Gender equality is of central importance to progress within an increasingly global world, but gender roles and attitudes to gender shaped centuries ago continue to influence cultural, social and economic behaviour, and to affect decision making at a local level. This is the case even where equal opportunity policies and rhetoric pertain at a national or corporate level. Too often, policy commitments to equal opportunities for women and rhetorical statements of the importance of women's contribution to society mask real-life behaviours that inhibit women's advancement; indirectly, if not directly reinforce women's subordinate position; and translate multicultural anxieties into conflicts over gender roles and behaviours. This project offers a unique approach. It is not only multi-organisational, multinational, and multi-disciplinary, but also places theoretical concepts of gender, particularly that of intersectionality, in dialogue both with artistic expression and representation and with the experiences of professionals who make on-the-ground interventions (as teachers, volunteer trainers, academic leaders, those in charge of arts organisations). The interchanges between these strands enable theory to inform, but also to be tested against the expressive and experiential. In the process, public awareness of the complexities of gender issues, particularly within complex social and cultural, and sometimes multi-cultural, contexts can raise awareness about the expectations associated with women's place in the community while helping to refine current feminist theories of intersectionality. The project facilitates comparative discussions, exposing individual researchers to the possibilities implicit in alternative disciplinary and theoretical methodologies, different cultural frameworks, and diverse historical periods. The intellectual frameworks developed as part of Second and Third Wave feminism for understanding the dynamics of women's subordination, together with critiques of subaltern status developed as part of postcolonial perspectives have provided women with a set of methodological tools for responding to consciously perpetuated gender discrimination. These movements have also provided the means of exposing both institutionalised sexism and the assumptions and unexamined preconceptions that unconsciously naturalise women's subordinate position, often generating hostility when women assume positions of power. Intersectionality has emerged as a promising paradigm for addressing the complexities of compounded social marginalisation, but it is a concept born within a particular socio-historical context. As a result, it needs to be interrogated, translated, and transformed if its potential utility is to be fully realised. Local factors such as caste, which the current framework struggles to fully articulate and analyse, pose a challenge to this and other universalised models and modes of feminist theorising. Understanding and acknowledging this challenge is an important precursor both to refining the concept and to supporting successful interventions-- be they local, national, or international in origin. The project will strengthen and extend the collaborative activities of four partner institutions dedicated to harnessing research for social change. It will develop support networks among women within academia in both India and the UK, furthering the interests of gender equality within Higher Education and beyond. The project will produce material outputs including documentaries, piloted English Language Teaching resources and volunteer training materials, and the creative reflections of an artist in residence. A volume of selected essays on "Interrogating Intersectionality" is envisaged that would help to clarify the theoretical and methodological issues, possibilities and current limitations of the concept.

This study will assess the impact on mental health of restricted access to arts and culture in a specific city region, and track, enable and enhance the value of innovation in arts provision in mitigating associated harms. Liverpool has one of the richest concentrations of culture in the UK, boasting the largest clustering of museums and galleries outside London. Cultural capital is critical to the city region's economy, contributing c10% (Culture Liverpool,2019). The city also has a pioneering history of harnessing arts for mental health care through partnerships between culture and health providers. Building on the University of Liverpool's strong alliance with organisations across these sectors, this project brings together an interdisciplinary team of arts and mental health researchers to devise and conduct, in consultation with cultural and health bodies, two surveys. Survey 1 (online interviews) will target 20 arts organisations (10 civic institutions, 10 community arts programmes, representing 'elite' and 'popular' arts) to capture (i)the impact of COVID-19 on public access to arts provision (including those who usually access the arts through formal healthcare routes) and on audience/beneficiary change over time (legacy losses and potential gains) (ii)the success of alternative (e.g. online/digital) modes of provision by arts organisations in reaching and communicating with established and/or new audiences. Survey 2 (online questionnaire and supplementary online/telephone interviews) will target c300 arts' audiences/beneficiaries to capture (i)the impact on mental health of restricted/non-existent access to usual provision (ii)the perceived value and accessibility of alternative arts provision and the latter's impact on mental health/wellbeing.

Contemporary arts - provisionally defined at the outset of this project as those arts events and practices that are newly created and in some way innovative or challenging - attract interestingly opposing audience responses: at the extremes, enthusiasts will focus their arts engagement primarily on seeking out 'the contemporary' (Gross & Pitts 2015), while established audiences for 'mainstream' or traditional arts will distrust the programming of new works, tolerating them at best or otherwise staying away (Pitts 2005). For arts organisations of all varieties this is a marketing and communication challenge; and for academics interested in the role of arts engagement in people's lives, attitudes towards contemporary arts offer interesting insight on cultural value and the place of creativity, challenge and comfort in experiences of the arts. Our investigation of these two extremes of audience response - those who engage with the contemporary arts and those who choose not to - was prompted by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG), our lead partner in this project, with whom we have carried out a pilot study to lay the groundwork for this deliberately ambitious, national, cross-art form investigation. BCMG were interested in the scope for 'crossover' between art forms: whether regular attenders at a contemporary art gallery would also be potential audience members for a BCMG concert, or for experimental theatre, or a pop up gallery in a disused warehouse, and the extent to which those different groups of practitioners and audience members were aware of each other's work. These practically-focused initial questions led to the formation of a Birmingham Contemporary Arts Network (still meeting a year after our research project), generating a substantial qualitative investigation with 56 audience members from five key organisations, and a series of 'audience exchange' visits in which audience members experienced events outside their usual patterns of attendance. These methods generated a depth of research enquiry around the nature of 'the contemporary, the place of arts in everyday life, their contribution to personal and civic identity, and the notion of 'cultural citizenship', which captures the sense of civically engaged involvement that characterised our Birmingham participants (Gross & Pitts 2015; 2016). For the 30 month, national version of this project, we will extend our enquiries by establishing contemporary arts networks in three additional cities (Bristol, Liverpool and London), chosen for their distinctive geographies, demographics and contemporary arts scenes. We will work with internationally recognised lead partners whose practices encompass a diversity of art forms, and build networks of practitioner and audience exchange to facilitate empirical investigations and cross-arts comparisons on a scale not previously seen in audience research. A phase of longitudinal action research, first in Birmingham, and then in our three new partner cities, will use our findings to generate and test new approaches to audience development and experience, so ensuring immediate and lasting impact from the research. Alongside this, enquiries with 'mainstream' arts audiences in Sheffield will explore resistance to the contemporary arts, so providing a more critical perspective on the debate. The substantial empirical knowledge resulting from the project will shed new light on interdisciplinary critiques of arts engagement in the 21st century (Heim 2016; Freshwater 2009), and build on the very small number of studies currently providing insight on audience experience in the contemporary arts (Sifakakis 2007; Van Dyke 2010; Hanquinet 2013). We aim to understand 'audiences for the contemporary arts' with a depth that speaks to academics across sociology and psychology of arts, cultural studies and specific arts disciplines, as well as practitioners and policy makers in all related fields.

Hear us O Lord from heaven thy dwelling place: using sound and Malcolm Lowry's short stories to create a new vocabulary for re-imagining plastic-filled seas. Our seas are polluted with eight million metric tons of plastic every year and microplastics have found their way into humans through the food chain. How do we process such statistics and scenarios? How and where can we network to create new artefacts that present the problem differently? To reflect and act upon this extraordinary state, we wish to develop a cross-disciplinary network that meets at sea and produces new audio content with the clear overall aim of finding a new vocabulary for re-imagining our plastic-filled seas. We will explore what happens when a Practice-As-Research methodology brings academics and creatives together at sea to mingle with members of the public and uses the short stories of Malcolm Lowry and sound recording as catalysts to re-imagine our plastic-filled seas. We feel that this network, building upon previous Lowry research, will benefit not only those sectors involved but, through the free podcasts, be of use in educational, entertainment and artistic contexts. We are observing many students attempting to make work about plastic pollution but their references are limited and primarily visual. How can we instead use listening and a fresh set of literary references to generate new content? The research will use sound under the guidance of one of the world's leading sound recordists, Chris Watson, who has used audio to encourage us to rethink our immediate and global surrounds. His award-winning natural history work with David Attenborough has given Watson a unique insight into the relationship between the environment and sound. Malcolm Lowry was born on Merseyside in 1909 and named his collection of short maritime stories 'Hear us O Lord ...' after an Isle of Man hymn. His writing will be the catalyst for our network that will meet at sea during six crossings between Liverpool and Isle of Man. Lowry's stories presciently explore the impact of oil refineries on coasts and the significance of sea travel writing. During each 4-hour crossing, researchers will mingle with members of the public and ferry staff to record short interviews, Lowry passages and abstract sounds. Each crossing will be programmed around specific themes, outlined in Case for Support, and each journey will have professionally delivered sound recording workshops, Malcolm Lowry readings and informal participation. We are proposing an exciting network who will meet at sea, including: The Retail Institute, liaising between the packaging industry and retailers such as Asda, Waitrose and Nestle The Art Doctors, an artists' group engaging the public in unusual contexts Bluecoat, Liverpool's centre for contemporary art and Lowry advocates through their 'Lowry Lounge' programme Mariners' Park, retirement facility on Merseyside for those with 25-years experience at sea The Band of Holy Joy, sound collage musicians/broadcasters Dr Jessica Van Horssen, expert in plastic pollution and part of eXXpedition network Merseyside Maritime Museum, National Museums Liverpool The network will be led by visual/sound artist Dr Alan Dunn (Leeds Beckett University) and Malcolm Lowry expert and poet Dr Helen Tookey (Liverpool John Moores University) who previously collaborated on 'The Lighthouse Invites the Storm' conference, audio event, public artwork and limited edition CD. Outputs from this new network include: 'Hear us O Lord' one-hour podcasts, 2020-22 'Hear us O Lord' two episodes of BAD PUNK by Band of Holy Joy, ResonanceFM 'The Lowry Lounge' art exhibition and live readings, Bluecoat 'Sea Galleries' digital display, Merseyside Maritime Museum 'Using Lowry and sound to tackle sea pollution' guest edited issue of 'Design Ecologies' 'Plastic at sea, with Lowry', researchers' network presentation, The Retail Institute annual seminar