IMPACT
The series of ‘Social Haunting’ research projects were funded by the AHRC Connected Communities programme. Our projects have worked with ‘living knowledge’ that resides, sometimes subjugated and silenced in communities. At the same time this process attempts to problematise the narratives that have defined and constricted those communities.
Thousands of people have engaged with our research. Sometimes in person, in a Ghost Lab or public event, sitting close to others, being together with care, imagination and the restless past. Others have watched our films or our partners’ theatrical performances, seeing creative interpretations of our participants’ contributions. More still have been by a radio at home, or as a collective in listening clubs, and have considered questions of community-beingness, legacies of collective wounds and seemingly occluded potential alternative futures.
We have shared our research through well established events that are rooted in historic and contemporary trade unionism and co-operativism, utilising our strong partnership with Unite Community and the Co-operative College.
This page provides some highlights of the ways we’ve reached out and attempted to have an impact in academic and non-academic communities, in the UK and internationally. Please see this alongside our wide-range of material on the ‘Output’ pages
14
GHOST LABS
100-200K
EST. RADIO LISTENERS
350
ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS
8
LANGUAGES FOR PROJECT OUTPUTS
Professor Avery Gordon, who developed the notion of ‘social haunting’ wrote the following in 2017 that relates to the ‘Working with Social Haunting’ project:
“On a visit to Manchester last year, I had the opportunity to meet some of the community partners and to spend a day with individuals from former mining communities who had participated in the Ghost Labs. I can honestly say that this was one of the most rewarding experiences in a thirty-year career as a scholar. The active and generative collaboration between the university and the community, the way the project was rooted in place and at the same time reached beyond it, the sense of genuine learning and respectful engagement among all participants, and the productive outcomes generating living knowledge as well as new communities initiatives were all the evident signs of an unusual and remarkably successful project.”
PROJECTS' REACH & ASSOCIATED ACTIVITIES
In addition to the variety of ways that we have connected our research to different communities, networks and audiences as official parts of the funded projects, a whole raft of associated activities have developed alongside the formal output. The work has been taken up with great enthusiasm by academic, creative and community partner members of the research team, and has connected with politicised arts and community events and activities across Britain, and beyond the formal life of the three projects. Some variant of the Ghost Lab model have been organised in the following towns and cities:
Stockport
Leeds
Newcastle
Doncaster
Sheffield
Seaham (upcoming)