Social engagement and partnerships outside HE

Social engagement is a key aspect of CMNH’s work, and includes sustained relationships with organisations as diverse as the Imperial War Museum and Falls Community Council. We identify and develop our research activities in relation to the social needs and interests of a wide range of stakeholders and practitioners, including local, community and public historians; archivists, curators and heritage-sector professionals; artists, writers, dramatists and other cultural practitioners and creators; teachers and other educationalists; social and political activists; peace-building, justice and environmental campaigners; and members of particular communities. Our modes of social engagement are evidenced both in the varied constituencies that take part in our events, as speakers, delegates, and audiences; and in the partnerships and collaborative relationships with organisations and groups outside the academy that we enter into in organising these events, in supporting their work through training sessions and workshops, in making applications for funding, and in designing our research projects in ways that engage with the current concerns of our partners.

CMNH has a record of achievement through collaboration with community partners in successful applications to the Heritage Lottery Fund and other funders of community history. We have also been successful in winning AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards and AHRC/TECHNE Doctoral Partnership Awards to fund interdisciplinary doctoral studentship projects which are developed as a collaboration between a university and an organisation outside higher education. See below for details of current projects. We welcome proposals for future collaboration from eligible organisations which range from local community centres to national institutions.

Our current projects include:

Brighton and Sussex University Hospital, 3Ts, the history and heritage of the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

CMNH has partnered with Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, Royal Pavilion & Museums, The Keep, Willis Newson arts consultants, and Onward Arts to win a three-year Heritage Lottery Fund grant, 2017-20. The project is designed to preserve and represent the history of the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, as the old buildings are demolished, through collected objects and stories. These will form the core of a number of presentations and displays for staff, patients and visitors to the hospital.

Gateways to the First World War

CMNH is a member of the AHRC Gateways to the First World War Public Engagement Centre (2014-19), that brings together a consortium of universities led by the University of Kent to work with community groups and heritage organisations on events and projects concerned with the centenary of the First World War. ). As such it has hosted a range of conferences, symposia, community groups, film screenings and research training sessions. Dr Sam Carroll is Community Heritage Researcher at Gateways.

Cross-Community Oral History, Post-Conflict Geography and Conflict Resolution at West Belfast Interfaces.

CMNH in collaboration with Falls Community Council, West Belfast, has won a TECHNE/AHRC Doctoral Partnership Award providing full funding for a PhD studentship to work in and on the Dúchas Oral History Archive at FCC. The award is currently being set up, to start October 2018. For further details of the project and the collaboration, see here.

The IWM and Public Memory of the Second World War

CMNH won a three-year AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership award for a PhD studentship at the Imperial War Museum, commencing May 2016. The project will examine the politics of Second World War display and audience engagement and interpretation at IWM. It will deliver a critical analysis of the IWM’s programme of Second World War exhibitions, events and related public activities and explore its relation to the changing landscapes of remembrance, commemoration and memory of the war, in the context of wider cultural and political shifts in Britain from 1945 to the present.

Performing Emotional Histories: Centenary Commemorations of the First World War

CMNH won this TECHNE/AHRC National Productivity Investment Fund doctoral studentship, awarded in 2017, in collaboration with the Dover Arts Development.

CMNH has worked in partnership with the following organisations:

ART:synch, Brighton and Hove

Brighton and Hove Black History

Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Brighton and Sussex University Hospital NHS Trust

Brighton Museum

Brighton Women's Centre

Building Bridges for Peace

Dúchas Oral History Archive, Falls Community Council, West Belfast

European Observatory on Memories

Fabrica

Gateways to the First World War Engagement Centre, Kent