The project builds on the PI’s and Co-Is’ existing research practices across intersectional areas of geography, mapping, performance, music, socially-engaged arts practices and intangible and material heritages.
PI – Dr Jenna C. Ashton is a researcher, artist and curator, and Lecturer in Heritage Studies, with 15 years’ experience as a curator, arts manager, museums educator, and social practice artist. She has a PhD in Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Manchester on contemporary art, memory and childhood. Jenna works extensively with various groups and individuals, and has developed productive partnerships with external organisations on key themes of social and ecological justice, and feminist creative practice as research and pedagogy. 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 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).
w: https://jcashton.com/ t: @heritagemcr e: Jenna.Ashton [at] manchester.ac.uk
Co-I – Dr Kevin Malone is a Reader in 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, 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).
