UCL Public Engagement Symposium for Arts and Humanities
October 28, 2011
On Wednesday afternoon, UCL held a public engagement symposium for students and staff in the Arts & Humanities.
Organised by Gemma Moore with help from Hilary Jackson (both UCL Public Engagement Unit) and introduced by Claire Thomson (Public Engagement Beacon Mentor for the School of Arts and Humanities, Laws, Social and Historical Sciences and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies), the symposium gave an overview of the Public Engagement Unit’s activities (Gemma Moore), including Bright Club (Nick Canty, Department of Information Studies), before focusing on projects funded through the Train and Engage Scheme for postgraduate students.
As well as hearing updates on projects of which I was aware, like the New Swedish Fiction Book Club (Nicky Smalley, Scandinavian Studies) and, of course, Playing the Margins (Sian Prosser and Paris O’Donnell, Department of Information Studies), the symposium was a great opportunity to hear about the full range of activities supported by the Train and Engage Scheme.
I was particularly inspired by Katy Beinart’s work Origination, which as well as being innovative and artistic, also seemed to get a lot of value out of the £500 Train and Engage investment, including a stall at Brixton Market to gather oral histories, an art exhibition, and, most intriguingly of all, a “translation machine” invented from the modification of other equipment. The project explored the archive and the creation of memory and the creation of material culture. There’s a summary of the project as a whole on Katy’s website and fuller details on the project blog. Katy is currently working towards a PhD by architectural design at the Bartlett.
All in all, this was a great afternoon, and hopefully some of this year’s students in the audience will find inspiration from it to undertake their own public engagement projects.
Image: Paris O’Donnell and Sian Prosser presenting Playing the Margins.
