The project builds on the research team’s existing research practices across intersectional areas of climate and social justice, geography, gardening, mapping, performance, puppetry, music, socially-engaged arts practices, arts activism, and intangible and material heritages.
Below is an evolving list of key individuals working on the project and its legacies.
PI – Dr Jenna C. Ashton Dr Jenna C. Ashton is an artist and curator, and Lecturer in Heritage Studies, at the Institute for Cultural Practices, University of Manchester. Jenna’s research contributes to evolving social practice and creative methods within “heritage studies” theory and practice, for addressing social and ecological (in)justice. Jenna’s work is often site-specific, highlighting experiences and knowledge(s) of place. Her research outputs are practice-based as well as journal or book focused, with a concern for how research dissemination articulates and embodies an ethics of practice, especially where co-creation has informed the research methods. She has over 15 years’ experience in community collaboration and co-production.
In 2017, Jenna was awarded an internationally competitive visiting Global Cultural Fellowship with the Institute for International Cultural Relations, Edinburgh University, working with thirty global curators, artists and policy makers exploring the value of cultural exchange for addressing issues of human rights. She holds a number of advisory and trustee roles in the UK and internationally. She is the founder and Creative Director of the arts and heritage organisation Digital Women’s Archive North (DWAN), and in 2019, in collaboration with women artists, she co-founded CIWA, the Centre for International Women Artists, a collective artist studio and gallery experiment in Manchester, UK.
Most recently, Jenna was PI on Partnership Development in Kosovo: “Empowering victims of war through art and culture: developing a museum of war, peace and memory in Kosovo”, GCRF – HEFCE Partnership Development Pump Priming (2019-2020); PI on “The Travelling Heritage Bureau of Displaced, International Women Artists”, Heritage Fund (2017 – 2019); and Co-I on project: “Green Infrastructure and the Health and Wellbeing Influences on an Ageing Population (GHIA)”, NERC/AHRC/ESRC Valuing Nature Fund: ref NE/N013530/1 (2016-2020). She also a Co-I on “Creative Adaptive Solutions for Treescapes of Rivers (CASTOR)”, funded by NERC Future of UK Treescapes programme (2021-2024).
Alongside her creative practice, Jenna is also working on two contracted books Creative Pedagogy for Messy Heritage (Routledge, 2023) and The Routledge Handbook on Heritage and Gender (Routledge, 2025).
w: https://jcashton.com/ t: @heritagemcr
e: Jenna.Ashton [at] manchester.ac.uk
Co-I – Professor Kevin Malone is Professor of Social and Autoethnographic Composition, Department of Music, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC), The University of Manchester. Malone composes socially-aware works which interrogate issues of communities undergoing change or dealing with tragedy, and interconnections of science, technology, media and theatre in music. From 2002 to 2014, he composed seven works investigating community and deeply personal responses to the events of 9/11. These works range from the frequently performed “urban” Eighteen Minutes for string soloists and orchestra which documents spontaneous television and radio broadcasters’ exclamations as they watched hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center towers, to the “rural” Requiem77 for solo cello and air traffic controllers’ recordings searching from their remote outposts for hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 before it hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. NAXOS chose Eighteen Minutes for its Top 20 Recommended tracks for September 2016 out of 2 million tracks. Malone spent a month in Shanksville, Pennsylvania dining with and interviewing witnesses of the crash of United Airline Flight 93 for the 5-year commemoration of 9/11 in which his Gently Tread was broadcast on American national television on 11 September 2006.
Herstories Unsung, Vols. 1 & 2 for solo (female) pianist attacks women’s social and political inequalities by having the performer restrained as she attempts to play outspoken passages, search for musical passages outside the piano’s range, and endure male interruptions during her discourse. Selections from virtuosic Volume 1 about five ignored women in history have been performed in the UK, USA, Brazil and Argentina, while Volume 2 (near completion) is designed for young pianists of modest ability (various ABRSM grade levels) to learn about 10 women’s achievements.
His major “A Day in the Life” project occupied 2018 to 2019. Funded by Arts Council England, the Ida Carroll Trust, University of Manchester, the RVW Trust and The Orchestra of Opera North, the project explored past and current lives of textile mill workers in West Yorkshire, resulting in three works totaling 55 minutes’ duration: a violin concerto revealed the inhumane working conditions of indentured children, an overture celebrated mill workers’ protests at St Peters Sq, Manchester before the 1819 Peterloo massacre, and an electronic tone-poem used Malone’s recorded interviews with current and retired workers who revealed their lives in textile communities.
He has composed 70 works, with 30 works primarily disseminated by Composers Edition, on four solo and 13 compilation CDs, and through iTunes, Spotify and Amazon. Across the globe, 25 of the championing orchestras, ensembles and soloists include Psappha, Ricochet, Riot Ensemble, Jane’s Minstrels, PRISM Quartet, Ebonit Quartet, Quatuor Danel, Apollo Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Archi, BBC Philharmonic, Dnipropetrovsk Symphony Orchestra, Radio State Orchestra Ukraine, Kiev Chamber Orchestra, Winston-Salem Symphony, Long Island Symphony, Manchester Sinfonia, Fidelio Trio, Joanne MacGregor, Kronos’ Hank Dutt, Alison Wells, Jane Manning, Richard Casey, Roger Heaton, Beth Levin and Adam Swayne. Frequent radio interviews and public talks about his work emphasise social music-making and community outreach as a means of keeping humanity at the centre of art, and art at the centre of society. Recent television and radio broadcasts include BBC, Channel 4, Patagonia, WXLV, and NPR National Public Radio.
w: https://www.opusmalone.com/ t: @opusmalone
Co-I – Professor Sarah Lindley, Professor of Geography and GIS, Department of Geography, School of Environment, Education & Development (SEED), The University of Manchester. Sarah specialises in environmental processes, climate risks and adaptation, and GIS. Most of her work is focussed on understanding human-environment interactions through collaborative, multi-disciplinary research with a strong geographical information science dimension. She has a track record and continuing interests in the field of air pollution, where her research has been particularly associated with understanding spatial patterns in emissions and pollutant concentrations. She was a member of Defra’s Air Quality Expert Group 2002-9 and has been Co-I on several NERC-funded projects.
A related research theme centres on decision support for sustainable development and climate change adaptation. She has expertise on mapping urban heat gradients and the regulating ecosystem services from urban green infrastructure. She has also developed new conceptualisations and data resources related to social vulnerability and climate-related risk and disadvantage. She had a key role in a number of RCUK multi-disciplinary projects with decision-support and stakeholder-led element (e.g. EPSRC-funded ASCCUE & SCORCHIO). She led the £0.7m NERC/AHRC/ESRC GHIA project and is Co-I on the €11.2m H2020 Grow Green project. Through GHIA Sarah worked with specialists on creative practice and has a strong foundation for inter-disciplinary collaboration. She has also worked with local and central governments, NGOs and consultancies and jointly produced outputs for various UK & international audiences. She has experience of delivering web-ready material and a practitioner oriented website (with >38k users).
Sarah has >50 peer review publications (Google Scholar h=36; Scopus=26 as of Feb, 2020) and extensive experience of supervision and research management (15 contract researchers as well as Geography’s Environmental Processes Research Group). She has three current and 15 completed PhD students (all successful) and has examined 9 PhD students (6 externally). She acted as an expert peer reviewer on the Living With Environmental Change partnership’s Health Report Card and served on the Inter- governmental Platform for Biodiversity & Ecosystem services (IPBES) Africa assessment (Defra nominated, 2015-18).
Co-creator – Alison Duddle is a visual artist whose work is made more often for performance and celebration than for galleries. She makes and directs puppet and mask performance for theatres, parades, festivals and outdoor events. She has her own company called A Bird in the Hand Theatre, and has created work for many other companies in the UK and abroad as well as for film and TV.
Advisor – Judy Ling Wong, Honorary President Black Environment Network, Founder National Park City Foundation, OBE. CBE. FRSA. HonFCIWEM. HonPhD. HonFIES. HonSocEnv. Judy is a painter, poet and environmentalist, best known as the Honorary President of Black Environment Network (BEN). For 27 years she was the UK Director of BEN, with an international reputation as the pioneer and creator of the field of multi-cultural participation in the built and natural environment. Judy is a major voice on policy and practice towards social inclusion.
She is recognised as a visionary advocate for diversity and equality. She was awarded an OBE for pioneering multicultural environmental participation in 2000, and a CBE for services to heritage in 2007. Recently, she was included in the BBC Power Women List, and the Forbes List of 100 Leading Environmentalists in the UK.
Her current contribution includes Chair – Green Apprenticeships Advisory Group, supporting the BEIS Green Recovery Taskforce, Member – UKRI Hidden Histories Advisory Group, Member – Weston Communicating Climate Advisory Group. Media Trust, Co-Founder – National Park City Foundation, Member – Living Landscapes Research Steering Group. Royal Society, Member – IUCN/WCPA Urban Conservation Strategies Specialist Group, Member – Aluna Cultural Strategy Development Group, Member – Tree Charter Board, Member – Population Matters Advisory Group, Board member – Botanic Gardens Education Network, Ambassador – Women’s Environmental Network.
