Cr/ía is an outward-facing and interdisciplinary hub for arts-centred research across and beyond the College of Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities. With a shared commitment to foregrounding the value of the arts – socially, and as a form of knowledge – our work has two inter-linked strands:
Creative Research: Art as knowledge, language and method
This strand centres on how arts-based methods can be used to access forms of knowledge that exceed the written or spoken word and generate – with communities and across disciplinary boundaries – new ways and forms of understanding. Lead: Dr Alice Tilche
Arts-based research methods are increasingly used across disciplines and become especially pertinent as institutions work to decolonize their approaches to knowledge. Research has been dominated by the ‘articulable’ – that which can be said, heard, written and read in the realm of words, but there are languages that involve alternative epistemologies and processes of knowing: those of physicality, of the labouring body, image, sound and rhythm. By centering the body, image and sound, arts-based research methods enable experiences to be released from the primacy of text and speech. Arts-based research, furthermore, has the potential to impact concerns typically linked to social sciences fields, thereby also strengthening an argument for the value of art in research.
Instituting Art: Arts at the conjunction of practice, place, public and policy
This strand centres on / collaborates with the diverse institutional formations that allow art to exist within public realms, and thus shape / be shaped by wider social and cultural dynamics and attitudes. Lead: Dr Isobel Whitelegg
Art does not come to exist socially and gain wider relevance and meaning without the varied institutional forms that enable artforms to be learned, produced, and placed into a public realm. Both historically, and in the present day, attitudes towards art – and the value we place on its existence – are contingent on structures of power and influence that enable a diverse art-institutional ecology to thrive, diverse communities to find expression, and new cultural attitudes to be forged (or contested). By placing arts-centred public institutions at the centre of our research, we foreground who art is for and what it contributes to social life, while enhancing the visibility and value of art-institutional forms that exceed the museum and art gallery model.
Co-Leads: Dr Alice Tilche and Dr Isobel Whitelegg
Core members: Dr Stacy Boldrick, Prof. Corinne Fowler, Dr Rosemary Shirley
Upcoming Workshops
Embodying consent: With yourself, with others and during research.
Friday 14th February 2025. 11-2 pm (with break) *** pls wear comfortable clothing. Attenborough Arts Centre, Main Hall. Zoe Goodman, Anthropologist and Facilitator at Rebellious Care. Alice Tilche, Associate Prof in Anthropology and Museum Studies, University of Leicester
Creative Writing & Research
Wednesday 19th March, 2-4 pm. Attenborough Arts Centre, Studio 1. Corinne Fowler, Professor of Colonialism and Heritage, University of Leicester
Place-based methods.
Tuesday 29th April, 2-4 pm. Attenborough Arts Centre, Studio 3. Rosemary Shirley, Associate Prof in Museum Studies, University of Leicester
‘Your silence will not protect you’: Arts-based techniques to surface challenging power dynamics and normalize conflict
Thursday 22 May. 11-2pm *** pls wear comfortable clothing. Attenborough Arts Centre, Main Hall. Zoe Goodman, Anthropologist and Facilitator at Rebellious Care
To book a space please email: lias@leicester.ac.uk