Materializing Culture
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This group explores the materialization of culture: how people now and in the past have engaged with, used and made culture, and how we as practitioners research and represent culture. We define `culture´ broadly, to include, material, visual, textual and spatial representations and cultural practices. We are particularly concerned with the embodiment and enactment of cultural practice and the material practices of everyday life.
The group is multi-disciplinary, comprising members from a wide academic constituency including academics, museums, heritage industry and other professional groups. We are actively engaged in research, writing and other forms of dissemination (particularly exhibitions) and hold events that foster innovative collaboration.
Current Projects
The group's current collaborative project is an exhibition titled 'Inhabiting Space'. The working party includes Prue Chiles (Architecture), Karen Harvey (History), Kate Pahl (Education), Susan Reid (Russian and Slavonic Studies), and Nick Bax (design consultant from Human). Intended for the new Jessop West Exhibition Space, this will interrogate ideas about the nature of social and built space and their representation in what will be a unique interdisciplinary exhibition. It will contain display materials from colleagues across faculties, who will work with an independent curator on display and design. Academics will experiment with practice-based ways of working using new media, and respond to each other's work in the exhibition process. Exhibits will also reflect upon - and establish a dialogue with visitors about - the public utility of Arts, Humanities and Social Science research. The team was awarded a University KT Rapid Response Fund and is currently applying for further funding.
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A funded pilot exhibition took place as part of the 'Curious' festival organised by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Six researchers presented images and objects from our research in a glass kiosk on The Moor in central Sheffield. Using a cabinet as a way to learn about the world goes back to the 16th and 17th centuries when men began displaying their collections of often odd and unusual objects in custom-made cabinets. Their collections showed the curiosity of the owners and, like material libraries, they also allowed others to learn about new and unfamiliar things. These `cabinets of curiosities´ brought together diverse knowledge into a single compact space: a university in miniature. The cabinet on the Moor and its contents invited passers by to stop for a moment, look, and think about our own collections and displays.
To see more about this project, or the Curious Festival of spring 2010, see the links to the right.
Individual members of the larger group are pursuing a range of projects, including 'Art and Industry in Northern England, 1700-1900´, 'The Politics of Drinking: Sheffield, 1760-1830´, 'If the Shoe Fits: Footwear, identification and transition', 'Everyday Aesthetics in the Modern Soviet Flat', and 'Every Object Tells a Story', a project to support the integration of narratives and images into a family learning project.