When society is crying out for change, who do we turn to? Politicians, civic leaders, law makers? They may seem like obvious answer. But what about artists, poets, film makers?
It may seem a little trivial to suggest that creative people can seriously tackle major social problems. But it’s hard to deny that a well-executed creative statement has the potential to cut through, make us think, and even help us understand something from a different point of view.
Just as there are songs that stay in our heads and paintings that imprint themselves on our minds, art can deliver a powerful message about the issues affecting the world around us. At The University of Warwick, our researchers collaborate with creatives of all kinds to explore new cultural tools in the face of complex social challenges. Whether it’s helping dementia patients retain their sense of self, or giving a voice to the homeless, our Infinitely Curious approach is driving exciting new developments.
Fighting dementia
through poetry
“Ageing is one of the few certainties in life.”
But, argues Professor Liz Barry, it’s something that we often struggle to comprehend.
“It's crucial that we try to capture and understand the experience of those who cannot always express it themselves or are not given a platform to do so.”
As a close friend neared the end of their life, Professor Barry spent hours alongside them, providing much-needed company and support. Now this has inspired her to explore the effects of ageing in new ways. Looking deeper into how our thinking, our memory, and even our fundamental identity change over the years.
The key to unlocking these mysteries?
Poetry
"We all get old, so this matters to everyone.”
“Stories can show how we are connected to others. Literature can represent the texture of subjective experience,” continues Professor Barry.
Working closely with colleagues in literature, theatre and philosophy, Professor Barry and her team are creating a wide range of new initiatives to improve the wellbeing of people living with dementia.
One example is a programme designed to help people reconnect with their pasts. Developed in collaboration with care homes and carers, the Rhythms of Memory programme will use familiar poetry to trigger memories, joy and playfulness. It draws on the fact that, as our short-term recollection fades, our more distant memories still hold a lot of power.
Professor Barry is also changing the way we talk about ageing. After sharing the team’s findings at showcase events, she discovered that, “doctors reported a new understanding of how to communicate with people living with dementia…they changed the language they used when caring for patients, which has positively impacted the lives of so many people.”
Professor Barry adds, “We all get old, so this matters to everyone.” And, through art and language, Warwick research is revealing an invaluable new understanding of how we can help retain a vital sense of self, even in the ravages of dementia.
"We can explore and rethink what constitutes personhood and recognise the way in which people's selves and capacity to interact meaningfully with others can survive the loss of memory or language."
The 19th century
eco-warrior
The University’s researchers are also using poetry to re-evaluate the green politics of one of history’s great writers.
“Many who claim to practice Christianity have done a great deal of damage in respect to the treatment of nature.”
So says Professor Emma Mason, Head of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick, as she explores how one Victorian poet sought to bring theology and ecology together.
Christina Rossetti penned many acclaimed collections, including ‘The Prince’s Progress’ and ‘The Face of the Deep’. But while the influence of religion on her work is widely acknowledged, her interest in the environment is less well known.
“As I researched Rossetti, I realised that her work revealed a Christian ecological politics with origins in the early Church,” says Professor Mason.
Her research explored, among other things, how Rossetti recalled the influence of St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and the environment, as she implored the reader to “Tread softly! all the earth is holy ground.”
But this isn’t purely a retrospective exercise. Professor Mason is using it as a platform to demonstrate that people of faith can make an important contribution to today’s global green debate.
“As a result of the urgency of environmental politics, and Christianity having myriad ways to rethink the global structures that lead to the inequality on which environmental destruction is based, I hope that my work will open out the importance of religion in the modern world.”
“I hope that my work will open out the importance of religion in the modern world.”
A voice for the homeless
through art
A Warwick researcher is using culture to open up another of society’s big issues.
Ignored, overlooked, invisible. The homeless are so often denied a voice.
But Professor Nadine Holdsworth is working hard to change this.
A member of our Theatre and Performance Studies department, Professor Holdsworth has been engaging with Coventry’s homeless population.
Through creativity and co-production, she has been developing innovative ways to improve the self-confidence and social connections of people living on the streets.
She is also working hard to tackle misconceptions about homelessness and, ultimately, drive a shift in public policy.
Art plays a key role in all of this. Each initiative is designed, in the professor’s words, to “set in motion the mechanisms, culture and skills to enable people who are or have been homeless to participate in citizen democracy.”
Take Homeless Monopoly, for example.
Developed in collaboration with Coventry University's Disruptive Media Learning Lab and the homeless charity Coventry Cyrenians, this new version of the iconic board game brings to life the harsh realities of homelessness.
Instead of Mayfair and Marylebone Station, players pass through scenarios such as bereavement, addiction and severe weather.
The game is being used in schools, colleges and community events across the city, in workshops hosted by people who’ve faced life on the streets. The game presents the realities of homelessness and the struggles of getting the key to a place of your own.
This is just one initiative in a series of projects running since 2019, which included a collaboration with local artist Frances Yeung, funded by Coventry Creates, on a creative toolkit to allow schools and community groups to explore homelessness.
Meanwhile, Professor Holdsworth has helped local community theatre group, Underground Lights, to explore how they work with people who have experienced homelessness, mental health issues and social isolation.
And Nadine has also been actively involved in the HOME: Arts and Homelessness festival which was staged as part of the Coventry UK City of Culture 2021. She was a member of the festival's steering committee and undertook research that explored the impact of the co-created festival for people who had experienced homelessness in the city.
Each project, in its own way, delivered essential self-expression to people who feel utterly ignored and disenfranchised by society.
Professor Holdsworth is clear that this “diverse set of creative forms can foster positive experiences of self-discovery, affirmation and enhanced wellbeing."
Reimaging policing through arts
Do you trust the police?
For some parts of society, trust is hard to find. Relationships between many communities and officers are fraught with tension, fear, antagonism and accusations of harassment.
But for over three years now, Professor Jacqueline Hodgson and Dr Rachel Lewis have been dedicated to finding creative ways to understand, challenge, and reimagine policing and the relationships between police and policed.
This began with an evaluation of the partnership between West Midlands Police and Coventry UK City of Culture, which saw the co-creation of a number of arts-led projects and even a West Midlands Police artist-in-residence, Kay Rufai.
In one project, people with experience of homelessness worked together with officers to explore personal experiences and perspectives, which a professional artist then represented through a large mural on the side of Coventry Police Station. But the finished painting, says Professor Hodgson, was less significant than the collaboration involved in creating it.
“The important thing was that they were sitting in a room together and talking.”
In another arts-led initiative, West Midlands Police officers and local creatives spent time with a small group of school pupils at risk of exclusion. Together, they explored the violence and insecurity that seemed ingrained in their relationship with the police.
Through a process of discussion and discovery, the young people created a video about their experiences, their fears and their hopes.
The film was shown on the big screen at Millennium Point, in front of the city’s mayor and senior police officers.
“It felt like quite an important opportunity…to speak to police, through their experiences of safety, insecurity and authority in their communities,” says Dr Lewis.
Prof Hodgson and Dr Lewis’s Policing, Culture and Community body of work is driven by a passion to explore the power of creative methods to generate a change in police practice and in the relationships between police and marginalised communities.
This is a research endeavour carried out in collaboration with artists and creatives as well as police. Building understanding and empathy is at the centre.
Their body of work is made up of a wide range of projects, including an empathetic storytelling initiative with police and young people; a play, After Preston, written by Amahra Spence, co-commissioned with, and performed at, Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre; and workshops with young people in two Coventry schools using creative methods to explore their experiences of policing, in the broadest sense.
The hope is that better understanding of the communities they police will lead to changes in officers’ understanding of their role and in their day-to-day practice, and even improved public trust and confidence in policing.
Professor Hodgson explains: “arts-led methods can create a safe and collaborative space away from the usual context of law enforcement, a way of challenging and changing police practice, enabling officers to understand their practice in a fresh light.”
The language
of winning
Skilful communication has the power to bring very different groups together, but it can also help us tap into our own inner strengths.
Can you talk your way into being a better footballer? A higher pole-vaulter? A faster F1 driver.
Dr Kieran File thinks so.
A member of Warwick’s Applied Linguistics department, he’s uncovering the huge potential of language to influence elite sporting performance.
Unsurprisingly, most academic sports analysis focuses on the physical – speeds reached, shots played, tackles made. But Dr File pursued his curiosity to “shine a light on the critical role that language can play to help athletes and teams get an edge on the competition.”
He observed that, traditionally, people tend to think of language in elite sport in a negative way. Players exchanging insults on the pitch. A manager berating a team after a loss. A coach stirring up a social media storm with some ill-considered comments.
This tells us that language is a powerful weapon in sport. So why not use it to improve performance?
Dr File’s mission is, he says, is to explore “how athletes, coaches and managers can build team culture, manage relationships and facilitate greater teamwork through their communication choices.”
Through detailed analysis, he dissects how language is used strategically in high pressure situations. And how new models of communication can be more inspiring to deliver those essential gains in the heat of the sporting moment.
His work isn’t all theoretical either. Dr File gets hands-on with professionals at the highest level.
Whether he’s working closely with rugby teams in New Zealand, or analysing how the England Boxing team coaches talk to athletes between rounds, each arena of sport brings its own trials for Dr File. “There’s no one-size-fits-all way of using language in sports teams,” he says, “I suppose that nuance has been the biggest challenge in my career so far.”
More recently, Dr File has stepped into the pit lane to work with the Williams Racing Formula One Team. He has been studying and shaping how engineers, mechanics, management and drivers communicate with each other in the high-stakes racing world.
Yet while each sport is different, the goal remains the same: To help the team find an advantage over its rivals. A killer edge from even the smallest of gains.
“Now,” he says, “I think the sporting world is slowly opening its eyes to the power of language.”
And Dr File is certain about why his research is delivering impressive results.
"It’s a project all about language and teamwork, and it’s actually all thanks to the ethos of teamwork here at Warwick. You can just tell that innovative and groundbreaking research is really valued here.”
A passion for culture and collaboration
It’s hard to say why art is so powerful. Why the right use of words or a well-crafted image can make such an impact on us. But at Warwick, we know that cultural expression has the capability to make real change happen.
A simple poem can reignite a spark of memory in someone living with dementia. A board game allows those facing homelessness to finally feel seen. A subtle adjustment in language gives a boxer a match-winning edge in the heat of competition. These remarkable moments can only come about when you approach an issue with Infinite Curiosity and bold partnerships with creative thinkers. We’ll never stop searching for new answers to life’s challenges, because we know that culture is one of the most impactful ways to communicate, connect and inspire.
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