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 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.

Although people are living longer than ever before, the number of people with dementia is increasing, and 1 in 5 people over 80 will have dementia by 2021. People with dementia and their families often become disconnected from society through the stigmatizing effect dementia has on taking part in everyday activities. Added to this, the current economic climate has meant reductions in many services, and there is often a lack of meaningful activity available to this population. Yet many people with dementia wish to remain within their communities, in the home of their choice, near their family, carers and friends, with the support of health and social care services. This research aims to address the disconnection and marginalisation of people with dementia and explore how the vision for dementia supportive communities might benefit from creative activities. Specifically, it will use a visual art intervention as the catalyst for change for understanding community connectivity, challenging attitudes and promoting well being. Research to date, although limited, suggests a number of potential benefits of arts participation to the quality of life, health and well-being of people with dementia. This project wishes to build on this to address a new area, which will maximise the involvement of, and potential benefit to communities. It will look at how participation in community arts interventions can increase well-being and connectedness between the dementia community and wider society. It will also examine another new area, to further understand the underlying processes that create the connection between arts participation and good outcomes. To realise the aims, the research will be set within three areas of the UK. These consist of ethnically and geographically diverse communities to contextualise the research. In each area our project partners will deliver the same visual arts intervention over a 12 month period to different groups. To understand the impact, the research will assess changes over time in the well-being and social connectedness of people with dementia, and how these changes can in turn have positive effects in communities (facilitate change in societal attitudes and promote participation and inclusion) through social contagion. The processes and outcomes of the research will be assessed using a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches, and will use art, both as a tool for analysis and for visual, creative representations of the results. The research builds on existing relationships and develops new ones with community and policy partners, such as arts organisations, museums, galleries, health and social care practitioners, charities and local government. This will ensure full engagement and maximum benefit and impact for research, policy and practice. It will also contribute towards building future sustainability.

The arts and humanities have a strong tradition of building, maintaining and using archives as part of their research. The creative industries also exploit archives, but refer to them as databases of assets from which they generate experiences for public audiences. In turn, social media now enable these audiences to contribute back to archives by commenting, tagging, annotating and uploading their own media. Our proposal addresses the potential for a productive collision of archives, assets and audiences to the benefit of all concerned by bringing together academics with the creative industries, and engaging both with diverse audiences. In order to drive this vision forward, we will focus on industrial heritage as a target sector of the creative industries, specifically on the three themes of i) enlightenment and innovation; ii) cultures of work, welfare and play; and iii) the rise, fall and re-invention of industry. This focus builds on the rich heritage of our region; the expertise of our three university partners, Nottingham, Leicester, and Nottingham Trent; and the interests and resources of a wide network of industry and cultural partners. Our objectives are to engage external partners, grow our capacity for knowledge exchange, deliver a portfolio of demonstrator projects, and ensure the future sustainability of our approach. We will achieve this through a year-long programme of engagement activities (theme launch days and a final symposium); mobility and training activities (knowledge exchange fellowships and student internships); feasibility projects; and sustainability activities (ingenuity and reflection workshops). As part of our programme we will work with the REACT Hub in particular to complement their Heritage Sandbox currently underway but which will have concluded by the start of our programme. The Director of REACT, Prof. John Dovey, will sit on the steering group to aid complementarity and shared learning.