of).
@JubalBarca that makes sense - I think we're quite lucky where I am with a city council that's not too tight-fisted with the culture pot, as well as Essex Book Festival, which has the slogan of 'reaching places other festivals don't' and makes the effort to be visible and engage people in e.g. Clacton/Jaywick.
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@JubalBarca public engagement that provides enrichment and mental wellbeing, I guess. More active things could be workshops where identified communities or random people do some kind of creative work under the guidance of an expert in a specific topic, or co-production of exhibitions/materials with people close to a particular issue (thinking: Lucy Bland's Brown Babies project).
Also, more passive engagement: people listening to a talk/reading a book/seeing an exhibition/visiting a website.