August 2024
Creative Spaces as Sites of Radical Possibility for Re-Imagining Policing (16th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Porto)

This paper discusses how arts-led engagement outside of the police enforcement space can generate emotion and affect, building empathetic relationships and challenge police behaviours. It draws on our evaluation of arts-led engagements by police with communities through Coventry UK City of Culture; our co-creation of arts-led engagement with policing and young people as a means of re-imagining policing; and our current collaboration with creatives and police to challenge perspectives and behaviour around race in policing, as part of the Police Race Action Plan.

July 2024
Reimagining policing, rearticulating safety, rebuilding community through the arts (British Society of Criminology 2024 Conference, Strathclyde)

This paper explore the possibilities afforded by arts and creative spaces as sites of radical possibility for a rearticulation of policing, in its broadest sense. We draw on findings from our partnership with the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, in which we use arts-based workshops to gain an understanding of young people's lived experiences of policing-related concepts such as power, freedom, safe spaces and authority. The second phase will see these secondary school pupils working with the Belgrade's producers and current artistic programme to produce artistic outputs which explore and reimagine their own experiences and understandings of policing.

March 2024
Marginalised People’s Creative Responses to Justice Problems: The Arts and Public Audience. (SIAH, Winchester School of Art)

A day of workshops with creative practitioners and researchers sharing ideas around creative responses to marginalisation, injustice, and social + legal change

December 2023
Belgrade Theatre collaboration

We have an amazing creative team in place working on a play inspired by the findings of our research on police, culture & community, to be performed on 1st December at the Belgrade Theatre. You can learn more on our webpage for Belgrade Theatre Collaboration.

July 2023
European International Studies Association: 10th European workshops in International Studies

This series of workshops brought together a wide range of scholars to discussing the possibilities afforded by researcher engagement through the arts. We discussed the ways in which this engagement can enrich and complicate our understanding of objects of study such as policing; and talked around the complexities involved in translating academic research into creative pieces for a non-academic audience

June 2023
Police-community engagement through the arts: changing mindsets, challenging practice. (British Society of Criminology conference, UCLAN

Alongside Prof Layla Skinns we co-organised a panel entitled 'The art of policing: the potential of arts and culture in changing police behaviours' where we considered the potential of arts-based approaches to preventive policing and community safety, and talked around the conditions for success - from resources and officer buy-in, to ethical boundaries and institutional change

June 2023
Rethinking Policing (COPR, University of Warwick)

This event brought together researchers and practitioners to discuss policing, police-community relations, and possibilities for effecting change in police practice. We were joined by Dr Mike Rowe (Liverpool University), Jamie Hobday (WMP), and Sharda Murria (BCU), to share their research on understanding policing as an organisation, on institutional logics, and on body-worn video.

May 2023
NPCC VAWG Practice sharing event

At this event, we shared our research on the possibilities afforded by police engagement through arts and culture with seldom heard communities. Our audience included leads on VAWG across UK police forces

May 2023
Policing, Culture & Community: Challenging bias through arts-led initiatives (12th Conference on the future of adversarial and inquisitorial systems, Bologna)

We presented our work at this conference on bias and criminal justice in Bologna.

April 2023
We're really pleased to see our research cited in the UK Parliament research briefing on levels of public trust in the police and strategies for building police-community relations

March 2023
Social Science Impact Celebration Event. It was great to present our research at this event and to hear about the other important IAA funded research taking place at Warwick

March 2023
Policing, Culture and Community — Resonate FestivalLink opens in a new window
A webinar exploring research into how the arts and culture can shift perceptions of policing

February 2023
Panellists (AHRC Cities of Culture symposium, Coventry)

November 2022
Policing, Culture & Community: WMP as City of Culture Partners (NPCC conference keynote)