In May 2025 Brigstow Institute launched a funding cycle around the theme of “Postcolonial natural history collections and museum and archive practices”. The theme looks to bring together individuals form diverse disciplines and practices who are interested in exploring the research value of natural history collections and archives, and postcolonial methods of museum and archive practices.
How can you create an innovative immersive experience which blends neuroscience, immersive technology, and movement, for an inclusive audience? This project seeks to explore the research landscape to give firm foundations for their multimedia installation.
How can we use movement to convey meaning and understanding within the research process? How does embodying a certain role or archetype shapes our interactions with people from outside the normative academic framework? This is more a process of thinking about the embodiment of roles such a ‘the researcher’ and ‘the artist’ and what this means for how we arrange ourselves in co-produced research relationships.
This research team want to co-create guiding principles for an intervention to improve the physical health of people with severe mental illness (SMI). SMI includes schizophrenia, psychosis and bipolar disorder.
Can resident-led, creative action address barriers to children’s outdoor play and mobility in urban neighbourhood environments? This research aims to co-design hyper-local approaches to transform underused threshold spaces (doorsteps, pocket parks, pavements, residential street space) into playable, social spaces and sites of everyday creativity and connection within an urban community in Bristol.
What does the future of reparative justice look like in the ever-changing world of our climate crisis and post-colonial environmental challenges? This research project seeks to redefine reparative justice through a lens informed by indigenous knowledge and postcolonial perspectives.
How can poetic writing produced by, or with, AI accurately model human voice, narrative and place-based experience? This project develop new methods to ground voice, experience and unique expression in poetic compositions and multimedia works created with AI.
Dark brown or green glass bottles from mid-17th – 19th century are frequently described in the literature as black glass. How can the new geomaterials-informed knowledge about the chemical composition of the English black glass help us uncover its historical and social significance?
How do people living with chronic kidney disease want to tell their stories; who do they want to share their stories with; how do they want their stories told? This research consults the Welfare State International (WSI) Archive to scope out other ways to democratise health through public art.
By fostering long-lasting individual and communal connections can you elicit care for and engagement with the River Avon? Against a backdrop of catastrophic river health in Britain, this project seeks to enrich, deepen and transform Bristolians’ perceptions of their local river, with the aim of recentring the river’s place in the public imagination.
This research will find out if creating purposeful, practical, and fun outdoors activities will help older men to build social connections and combat loneliness and isolation. Can it further encourage connection with settings of health, and care that can benefit their health and wellbeing?
The public discourse around youth violence is heavily focused on the imagery of weapons/knives and death and this has had an impact on strategic policy and policing practices. How do you want to disrupt this focus and instead create a craftivist art installation which focuses instead on the lost childhoods of young people who are involved in youth violence?
Ideas Exchange 2024/25 The project will bring together academics, artists, and filmmakers to deepen our understanding of the social, cultural, and environmental impacts of disasters, as well as the mediating and healing functions of community-based and artistic practices.
How does a qualitative, embodied approach to understanding/knowing water can be explored alongside the quantitative environmental data? How can we imagine and (re)-story water / rivers? What would a caring policy towards water look like? Is there a new space for policy within this affective domain between bodies and rivers?
What agency is afforded to queer people when imagining future technological development? How can we develop creative practices that bring queerness to the forefront of re-inventing approaches to technology?
How can health researchers, film researchers, charity organisers, and the south Asian community work together to promote inclusion of marginalised communities in healthcare research by using co-creation methods and visual media?
What social and cultural significance does growing, brewing, and drinking hold for the residents of care homes? What role might activities orientated around growing, brewing and celebrating the cultural heritage of beer play in supporting wellbeing and social connection? How might such activities challenge and disrupt dominant cultural representations of life with dementia in a care home?
How do neurodivergent archive users use and experience archives? How do we make archives more accessible for neurodivergent users?
How have different disciplines and creative practices approached the multiple temporalities of the Anthropocene? What creative techniques can we use to engage students and publics with the challenges of planetary environmental change?
How will reconstructive prosthetics adapt to future environments? How can creative methodologies and interdisciplinary co-design help answer this question?
What does it mean to be an Irish Bristolian today? What is the history and heritage of the Irish in Bristol? How can processional arts be used to understand unwritten pasts and speculative futures?
Could rocks and samples held in geological collections, their associated histories and related indigenous worldviews help us all begin to understand more fully our relationships with the land and our planet, our past and global future, our cultural and natural heritage?
How can researchers explore Caribbean storytelling and folklore as a social act of human self-possession, a means of sharing experiences, and a mode of affirming values? How have these storytellings been captured in archives and how are they told today?
How can researchers come together to form a network to reestablish Léon Brunschvicg as one of the preeminent philosophers at the turn of the 20th century?
How might historical, ecological and artistic practices inform contemporary night-walking? What does the presence of a feminine nightwalker do to the city, and our notion of cities at night?
What participatory arts-based methods support migrants in getting involved with the outcomes of participatory research projects and make space for their experience to be voiced by them?
How can we explore the ethical considerations of using AI to create art? Could AI provide a crucial tool for poets with access needs to write and create?
How will the Global North's net-zero 2050 transformations negatively affect communities in the global south? How can an international research group be established to begin exploration of this imminent issue?
How can researchers create a layered and polyphonic soundscape that voices the process of selection and omission inherent in the creation of historical narratives and archives?
How can researchers redress digital exclusion in digital health studies? How can children with ADHD and their families benefit from “just-in-time-adaptive-intervention”?
What is possible in relation to living well with our clothing and environment? How can underground (and often marginalised) networks and communities offer knowledge and examples of sustainable washing practices?
What research can be done into the practice of how to ethically decolonise rock and mineral collections? And how can we bring curatorial practice, poetry, academic thinking and art into the development of decolonising processes?
What can we learn from hip hop culture to put collaborative practice at the heart of humanities research? And how can knowledge from hip hop practitioner communities help to inform a more equitable model of participation in academia?
How can medical professionals and researchers coproduce scenarios with minority communities and draw on the lived experience of health concerns and attending health services through storytelling workshops?
How does a perspective on the body as a living archive of intergenerational memories inform approaches to migration and memory? How can an embodied and creative approach to ‘memory work’ help uncover, archive, and work through such memories? And how can this type of ‘memory work’ help migrants themselves redefine a sense of identity to live a better life?
How does the concept of Peasant Popular Feminism influence socio-political roles within regional peasant organisations? How does it support women farmers in agroecological transitions? And how does it connect to peace-building?
How can people living in Britain today be supported to relearn interdependence with land? What is the role of humans as keystone species in landscapes? What does ‘indigeneity’ mean to different communities with different histories of relationship with land? And how do we ‘relearn’ practices of dwelling in and with land?
In what ways can the creative methods of craftivism support interdisciplinary climate change education in secondary schools? How might the creative methods of craftivism help young people to share, recognise and respond to climate change related emotion and anxiety? And how might involvement in craftivism improve secondary student voice and agency in responses to climate change?
If non-professional actors can bring realism and authenticity because they have had similar lived experiences to those of their fictional characters, what is at stake when asking non-professional actors to work with such experiences, especially when they might be traumatic? How can such processes be carried out in an ethical, collaborative, and safeguarded way?
How can ethical storytelling be used to develop new drug policy, to inform how we can live well with drugs in our communities, and to destigmatise drugs and people who use them?
How do humans relate to one another in contexts mediated by the technological, the artificial, and the re-embodied? And how can puppetry and robotics inform a new ethics of relation?
How could brewing provide an opportunity for reminiscence and a connection to the natural world, the local community, and therapeutic horticulture in care communities?
To what level does poor social media literacy impact mental health issues and the risk of self-harm in teenagers? How can we combine intervention development and evaluation to improve mental health outcomes at a population level with a media literacy focus in the context of secondary education curriculum development?
How can academic researchers and community partner organisations explore multiple creative methodologies to overcome the barriers to seeking therapeutic intervention for victims of FC/FGM?
What interventions can be developed to reduce stigma towards people who use drugs and OST? How can a story-sharing workshop shed light on drug stigma and the necessary policy to prevent it?
What can be learned from the way that Caribbean people tell stories and how this practice has evolved? How might we preserve these stories for wider audiences? And what is the most effective way to re-tell these stories in alternative formats for digital, potentially younger, audiences?
What care futures are envisioned by younger LGBTQ+ people? What can be learned from unorthodox spaces/places where caring relationships are practised by LGBTQ+ people? What are the different relationship care structures, for example within poly families compared to monogamous relationships, and the durability of these over time?
What do accessible, safe, and enjoyable accommodation provision in the homelessness/supported housing sector look like for autistic people? How can artistic visualization and participatory methods help uncover the needs of precariously housed autistic people?
How can we co-create knowledge with plants? How can academic researchers and art practitioners collaborate to consider practice-based approaches to studying plants?
What can an historical approach bring to our understanding of people’s attitudes of and behaviour toward everyday healthcare? How can this contribute to clinical practice and the future delivery of primary care?
How can creative techniques and artistry be employed to think about how a space can invite people to step forward and act in an emergency?
How can researchers, community organizations, and local artists/creatives come together to explore the best methods of employing cultural and organisational assets to promote culturally-coordinated understanding and to improve wellbeing, child development, as well as community connectedness and inclusion?
How can researchers co-create with with community members and "thought leaders" to explore philosophical questions on thought and consciousness?
How does the past influence the stories we tell about queer life in the present? What are the effects and by-products of living through and/or living in the aftermath of a moment of restriction and repression on sexual identity?
How much do the sounds around you affect your mood? How much do you need to alter a city’s soundscape to benefit its citizens? Much like air quality, the sounds of our cities affect our wellbeing and health. This project explored how noise pollution in the city can be mapped and the effect of noise on people’s wellbeing.
How have encounters with ideas hidden in the pages of books and archives stimulated imagination? What connections with others happen amongst the labyrinth of shelves and ideas that change the course of lives?
How can coproduction between researchers, dental professionals, and adult child sexual assault survivors lead to new approaches to dental teaching and training which makes healthcare accessible, inclusive, and responsive to all patient needs?
What are the final steps required to conduct a comparative analysis of the relationship between memory work and political protest in twenty-first century Latin America?
How can an web browser plug in best support fashion activists to find and share information which will be useful to other consumers as well?
How can children from diverse backgrounds communicate their connection with nature and biodiversity through art? In what ways are nature-based spaces important for children’s wellbeing? What are the diverse experiences of nature that children across the city experience?
Are there any further ways that AD can improve game accessibility? What is the best way to make an audio described game available in a different language and culture? And how can we co-produce a game with visually impaired people that is accessible for all? How can we enhance game accessibility training?
How do you create sensitive and authentic cinematic representations of grief? What can we learn from the process of creating films on grief? What can be learned from the different roles and positions involved?
What kind of future ethics will we have for living well with plants? How can technologically mediated encounters with plants be done ethically and sustainably? Will the future of space exploration require us to learn to live well with plants in novel ways?
How do creative processes support mathematics teachers in becoming curriculum-makers in relation to issues of climate justice? In what ways do mathematics teachers reimagine their own classrooms in relation to issues of climate justice? What curriculum materials and resources do mathematics teachers make based on these imaginings?
What is lived experience of “financial resilience”? How can we create community-led and – centered services to support them on that journey?
How can we appraise the relative merits of subjective and objective approaches to narrative storytelling when attempting to convey the lived experience of grief empathetically and authentically?
How can we build on existing research into the benefits of diary keeping to improve student wellbeing? Can diary keeping improve the mental health of secondary school students?
How can we write narratives of hope in the face of this unfolding disaster? What stories will help prepare us and our children to navigate this crisis?
How can shared immersive environments facilitate the co-creation of fairer and more sustainable futures? How can communities at the margins be actively included using an immersive digital shared space?
How can community creativity centering on communal gardening in St Pauls contribute to unmooring “traditional” Environmentalism from its white supremacist origins and on-going entrapping?
What are young peoples views on the constructions of gender within the school environment? How do these manifest themselves in everyday interactions with teachers and peers?
How can we form a network of practitioners, artists and academics to talk about boys, men and masculinity? What impact could this have on male based violence?
How we think about time - and use time to think with – matters. This ‘temporal imagination’ shapes our understanding of the world, how it might change and influences what we value. What would an educational approach to time look like?
How can we better understand audiences experiences of temporary monuments? What is the best way to collect and use audience feedback during a live performance?
Can the discipline of engineering find ways to improve the quality of life for those affected by Epidermolysis Bullosa?
How can we ensure that walking is accessible to all? Can experimenting with different forms of walking change our view of society, health, and history?
How can we open up conversations about death and bereavement, in a manner that destigmatises grief and promotes compassion and understanding?
How can space be made for meaningful interaction between the participants on how to optimise human-seal relations?
How can participatory research can help us to further our understanding of how the sensory environment affects inclusive design and societal wellbeing?
How can researchers use interdisciplinary artistic forms as an emotional distancing tool to developed a framework for creating a responsive, ethically-informed project to collect and curate anonymised stories?
In an emergency, how would you locate a defibrillator? How can we creatively consider ways to ‘signpost’ campus users and members of the public to the locations of live-saving defibrillators?
What role can 3d medical technologies play in exploring one’s identity? What are patients’ perceptions of 3D medical models and the emotional implications that these can carry?
Can we imagine a time when we take responsibility for the health of our water systems? What might an arts practice look like as a result of this speculative dialogue?
What are women’s concerns and questions when contemplating motherhood in the climate crisis? What methods are effective in facilitating non-judgemental dialogue between women who have made different reproduction choices?
How can the BDFRN formally establish the network’s structure, research focus and collaborative principles to be used during the upcoming years?
How might an engaging artwork help women to connect or understand our bodies and hormonal changes on a deeper level?
In what ways can analysis of nocturnal human-environment entanglements of the River Erme reveal new insights about the contested futures of our rivers?
How much do the sounds around you affect your mood? How much do you need to alter a city’s soundscape to benefit its citizens?
How can local policies about neighbourhood geography could take more account of the experiences of young people from ethnically diverse communities?
How can artists and researchers come together to create visualisations of injustice and resistance in contemporary food systems with the goal to explore disparities, inequalities, and the social/environmental problems inherent in industrialised food systems?
How can we start the discussion and increase the field of research related to CSA survivors and dental health?
How can the positive environmental actions of the community be properly recognized and learned from to enact future climate policy? How can this help address inequalities in post-pandemic climate and nature emergency responses?
How can we support young entrepreneurs in Nigeria and Bristol to support new ventures through international collaboration? And how do we develop effective strategies and tools to bring international groups of young people together to collaborate?
How can we explore the therapeutic potential of creativity? What is the most effective way to demonstrate the different ways that art and the imagination can enable the bereaved to express and process their loss?
How can a wooden printing press offer an antidote to an isolated world which has become dominated by screens and by texts composed in haste? How can a common press allow people to connect off-line, encouraging mindful and embodied practices?
How does ecological literacy affect the ability of humans to comprehend and interact with current crises? How does access to land affect the uptake of agroecology in the South West? What are the deep-set beliefs and behaviours of farmers and academics preventing our food system from making an agroecological transition? What is the role of collaborative processes in supporting and promoting agroecological systems?
How can we explore the creative processes behind our different voices? Can the popular media of podcasts and short films assist the political process of constitution-making? How can we tell the history of Chile’s social movements from the perspective of the objects that shaped them?
How have women found information and advice about the menopause? Is it understood and discussed differently within different families or social and cultural groups? And how can creative activities and storytelling help people explore and communicate their experiences of the menopause in different ways, and improve wellbeing?
How can a new approach to diary writing be used to improve the wellbeing of teachers in the UK? Can effective policy be developed around this to impact government policy on teaching?
How can theatre making and practice-as-research shed light upon possibly the first performance of Hamlet as well as the colonial history of the early voyages of the East India Trading company?
How can we consider walking as a form of exercise and cultural performance that is socially conditioned? Are we able to unite health and creative perspectives on walking? How can the regenerative benefits of walking be accessible to all Bristolians?
How can previous research and engagement with local communities through participatory methods be implemented in designing policy around community-assets and community-led economic development initiatives?
How can engineers, artists and hydroponic growers come together to explore the use of recent robotics innovations from the University of Bristol as a means to advance automation of vertical farming?
How can researchers use soft robotics to develop non-verbal communication aids for people with communication difficulties?
How can researchers develop a soft robotic device as a therapeutic product with intelligent sensing to support people living with dementia?
How can researchers enable the public to experience a conversation in a different and more immersive way and to communicate concepts of support and kindness through visual, embodied language?
How can we create an effective discourse on legal protections and responsibilities in self-protective religious minorities?
How can culture, creativity and ‘critical making’ can promote better critical understanding of temporality in the Anthropocene?
How is closeness and distance being renegotiated and navigated? What does it mean to ‘bump into someone’ in the context of home-working and social distancing?
How can teachers be enabled to collaborate together at scale as researchers? What barriers and opportunities exist for teachers and academics in the South-West/Wales to collaboratively develop a methodology for teachers to collect data on climate change within their schools?
What's the best way to learn a poem? Is silent rote learning effective, or is it better to repeat things aloud, to visualise the poem's content, or to move about when trying to memorise it? Do different memorisation techniques induce different psychological effects?
Can soft-bodied robots help us to combat isolation and loneliness?
How can an supportive and informative conversation about menopause be started without embarrassing or putting off people?
How have people experienced access to the cities’ streets, thoroughfares, and green spaces during the pandemic? What’s different between Bristol and Bordeaux? What commonalities are there? And how do people experience different forms of lockdown?
Is audio description assisted game playing feasible? Can audio description be applied to game streaming? Can video games include audio description?
How can we expand current understandings of war and what makes war possible by focussing on ‘home’? Can photo-documentary research disrupt current representations and understandings of war to further the collective understanding of war, war-time and military life?
How are these young people experiencing education now? How has expulsion impacted their mental health, social connectedness, and emotional wellbeing? What are excluded pupils’ educational and wellbeing needs now we’re returning to face-to-face learning?
How can we talk about trans lives by examining the life of a gender non-conforming woman from the past? How can researcher explore the life of Jenny Moore from the early twentieth century, and focus on how living outside the law shaped their identity and experience?
What causes us to experience temperatures differently? How can researchers facilitate an exploration of human experience of rising temperatures?
To what extent can visual representations of living spaces offer an insight into the lived experiences and mental well-being of people in the HIV/AIDS community in the UK?
How would care receivers like to experience care in the future? What does it looks like? What is it's materiality? What emotions will it bring?
What is the perceived value of developing a set of guidelines for co-production co-designed by a group of disparate communities coming together to seek racial justice?
Can a collaborative filmmaking process provide an empowering space for refugees and asylum seekers? Can filmmaking be used as a critical tool in examining the current immigration system?
What are the forces that shape the structure our cities? How do pollution and slums impact urban development in the long run?
How can you source and generate content from languages and stories underserved by the wider publishing industry?
With increasingly polarised narratives of migration – positioning migrants in opposing roles of victims or national security threats – how can we foster better narratives in order to shape better policies?
Can our wearable devices such as pedometers, heart-rate monitors, and Fitbits be repurposed to challenge the relationship between the user, the quantified-self, and our understanding of the workplace and beyond?
What support do young people of diverse backgrounds need to deal with the climate and ecological emergency in their own way? What types of knowledge and understanding young people feel they need in order to better deal with the issue, how they prefer to learn about these topics, and how the arts can facilitate this process?
How do families separated by UK Immigration Laws cope with uncertainty? How can they be supported? This research project seeks to experiment with new ways to provide support for those affected.
In emergency flood disasters, what information is needed from scientists? How should data be presented and within what timeframe?
How can you stage Elizabeth Blackwell’s experiences as a disabled woman and a pioneering doctor? How can we explores embodiment of disability in performance while exploring what we might learn from such life stories?
Can active particles be used to create interactive tattoos? What mechanisms are needed in order to make functional tattoos for a variety of applications?
Can digital tech empower online consumers to respond to environmental emergencies? Can we create a tool that can connect with consumer practices to give people the opportunity to make ethical consumer choices?
What is the value of local parks in lifting the wellbeing of local communities? How do communities relate to their green spaces?
Can both productive stitch and subversive stitch be understood as therapeutic? How can researchers explore the role of sewing in 19th century asylums and its relevance to contemporary wellbeing?
How can medieval churches tackle longstanding issues of uncertainty in contemporary rural life? How can we draw on the roles of heritage sites to help develop place-based responses to this question?
Can technologies of virtual and augmented reality re-inscribe historical sites with an alternative history and become a moment of celebration for the cultures that were damaged by this history?
How can we bring together community members and organisations interested in making Bristol a more compassionate city for those who are bereaved or grieving?
How can traditional farming techniques, honed over millennia, help enable substantial and sustainable increases in global access to food?
How can the NGO PHASE update its central 'Theory of Change' to respond to the developments of the organisation and the communities they assist?
Are there new ways for citizens to visualise and interact with the data that are routinely collected about them in their everyday lives, e.g. to see the kinds of futures imagined or performed through data?
What can be gained from an international and interdisciplinary network, focusing on identifying communicative expertise in supervision meetings between children’s social workers and their managers?
How do communities define, measure and experience wellbeing and resilience? How do community-owned spaces contribute to these characteristics? How can community-led regeneration thrive without being co-opted by commercial interests?
By visualising the sounds of marine wildlife and the way they are impacted by underwater noise pollution, can we draw attention to an otherwise invisible challenge?
What can life stories of Ken Pryce's sociological study teach us about living well in older age, living well with the past and living well with difference? How do they relate to the contemporary experience of young African Caribbean people and others racialised as black?
How might technology be used to deepen the connection between parents and their babies, while they are still in the womb? How can engineers and social scientists come together to explore the potential and challenges of using wearable robotics to enable in utero interactions?
What can people recall about their attitudes to, and how they managed, mild infections in the pre-antibiotic era? What is the relevance of pre-antibiotic era attitudes and strategies to the present-day management of mild common infections?
What perceptions do robots have of humans? What does it mean for us to live in a world increasingly inhabited by artificial and augmented intelligence? How can a network be developed that crosses artistic, scientific and engineering disciplines to explore how machines see us?
How can you design a project that incorporates humanities from the outset? Can ‘Blue Humanities’ refining or re-framing scientific research questions?
How can researchers re-examine the relationship between global issues of agriculture-driven deforestation, poverty and unsustainable development?
Can diary writing improve wellbeing? Is it time to "reimagine" the diary? Are there ways for busy people to engage in diary writing? This project looks at the past, present and future of diary writing in relation to wellbeing. It explores ethical considerations, barriers and creative formats.
Can animation be used as a research method to examine global challenges? Can animation be applied to promote forms of development?
What can be learned from a one-day conversation between academics, creatives, and city-council representatives based between the two cities with parallel histories?
Is it possible to write a maths poem? How can researchers break down poetry's reputation for being inaccessible, and obscure?
Can handling 'playful things' provide focus and relieve anxiety? Students are increasingly seeking mental health support – most commonly for anxiety disorders. This research will explore how touch can be a tool for relieving anxiety.
How are some people able to be physically active in their daily lives while others are not? How can physical activity guidelines be made more relevant and accessible?
Can university students' awareness and understanding of global citizenship be promoted through intercultural encounters with students from other universities?
How do you create sensitive and authentic cinematic representations of grief? Will multiple voices offer a balanced, holistic perspective or will it universalise and generalise the grieving process in an unhelpful way?
What are Bristol Somali refugees’ experiences of journeys from adversity to resilience, from isolation to connectedness, and from constraining to facilitating environments? How might video narratives contribute to understanding and action to improve the opportunities for pre-school children in refugee families?
When musicians are creating in dialogue with machines how can humans solve problems pre-emptively? How do we cope in the moment? How do we recover? What new ideas emerge from the irreconcilable?
How can VR and 5G come together to showcase the South-West as a prominent future thinking, creative tech hub?
Can you apply narrative methodology to real life GP consultations and patient histories? This project will use storytelling to create a toolkit that will improve communication when giving and receiving medical histories.
How can we explore different methods of engaging people with dementia in research? What do people with dementia think of diagnosis services?
What kinds of collective care practices can nourish and replenish us emotionally and politically?
How can we reduce anxiety for older people transitioning into care? How can we co-create moments of connection with the people and spaces that will make up future residents' new homes?
How can VR and dance help us to rethink the human perceptual systems and the bias toward vision; the inherent nature of the relationship between perceptual systems and environment for wellbeing; and the ways in which we can re-centre the design for spaces away from visual conspicuity frameworks for sensing, movement and interaction?
How can game developers and publishers, localisation service providers, game players, and researchers come together to address the issues faced by video game localisation?
What cultural possibilities opened up by the arrival of 5G technology? How can technology bring to life the multilingual history of the Bristol city docks?
How can a radical and interdisciplinary team come together to further develop their work on non-visual senses and environment?
How do children conceptualise kinship? How do children from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds develop concepts of family and relatedness?
How can you reduce barriers to participation in research about an illegal activity? How can researchers creatively explore the impact that presentation and perception of cannabis use has on individual attitudes towards drug use?
Why social play is important? How might social video gaming impact the wellbeing of an individual? Is there a way to fulfil an individual's gaming purpose in a more social environment?
Why aren’t children from Hartcliffe ‘on the buses’? Prompted by the experiences of children in Hareclive, this project uses arts-led methods to explore this important question, understanding the effects of “bus immobility” on the children of Room 13. It provides evidence to assess and challenge bus and transport policy in Bristol and beyond.
How can an awareness of local history improve our understanding of our community?
How do pubs feature in older men’s life-histories? What role do pubs play in these men’s social lives? And how have these social spaces impacted on men’s social connections and networks in later life?
Can gorillas use computers? Can they, and perhaps other non-human animals, reach a state of ‘Flow’? Could cognitive game-play positively impact their well-being in zoos?
How can collaborative PD methodologies be adapted for individual visual impairment to empower stakeholders in the design process of an inclusive AR/MR learning solution?
How might bringing together artists, scientists and researchers in the humanities with shared interests, generate insights into a shared language for research and creative practice? How can we better communicate risk levels associated with ground movement?
How can experimental film be used to address the global decline in flying insects and the loss of bees and biodiversity?
How can we explore what are the barriers and facilitators to opportunities for play, social interaction, physical activity and healthy eating for children through neighbourhood walkabout and photovoice?
How might Bristol productively acknowledge its ongoing colonial legacy and contribute to the work of truth and reconciliation with Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Metis people? What is the potential role of arts practice within this process? How might contemporary enactments, ceremonies, and rituals devised in response to the archival and material records of this history make visible Bristol’s role in north American colonisation?
How can the University work with the Somali communities in Bristol to improve wellbeing and outcomes for Somali young people? How can a migrant community use research evidence to support their development?
How are migration and migrants/refugees represented in the media? How can we improve public conversations about migration from the grassroots up?
Is it possible to design a ‘convincing’ puppet but wanted to discover if you can make an audience feel as though “a beast has life” even if “the being in question doesn’t exist”?
What is the contemporary father’s role in early parenting? How attainable are feminist ideals of parenting equity and what the key barriers to them? To what degree can performance art capture/explore tensions in work-life balance?
How do the public themselves argue today, as compared with the political elites who are traditionally the focus of study? What rhetorical appeals do the public find most persuasive in practice and why?
How can academics work with storytellers to translate factual research into gripping stories for children and adults? What is the relation between truthfulness and fantasy in storytelling?
What resources could a multidisciplinary dialogue about ancient Greek and Roman religions discover for understanding, caring for, and cultivating forms of mental and spiritual wellbeing today? How could this same dialogue generate new perspectives on Greek and Roman religions?
How did Brexit exasperate new and old anxieties about immigration, racism, class, and the so-called 'left-behind'? How can the academic community and city partners collaborate to undo the damage this caused?
How can researchers come together to explore the use of Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology to utilise waste in innovative ways?
How can we explore what are the barriers and facilitators to opportunities for play, social interaction, physical activity and healthy eating for children through neighbourhood walkabout and photovoice?
How can a creative event on the untold stories of disabled activism provoke discussion, exploration and creative responses to both the intersections and tensions of activism in Bristol and the South West of England?
Which aspects of living with takotsubo cardiomyopathy cannot be captured by the label “broken heart syndrome”? Did participants experience their diagnosis as a “biographical disruption” and does that affect their self-representation?
How can we draw together expertise from patients and their families, health service staff, Citizens Advice workers, academics and civil society organisations to develop an innovative scheme for providing a Citizens Advice Service within a District General Hospital?
Is there an appetite for using immersive technology in PSHE education? What are the potential risks of using this method? Are young people engaged when using this method?
Why have people written diaries, now and in the past? Can private diary writing help promote well-being? Is it time to ‘reimagine’ the diary for the contemporary era in an era where people publicly share life-stories on social media?
How can we design a peer support service for people receiving a diagnosis of dementia?
What would be needed to live on Mars?
What system of dance and theatrical movement developed amongst the little theatres during the war, and how was it distinctive? What is the relationship between the artistic work of the little theatres, and their political values?
What can we learn from the collective care practices of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) to create a care toolkit relevant to contemporary contexts?
Can we address themes such as sustainability, conservation, multispecies relationships, maritime history and ‘ocean blindness’, to define new ocean pedagogies that can empower learners to create positive change?
How can an archive of primary care consultations be used across the disciplines and to engage publics?
How do people seek out and access certain types of sound? What do they think and feel about the sound that they experience?
Is it possible to develop a generic, interactive museum guide, which is transferrable to all museums? What new forms of interactions, engagements and reflections on museums and interpretations might this make possible?
Who was Fanny Fust and what can her life tell us about the experiences of people with learning difficulties in the 18th century? What conversations might such a history spark about disability and consent in the present day?
How can a database of information of events and movements that brought together Asians and Africans across national borders in the 1950s and 1960s be represented in an innovative visual way?
How can art be employed to offer materiality and image to the seas and oceans which increasingly occupy and invisible and non-tangible space in the public imagination?
What does ‘eating well’ mean in the context of killing animals for food? What can a cultural approach can bring to animal welfare assessment?
How can co-produced participatory art practice, storytelling and ethnographic method benefit older populations from South Asian backgrounds, enhance their wellbeing and in what ways?
How might live performance offer an interactive and unconventional way to explore how human living might transform when significant environmental change occurs? What role does technology play in that transformation?
How might bringing together artists and scientists with shared interests in experimentation and making/culturing generate insights into creative practice?
What methods can be used to reveal under-explored stories and create interactive digital maps of the social networks of Chile’s most prominent indigenous political activists in the early 20th century?
How do connections between the people and place where one lives affect and effect a sense of living well? Can collaboration and creative intervention positively impact upon the wellbeing of a street?
How can intergenerational dialogue within the Bristol Somali population be facilitated in order to address outstanding issues of mental well-being?
How can experiences of those with food anxieties be used to improve treatment for eating disorders? What types of creative activities, or without food, can help to reduce food anxieties?
How can we use the playfulness that food affords, to experiment with misbehaviour and ‘bad’ food? What is the impact of cooking workshops on the skills, aspirations, and confidence of participants?
How can researchers to use new digital tools and community-led practices to develop and reveal hidden gems within the Feminist Archive South?
To what extent can cultural synaesthesia, through the union of sound and taste, allow people to experience their lives differently?
Can soft, interactive textile controls in home furnishing or as a wearable help the elderly access useful technology? Does the added sensory experience of textured textiles, with simple controls, help an elderly person remember how to use them? Does the sensory experience help build an emotional bond with the object?
How can a Bristol Disability Human Rights Network be established by linking academics in Law to members of the Disabled community?
How can researchers come together with community members to create accountable systems to tackle the dangers of dog fouling?
How has cycling shaped our understanding and relationship with our environment? And looking ahead, what changes can be made to improve the cyclist’s experience?
Can old, ephemeral items (like postcards) help us to establish a deeper connection with our homes and neighbourhoods?
How can researchers re-approach support networks and information for fathers to safeguard and improve the wellbeing of fathers and their families?
Digital Storytelling for Anyone’s Child brings together a historian with a creative technologist and a charitable thinktank to experiment with new interfaces for cross-continental digital storytelling about the human costs of the global drugs war in Mexico.
How can we experiment with creating a repository of translated language that will be both a tool for language learners to learn and practice and for linguists to store and organise pieces of translated text?
In what ways can the process of creating video inform future planning of research into the roll out of the OpenUpMusic’s “Open School Orchestras” programme across the nation in 2017-2020?
How can we explore an intense interaction of human and machine through a new musical performance work?
How can augmented reality, creative practices and immersive technologies be applied to problems identified by architects, councils and community groups around engaging a broader range of people with local planning?
Can we develop a methodology to identify and categorise public spaces? As we move in the city do we understand the changing spaces through which we move and does this have implications for the future?
With care home residents and hospital patients spending much of their time indoors, how can we help them to re-connect with nature?
What are the societal, playful, and wellbeing implications of being able to control your phone by blowing on a bottle?
What makes a place special and unique? What causes people to fall in love with an environment?
How can researchers expand the multifaceted issue of slavery and the facets of enslaved people's lives to a wider number of disciplines?
When medieval people took part in rituals, what message might they have taken away? How might the performance have made them feel?
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