Between 1852 and 1938, over 70,000 convicts were transported to the bagne in French Guiana which finally closed in 1946. Approximately 21,000 convicts were sent to New Caledonia between 1864 and 1924. A complex tension between the role of convict transportation and labour as an integral part of France's colonial project and the inevitable social exclusion produced by this form of incarceration frames the way the two territories can be compared. Unofficial forms of tourism have always taken place in both settlements during and after their operation but it is only recently that serious restoration initiatives have been undertaken and supported by the local community. In French Guiana, these include the transportation camp at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, the Saint Jean relegation camp and former prison buildings, including the warden's residence, on the Iles du Salut currently under the jurisdiction of the Centre National d'Études Spatiales. In New Caledonia, restoration initiatives in the South Province include a prison museum housed in the former prison bakery; Prony village, a reconstructed site of forced labour; Fort Teremba featuring seasonal light shows and the ruins of the penal colony on the Ile des Pins. Taking these restoration and preservation activities at its starting point, the project considers the former penal settlements as representing a moment of decarceration within a wider global history of punishment, imprisonment and detention. Looking at the delicate process of remembering the bagne, the aim is to consider how penal tourism might focus more directly on questions of decarceration and abolition within a contemporary carceral context. There are several 'moments of decarceration' including institutional reconstruction (space station, tourist facilities), community mobilization (support groups, museum and heritage jobs) and culture industry activity (light shows, convict art exhibitions and tours of ruins) all of which mean analysis of these sites requires a broad and collaborative approach that draws on community participants and international networks of expertise. Tracking the routes and trajectories existing between sites draws greater attention to the carceral past, present and future of a wider human and natural geography. The project will use a cartographic approach to understand the multiple spaces of the bagne and involves presentation of innovative new materials and perspectives to local and global audiences. Archival research skills, ethnographic fieldwork, visual and textual analysis, and theories of framing and spectatorship will also be developed through this process. Fieldwork visits to the two territories, carried out by the PI and PDR, will involve mapping activities using historical visits alongside contemporary routes and itineraries exploring different ways of 'locating' and 'situating' the bagne. To promote this perspective and the wider applicability of the methodological approach a series of maps and a digital photo archive will be produced and made accessible while written outputs including a monograph and two journal articles focus on the (photographic and cartographic) methodologies developed. Public events (activity sessions, symposium and workshops) organized in Nottingham (Galleries of Justice, Nottingham Contemporary) will bring together scholars and heritage stakeholders from the two territories together with UK-based academics, curators and site developers. The project's scholarly outputs will be of interest to academics working in French and Francophone history and culture, postcolonial studies, museum and heritage studies, criminology, visual culture and human geography.

Writing has been essential in driving contemporary art forward since the middle of the 20th century. However, where once we entered galleries to find words displayed on walls or in vitrines, now we are encountering language in the artworld in a qualitatively different way. Art's literary content is entering the gallery as sound, through the medium of the recorded voice, as artists are drawn increasingly to present texts in the form of voiceover. The concept of voiceover is familiar to us from documentary film, but video, installation and new media artists are pushing the format in new and unexpected directions. Voices in the Gallery aims to carry out the first investigation of the voiceover as a phenomenon that exists simultaneously as art-form, literary genre and sonic intervention. By bringing together ideas and perspectives from art, literature and sound studies, it will deliver an original, interdisciplinary theory of voiceover. This project will use the voiceover as a medium by which to explore how writing operates in art practices today: Why is the human voice so pervasive in contemporary art? How do audiences engage with voiced writing? How does vocalization affect our experience of language-driven artworks in the gallery? How can we critically assess the literary and aesthetic features of a voiceover track? How can galleries equip listeners to 'read aurally': to interpret vocalized text that remains unseen? In answering these questions, this project will produce a range of academic and non-academic outputs and activities. My research presentations and article will establish a new field of crossdisciplinary inquiry. My agenda-setting monograph will shape how artists, institutions and critics make, curate and analyze voiceover in future. Partnership with creative industries is integral to this project. The research will be carried out in collaboration with engagement, exhibitions and public programming professionals at Nottingham Contemporary and John Hansard Gallery. These organizations combine international reputations for curating the most innovative contemporary art with a profound commitment to engaging diverse local audiences. By embedding ongoing research in the galleries, and engendering dialogue and exchange between arts professionals and HE, the project will mobilize insights from the research to open entry points into language-driven arts practices. Close listening workshops and study sessions will invite participants to explore new ways of experiencing and interpreting voiced writing in art. Broadside leaflets freely distributed in galleries, will guide and enrich audiences' experiences of voiceover. An off-site exhibition in Southampton city centre will invite new publics to experience a specially curated voiceover installation in their civic space. Crossing between disciplines, working with cultural institutions and their communities, this innovative leadership project will transform how we encounter, mediate and explicate an important, emergent mode of contemporary art-making.

The birth of the British Black Arts Movement (BAM) in the early 1980s was responsible for a paradigm shift in UK art history, bringing to the fore the issues, concerns, practices and aesthetics of marginalised artists. Despite racial bias being recognised and acted upon (e.g., Equality Act 2010), racism is still a reality in British society. The systemic inequality in the representation of Black art history in Britain has come to the fore in the recent months, especially within debates around the killing of George Lloyd in the US, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the fall of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston. However, the history of the BAM and the role of cultural organisations in its development remain understudied. In preparation for the 40th anniversary of The First Black Art Convention in Wolverhampton (1982), this project aims to revisit and promote the region's unique and exceptional legacy in the development of the Black art scene, with a special focus on the role of cultural organisations in supporting artists of colour in the Midlands since the 1980s. The network will disseminate the impact of the BAM in the region, and foster a change of attitudes in the cultural sector towards a more equitable scene by identifying the challenges faced by artists of colour today and proposing recommendations to cultural organisations, policy-makers and advocacy groups. The network activities will benefit academics in the fields of visual arts, curating and Black studies; and non-academic audience working in the cultural sector and on non-for-profit organisations supporting artists of colour. The network activities include: two workshops 1) the first invites members of the BAM to explore the role of cultural organisations in the movement in the 1980s, providing new insights; 2) the second invites practitioners of colour to identify challenges and opportunities in the field for a more diverse and inclusive approach. The workshops will be followed by a public event to open the finds and recommendations to a wider public. Both workshops and event will be recorded and disseminated via the project blog that will outlive the funded period to continue benefitting scholars and practitioners working in the fields of art history, curating, institutional practices, visual cultures, museum studies, visual arts, and Black studies. Following up on these debates, the network will produce an advocacy document with recommendations for a more equitable art programming, workforce and audience development in the cultural sector, which will be effectively disseminated to funding bodies and policy-makers (Arts Council England; Contemporary Visual Arts Network; Midlands Higher Education Culture Forum). In addition, two papers will be published in peer-reviewed academic journals to benefit other scholars in the field, disseminate new knowledge, and influence related debates. The project will be led by PI Professor Carolina Rito and Co-I Professor Paul Goodwin. The network also counts upon the participation of academics and art practitioners of colour whose work has strongly contributed to a more equitable and diverse scene and has focused on the BAM (i.e., Agency for Agency, Dr Keith Piper, Dr David Dibosa, Marlene Smith); with Midlands groups promoting inclusion led by people of colour (Maokwo, Nottingham Black Archive); and four contemporary art galleries in the Midlands with relevant experience with the BAM (the Herbert Gallery and Museum, Wolverhampton Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary and New Art Exchange.)

Connecting us across space, our voices reach each other in ever more diverse and innovative ways. Emerging technologies are generating new conceptions of what it means to 'speak' and to have a voice. Social distancing has brought new attention to the means by which we communicate remotely. It also brings new pressures to bear-highlighting gaps in the conduits upon which individuals, communities and organisations suddenly and solely rely. This accelerated transition to conducting conversations, classes, performances, medical consultations, business and relationships via digitally mediated speech and text transforms our cultural experience of vocality. Crisis has provoked mass adaptation. Later, it will necessitate reflection. Assistive technologies--synthetic voice assistants, text-to-speech programmes, automated transcription, closed captions--have long been used to translate sound into text and vice versa. In recent years, these systems have passed into mainstream consumer use: enhancing inclusivity in some domains and bringing obstacles to access into relief in others. All of these innovations are registered and creatively processed by contemporary artists whose work already interrogates the potentiality of this expanded, multimodal vocality. Voices in the Gallery 2 extends the original project's theorisation of voiceover in contemporary art to engage stakeholders across the creative industries in a cross-sectoral exploration of the transformed nature of 'voice' today. Through partnership with creative industries organisations, advisory access agencies and creative practitioners it asks: a) How are new tools of communication, remote-access and assistive technologies changing our experiences of text and voice, connection and containment, presence, absence and isolation? b) How can art's expanded vocality be harnessed by artists and institutions to incite the development of a more inclusive art environment? Voices in the Gallery 2 will mobilise the multisensorial, technologically-mediated nature of 'visual' art to transform how the cultural/creative industries conceive of accessibility. -Newly commissioned artworks will explore the implications of voice technologies, and activate their potential to produce radically inclusive artworks. -A geographically and digitally distributed exhibition and event programme will galvanise a network of institutions, practitioners, professionals and local publics to gather-virtually/in-person-to consider the changed state of vocality today. -Articles and presentations will analyse the cultural, social and political ramifications of these technologies. -A collection of lecture-poems will explore the relations between speaking and writing, co-presence and delayed connection through critical-creative and formally innovative means. -Access will be enhanced and remote engagement enabled by an audio-guide produced through practice-based research collaboration with a social practice sound artist and in consultation with audio-description specialists VocalEyes. -An education pack developed with a freelance arts educator in consultation with engagement professionals will facilitate teachers and schoolchildren in exploring expanded vocality in everyday communication. -Site-specific community co-creation projects will activate participants in three locations to explore experiences of automated voices in public space. -An inclusively designed accessible broadside pamphlet, developed through tripartite collaboration with Daly & Lyon and the UK Association for Accessible Formats, will facilitate audiences to engage via print and digital formats with the project concept, artworks and investigative strands. -A co-created Inclusive Design for the Arts Toolkit will share insights, model solutions and disseminate best practice in inclusive graphic design to creative industries professionals.

The VisitorBox project will produce a toolkit that combines physical ideation cards with a mobile app and web-based idea repository to enable heritage organisations to rapidly generate and share ideas for new visitor experiences. This Follow-on Fund project addresses the 'Digital Transformations in the Arts and Humanities' theme and will forge impact through commercialization and knowledge exchange. It builds on research undertaken by the project team as well as research and impact collaborations with our external partners. These partners are chosen from different segments of the regional and national heritage economy; they represent curators and collection managers with differing training backgrounds, all keen to harness digital technologies to enhance access to and engagement with their collection assets. VisitorBox presents an unanticipated pathway to impact that has emerged from the AHRC international network Data - Asset - Method (DAM network: AH/J006963/1). This network identified the barriers that prevent our stakeholders operating in the culture economy from accessing digital technologies. The main barrier is the stakeholders' lack of an overview of available technologies, and their low confidence and expertise to experiment with such technologies, especially at the early stages of design and prototyping. The network findings align in particular with our experience of collaborating with partners in the heritage sector, including in the context of three EU-funded projects. We want to bring to bear our knowledge and the expertise gained through the network to overcome the barriers of harnessing digital technologies in this specific sector. Our aim is to respond to one explicit demand of our heritage partners in the domain of visitor engagement, which is their key means of intellectual and commercial exploitation: to have access to their own design and prototyping exploration tools and so scale up the impact of our research and consultancy. Researchers and partners (including the Nottingham Castle and Galleries, the National Videogame Arcade, the D.H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum, Nottingham's UNESCO City of Literature, and the National Trust) will work together as co-producers of VisitorBox. The tool-set will consist of a set of ideation cards. These physical playing cards represent individual design concepts, technologies, user types, and visiting activities; the cards encapsulate comprehensive engagement design and humanities thinking, reflected in the rules for playing them. The cards will allow players (e.g. curators) to produce new ideas quickly but without compromising on methodological depth. Alongside the card deck VisitorBox will include a mobile app, allowing players to scan individual cards or card combinations to capture ideas and curatorial trajectories in digital form. Players will be able to upload these digital ideas to an interactive website, the VisitorBox repository, and share them with their colleagues, or with trusted partners. Users will also be able to gain access to a rich set of digital resources that will support project refinement and execution. The project will evidence the value of the toolkit through co-production with our partners in six design workshops and additional piloting with twenty national and international heritage organisations. Feedback from these activities will inform the development of a sustainable business model for VisitorBox. We will promote VisitorBox along with our business plan at high-profile sectoral events in Europe and the US, and within the teaching programme of a leading US HE organisation. The project will be led by an early-career researcher - Dr Ben Bedwell - to establish him as a research leader at the interface of Computer Science and the Humanities. The project team has a strong track record of developing challenge-driven technologies for arts and humanities practitioners; it involves the lead investigators of the DAM network, Lorenz and Benford.