Stories of Change: Exploring energy and community in the past, present and future

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AHRC
AHRC
AHRC
AHRC
AHRC

£5,847,105

April 28, 2014

Dec. 31, 2017

The ways we have lived with energy in the past has often changed - and will change again. The question is: what changes do we want and how do we tell these stories of change?

The 'Stories of Change' project works with a range of communities to explore the varied and changing ways in which humanity has lived with energy in the past, and the choices available to us all in the future. It draws on history, literature, social and policy research and the arts to encourage a more imaginative approach to energy choices. The project supports the cross-party commitments to decarbonisation that sit at the heart of the UK Government's Climate Change Act. Research has shown that many people feel disengaged, disempowered or actively hostile to the kinds of changes to the UK's energy system required to meet the targets embedded in the Act. Societies the world over are faced with pressing shared challenges about future energy choices. Polling points to wide acceptance that actions will be required to reduce demand and cope with future environmental hazards. But new developments and measures to manage or reduce demand can generate conflict. Our project seeks to make space to work through the areas of conflict and identify elements of a collective vision.

We are inspired by the example of the Mass Observation movement's stories of everyday life in the UK, above all in the 1930s and 1940s. Their work combined a desire to give ordinary people a voice, radical innovations in social research and bold new ideas about media and the arts. It has inspired our three objectives:

1. To listen to and give a platform to more diverse, often unheard, voices;
2. To mobilise change through research and the arts, and;
3. To innovate in use of digital media.

'Stories of Change' is organised around three mini research projects, or 'stories' and one cross-cutting project 'Energetic' that supports these, and draws wider conclusions. The project works with communities in three locations; each representing a different area of life. 'Policy Story: Demanding Times' gathers a novel mix of communities of interest around energy policy, and generates new accounts of energy policy and politics past, present and future. 'Industry Story: Future Works' is rooted in the English midlands, and seeks to unearth fresh accounts of the long relationship between energy, industrial making and landscape, and explores where it might go next. 'Everyday Story: Life Cycles' engages with the role that energy resources have played in shaping communities and everyday life in south Wales, from migration, for example from within Wales and as far as Somalia to work with coal, to new movements of people and things that support the UK's largest wind array.

We are working with stories because they offer a popular and engaging route into thinking about the past and present and imagining possible futures, and also because stories, narratives and narration are concepts that people from a range of academic and creative disciplines can gather around. History, digital storytelling, fictional narratives, and scenarios of the future all communicate different ideas about the consequences of change for everyday life, and explain different perspectives and attitudes towards change.

We will gather these stories - old and new - into an online publicly accessible collection (our 'Stories Platform'). We will offer pathways ('stories') through the materials, but it will also be easy for users to browse, or make up their own stories of change by threading material together using digital tools we provide. The academic team will also produce academic articles and a book, policy briefs and popular materials. The communities, our creative partners and the research team will also collaborate to produce a mix of creative writing, songs, short films, performances and museum and festival shows.

Potential Impact:
IMPACTS OVER TIME There will be specific impacts within the life of the project, but it is also a platform from which we will develop a longer term body of impacts and university-community relations (including policy). Our Digital Strategy supports future evolution. Our Creative Commissioning Strategy will co-produce a body of finished work, but also fund development phases and seed applications for co-funding from Arts Councils England and Wales and charitable trusts, extending impacts in scale and time.

COMMUNITY IMPACTS To support progress towards more sustainable communities, we will:
* Uncover and channel, through co-design and co-production principles, the messages felt to be relevant by communities we work with via policy, web and other media pathways
* Leave a skills and capacity legacy - e.g training young people in eliciting oral histories, developing digital storytelling techniques and online documentary content
* Develop new connections within and between communities and new confidence around the value of their stories (via events programme; workshops; online tools)
* Reveal and promote, through our creative commissions and Stories Platform: a fuller account of popular views about and ideas in response to policy challenges and opportunities amongst policy communities (story 1); a wider range of views and ideas about low carbon futures by those involved in the industrial sector, supporting progress towards a greener economy (story 2); and a richer account of energy systems transformations as they affect everyday life, opening routes to environmental sustainability (story 3)

POLICY IMPACTS We view policy communities and their networks as a key constituency, rather than simply end users. To support progress towards the goals of the Climate Change Act we will:
* Produce policy briefings in print and podcast form
* Present key findings to policy audiences in local authorities and UK and Welsh Government
* Create greater awareness amongst policy makers of the range of responses to and ideas about low carbon transitions
* Extend awareness and experience of novel forms of community engagement rooted in stories, co-production and use of digital tools and platforms
* Support a novel body of 'connections with communities' for policymakers, and awareness of the potential and hazards surrounding co-design and co-production

CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS AND CREATIVE COMMUNITY IMPACTS Partnerships with museums, heritage bodies, galleries, festivals and media, as well as our creative partners, will support ripple effects, make many connections and ensure findings are heard well beyond the immediate communities and partners involved in the project. To help create longer term impacts we will:
* Critically evaluate impacts drawing on current academic research and leading arts impact evaluation practice
* Connect communities further with arts organisations and practitioners and seed further partnerships and engagement

TEACHER & LEARNER IMPACTS We will create 'learner pathways' through the Stories Platform content, and tools supporting user-generated content and permitting users to generate and share their own pathways/stories

MEDIA IMPACT To scale the impact amongst general publics we will:
* Catalyse fresh approaches in mainstream media storytelling about environment, society and energy, overcoming stale, incomplete representations of conflicts or static accounts of energy systems
* Create an online Story Platform to inspire users through the diversity and dynamism of humanity's life with energy, and allow them to: browse 'raw' content supported by semantic web tools; follow curated pathways; upload content and generate their own pathways

TEAM IMPACTS All members will develop digital humanities/social science, social media and digital media skills. They will also develop skills in rare but prized interdisciplinary multi-institution team-based working, and reflect on and promote awareness of the skills required.