In December 2020, Bristol+Bath R+D launched our Inclusion Innovation Research Pots. The pots were designed off the back of a whole host of conversations within our staff team, research fellows, prototype teams and the creative technology sector at large.
These conversations explored what the industry needs in order to thrive; turning inwards, we explored this programme, investigating how and where change could happen and why we need it. We have implemented change throughout our programme as a product of these conversations.
However, there are still many more questions to answer, and we know we are not the only ones asking them.
Our conversations coalesced into 3 key themes:
Inclusive Governance
Inclusive Spaces
Inclusive Communities of Practise
We recognise that there is great work happening across these three themes all over Bristol and Bath, so we launched a callout for inclusion practitioners to respond with questions they were asking in their own work. Offering pots of funding to create space for people to 'test' ideas or processes and to share their observations and recommendations with us, so that together we can ask what ‘inclusion best practice’ looks like.
We also went back to our partner organisations Rising, Creative Youth Network, Dot Project and Knowle West Media Centre with the same themes for some deeper dives into inclusion best practice.
We are very excited to announce our researchers, they will spend the next three months asking questions and trying out new ideas to be more inclusive in their work.
Exploring Inclusive Governance
The question of ‘how do you make governance structures more inclusive’ is a complicated one. The B+B R+D team have spent a lot of time exploring how we might diversify our governance structures fairly whilst avoiding tokenism amongst many other questions.
We are excited to be joined by organisations like Little Lost Robot, who will be testing out some ideas they have about business models and structures that support Banes’ Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities into governance.
Living Soil Bristol will be exploring what memberships models and other platforms might look like for engaging Bristol’s diverse local communities in their work. Rising Arts will also be exploring some exciting questions they have around the responsible transfer of power within organisations like theirs.
These questions speak to conversations B+B R+D are starting to have about the legacy of this programme as its end comes into view, what is its legacy? What happens to this network and who will steward it?
Exploring Inclusive Spaces
Understanding how we make ‘our spaces more inclusive’ became even more pertinent as our entire programme moved online in 2020. Thankfully, we were able to transfer workshops and meetings to Zoom spaces, but this did not come without its own issues, and they are ones that were shared by other organisations and practitioners in the region.
Having had some great success with their online offer, Creative Youth Network will be exploring, with their community, what a digital engagement platform looks like for them long term. Emma Blake Morsi is looking outwards to the work of others to inform what equity in hybrid meeting spaces looks like in her practice.
Knowle West Media Centre will also be exploring physical space, processes and methods, and how they are made more welcoming through co-creation. Dr Stuart Read and his team at the Bath Spa University EDI dept will be exploring how to better communicate with, and learn from, people with profound learning disabilities. Non-Conforming Bristol will be tackling inclusive tech head on, building AR spaces for queer and non-binary people.
Exploring Inclusive Communities of Practice
At its core, B+B R+D is a community of creative technologists, academics and action researchers. The question of how we best nurture this community is one the team asks every day.
Our work here will be enriched by the questions being asked by Roseanna Dias as she brings her practice of thoughtfulness and care into the development of a new community network she is building. Manu Maunganidze of Global Goals Centre will bring together schoolchildren, film students and refugees around the co-creation of an installation to explore how the very different needs of those groups can be met in a singular space. Dot Project and their partners will take their mapping tools and skills and understand how they identify and connect with a network of practitioners working in their field to understand how they can work better, together.
These questions of how we bring people together fairly and with care are key to many projects. These learnings can also help inform how we build workplace cultures and how our staff teams can thrive through difference.
What are our next steps?
We will soon be announcing our Reflect blog series.
Whilst working on collating the learnings, observations and recommendations to findings that will be tangible and practical, giving real utility for organisations big and small working in Creative Technology and more widely within Bristol and Bath.
We are also keen to share our learnings with people running programmes like ours, and with the people who fund programmes like ours. Our Inclusion Producer will spend time over the coming weeks building those connections, to ensure that we are building findings and outputs that add value to those groups.
We hope that this research helps champion the incredible work taking place into inclusion in varying industries in the area. B+B R+D believe the best way to aid the community is by learning and sharing with each other from the very outset.
If you want to be part of this conversation and have any thoughts comments or questions please get in touch with our Inclusion Producer, Tony@Watershed.co.uk
Inclusion Action Researchers - Test Questions
Inclusive Communities of Practice
- Roseanna Dias - How does my individual inclusion practice translate to an organisational scale?
- Manu Maunganidze - What are the best methods of practice to bring together diverse communities (film students, refugees, school children, technologists) to produce a single installation that most closely reflects the interactions of that community?
- Dot Project - How might we design strong foundations for an inclusive community of practice to develop a unified approach to ecosystem mapping ethical technology across the UK?
Inclusive Governance
- Ruby Sant and Juliet Webb - How can we remove structural inequalities in the creation and maintenance of governance structures of small companies and CICs? Specifically in relation to people of the GRT community
- Daniel Balla - What are the key aims, attributes, checks and balances of an inclusive and empowering governance structure - and what effective strategies, methodologies and processes can facilitate its co-creation?
- Rising Arts Agency - How can reflection be embedded in partnerships to encourage more effective power redistribution?
Inclusive Spaces
- Emma Blake Morsi - How can inclusive hybrid spaces be used for bridging the gap between environmental inequality for marginalised people and communities?
- Mitchell Wilson and Lilly Parr - How do you design a hybrid space to be open and safe? Hybrid in this sense refers to physical spaces augmented with a virtual overlay.
- Dr Stuart Read and team - What are the most effective ways of communicating with people with learning disabilities in the Bristol and Bath region, including people with severe to profound learning disabilities? What constitutes best practice for co-producing research events into inclusive communication with people with learning disabilities?
- Knowle West Media Centre - What do the many facets of inclusive spaces look and feel like and what tools and methods can we co-create to make them better?
- Creative Youth Network - How do we reach young people through digital technologies, post lockdown, to build a sense of belonging and community?