This interdisciplinary book explores the role of art in placemaking in urban environments, analysing how artists and communities use arts to improve their quality of life. It explores the concept of social practice placemaking, where artists and community members are seen as equal experts in the process. Drawing on examples of local level projects from the USA and Europe, the book explores the impact of these projects on the people involved, on their relationship to the place around them, ...

Leading scholars combine their love of The Archers with their specialist subjects, in Custard, Culverts and Cake - a sometimes serious, but most often wry look at the people of Ambridge. A group of Archers Academics take on subjects such as food, geography, social media, faith. There is, naturally, an entire section dedicated to the Helen and Rob storyline.With contributions from members of the Academic Archers network, the book blurs the line between fact and fiction - The Archers...

Trauma Informed Placemaking offers an introduction to understanding trauma and healing in place. It offers insights that researchers and practitioners can apply to their place-based practice, learning from a global cohort of place leaders and communities.The book introduces the ethos and application of the trauma-informed approach to working in place, with references to historical and contemporary trauma, including trauma caused by placemakers. It introduces the potential ...

This book makes a significant contribution to the history of placemaking, presenting grassroots to top-down practices and socially engaged, situated artistic practices and artsled spatial inquiry that go beyond instrumentalising the arts for development. The book brings together a range of scholars to critique and deconstruct the notion of creative placemaking, presenting diverse case studies from researcher, practitioner, funder and policymaker perspectives from across the globe. It opens...

This Handbook is the first to explore the emergent field of ‘placemaking’ in terms of the recent research, teaching and learning, and practice agenda for the next few years. Offering valuable theoretical and practical insights from the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, it provides cutting-edge interdisciplinary research on the placemaking sector.Placemaking has seen a paradigmatic shift in urban design, planning, and policy to engage the community voice. This Handboo...

Flapjacks and Feudalism: Social Mobility and Class in The Archers is an excavation into the family and class politics found in the clans of the residents of Ambridge, in BBC Radio 4's The Archers.A whole section of the book is devoted to 'The Fall of the House of Aldridge', with Brian's ethical misdemeanours and fall from grace, looking at how Brian could have hidden his scandals and changed the impressions surrounding him as a 'feckless farmer'. Another section s...

The first academic study of the phenomenon of The Archers fandom from the fans themselves. The fourth instalment in the Academic Archers collection, Fandom Culture and The Archers looks beyond the popular success of the Archers to explore how the program, and the themes it discusses, are used in teaching, learning, research and professional settings, and how the Academic Archers fandom helps shape these real life impacts.The chapters explore first the nature of Archers fan...

The intrepid team of researchers who brought you Custard, Culverts and Cake: Academics on Life in The Archers return with a hard-hitting exposé on the lives of the women of Ambridge. In this new book, the Archers Academics are joined by former The Archers editor, Alison Hindell and real-life Academic Archer Dr Charlotte Connor (a.k.a. Susan Carter), to examine the power of gossip in Ambridge, portrayals of love, marriage, and motherhood, female education and career expectations, w...

If you have ever wondered about the ethical implications of Dr Richard Locke’s affair with Shula Hebden Lloyd, or whether the ergonomic design of tractor seats could have prevented Tony Archer from getting a bad back, then this book is for you. Leading academics from across the United Kingdom use storylines from BBC Radio 4’s The Archers to examine life in rural Borsetshire, bringing their academic research to new audiences. Is Lynda Snell a middleclass warrior? Can Rob Titchener ...

Do we have a literacy crisis?Fierce debates in the media over how to teach children to read and write have reached new heights in recent years. The intensity of the debates is not surprising as literacy education matters to everyone, but there is collateral damage. Public confidence in literacy teachers has been undermined and many believe we have a literacy crisis in our schools.The Literacy Wars explains the reasons for the often bitter disagreements between the ...

The aim of this book is to offer an informed account of changes in the nature of the relationship between play, media and commercial culture in England through an analysis of play in the 1950s/60s and the present day.

"Part chronicle, part analysis and part advice manual, Social Scientists Meets the Media combines the thoughts of academics and media people to produce a vivid and valuable series of accounts that will prove of service to all academics seeking a wider audience but wary of the terra incognita they face in finding one" Ellis Cashmore, Staffordshire UniversitySocial Scientists know they are in a dilemma: their work may fall prey to sensationalism, but at the same time they don't want t...