Without a basic foundation of care for ourselves in our lives we are drowning in a sea of chaos, treading water at best. The last few years have been the hardest for many of us. We have lived through a global pandemic which many of us are still in recovery from.

At this time of great uncertainty, we need more than ever to gather and build our resources, but how can we achieve this in lack and scarcity?

In our sector, we artists have been overworked and underpaid for too long. We all know this is not a sustainable way to live and work. Many of us are sick, disabled, poor, struggling and finding the best ways we can to survive. Enough!

CARING FOR MYSELF IS NOT SELF-INDULGENCE, IT IS SELF-PRESERVATION, AND THAT IS AN ACT OF POLITICAL WARFARE.

Audre Lorde

So where do we begin?

We begin by gathering again, to share resources and to change our mindsets. We cannot overcome our current situations alone or in competition with each other. We need community.

I will be holding space for my proposal on ‘ecologies of care’, and I invite you, artists and arts workers to come along and gather.

Find out more here.

Artist Bio

Ria Righteous (formerly Ria Jade Hartley, she/her) is an interdisciplinary Artist crafted in performance, theatre & Live Art. As a decolonial-queer-feminist, Ria’s practice innately advocates for others - giving space for thought, feeling, creation & innovation. After almost two decades of studying, teaching and creating in the Arts & Cultural sector, Ria has gained expert knowledge and experience in which she would like to more formally offer out in workshops & talks under her initiative ‘ecologies of care’.

In ‘Countersilence’ I examine how sonic mapping can be used to investigate affective and subjective listening experiences within Manchester. In order to achieve this, I am assembling a creative toolkit which will contain soundwalks, field recordings, soundscape compositions and a digital soundmap. This toolkit will be developed and tested by me and then by research participants in a workshop setting.

The workshops will contain a practical element in which the participants will develop sound works using the different elements of the creative toolkit; these sound works will then be integrated into a digital soundmap which will be shared publicly as artistic product.

The workshops will also have space for the participants to reflect on their listening experiences and how the process of sonic mapping has helped them to express their relationship to Manchester through sound.

This presentation draws on work undertaken as part of the Interpreters for Mental Health Act Assessments (INForMHAA) study funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research School for Social Care Research, involving a transdisciplinary project team across four UK-based institutions, led by the University of Manchester.

The study investigates the ways in which interpreter mediation impacts on Mental Health Act Assessments and how interpreter-mediated Mental Health Act Assessments can be improved. Assessments under the Mental Health Act (1983) can lead to a person being admitted, detained and treated in hospital for a mental disorder without their consent (also known as being 'sectioned’).

Our focus in this presentation will be on the creation and reception of a series of simulated scenarios that will eventually form the basis of a training resource for Approved Mental Health Professionals (AMHPs) and sign and spoken language interpreters in England.

We describe our collaboration with TiPP, a Manchester-based theatre group with a focus on social justice and change, and the challenges of simulating scenarios that bring together professional actors, AMHPs and Interpreters.

We will show a short example of a filmed scenario before discussing some initial responses to the resource through focus groups and workshops.

In this interactive session, we will discuss what REAL teamwork is; how various types of diversity add value to research carried out in teams, and share an overview of how the University of Manchester is developing training and toolkits to work well in teams to deliver research Team Research.

We will end with an interactive session of shared experiences.

The University of Manchester Team Research Programme is part of an institution-wide Research Culture Improvement Portfolio funded by Research England. The session will be led by the coPrincipal Investigators of the programme (Charlotte Stockton-Powdrell and Ruth Norris) who will share their experience of shaping and delivering the programme; a description of activities and results to date; and plans for next steps.

*Nb. Where we use the term Team Research - this can be considered equivalent to the definition of Team Science / interdisciplinary team working principles. We have chosen this wording to reflect the inclusion of disciplines and team members who don't consider themselves ‘science’ e.g humanities, arts etc.

“We can start all over in the new beginning

We can learn, we can teach, we can share

The myths, the dreams, the prayers

The notion that we can do better

Change our lives and paths

Create a new world”

Tracy Chapman, 'New Beginning'

How do we collectively imagine a better world and forge new paths together, if we do not first discuss inclusion?

Who has been welcomed to do the imagining and whose voices, ideas, hopes, and dreams are still missing?

This presentation will explore what a more inclusive arts and humanities could bring to a new beginning in a post-pandemic world.

Following the pandemic, loneliness is commonly talked about in the media with some experts declaring a ‘loneliness epidemic’ in the UK.

But what do we mean when we say loneliness?

In this talk we will discuss some of the common misconceptions about loneliness, and who is most affected by it.

As researchers we often focus on things that happen, and the things that are said; but what about things that don't and aren't?

With this talk I will touch on the role of creative and participatory methods to get at often untold stories, and the possibilities this opens up for sharing stories more widely with publics.

This award-winning research project offers an insight into the everyday lives of Deaf BSL users living with dementia and their families. The talk will share some of these findings and how these were represented as an effective learning opportunity.