The Hero Project (THP) aims to initiate a national conversation about the figure of the hero. Using a widely disseminated web-mounted survey to take the temperature of the nation, we will ask the British public: who are our heroes today? Who were our heroes? Our intentions are four-fold. First, to establish the features or achievements of a person that contribute to their status as 'hero.' Second, to examine whether or not hero status is historically contingent. Third, to explore the way in which the historical selection of heroes can be seen to have assisted in the formation of ideas of national and community identity. And finally, to pose the further question: are heroes found or made, the latter leading to the fascinating issues: (how) can we build a hero? And how might hero-creation help to shape our futures? Working with two prestigious partner organisations, in the form of the Royal Geographical Society (London) and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (Edinburgh), our cross-disciplinary team based at Newcastle, Aberdeen and Birmingham universities will undertake an integrated programme of research and dissemination activities to explore and analyse the hero figure past, present and future. The Hero Conference - a major international, cross-sector conference, to be held at the RGS in Summer 2015 - will bring together academic, public sector, charity, military and commercial participants to debate the hero figure, and its relevance to today's organisations and audiences. The accompanying 'Heroes of Exploration' exhibition will draw attention to the RGS's holdings, and the role of that organisation in shaping and archiving exploration heroics across the decades. At the SNPG, we will complete archival research and provide a new path through the collections via 'The Hero Trail' - a leaflet aimed at engaging the strategically important 16-24 age group. The research team will also complete journal articles on hero topics in our own areas of research, and mentor a Research Associate in doing likewise. Gathering further collaborators and interested parties across the year of the award, we aim to consolidate 'hero studies' as an important and engaging new field of research, with enormous potential for follow-on and spin-off projects.

This project will result in an exhibition and accompanying catalogue/book for public consumption at two prestigious venues in 2010: the National Gallery, London, and the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. It will showcase the work of the painter Christen Schjellerup Kobke, revered as the greatest talent of Denmark's celebrated 'Golden Age' (c.1800-1850). This period and ethos, also embodied in the works of Soren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Anderson, has long been regarded as encompassing the nation's greatest cultural, intellectual and scientific flowering, Kobke's work, displayed and analyzed thematically, will be contextualised for a mass audience within these contingent societal influences, whilst also giving due weight to the artist's role in reciprocally shaping and informing Golden Age concerns and tastes. Alternatively known as 'The Age of Kobke', this mark of esteem illustrates the importance attached to his output and its part in determining a distinctly Danish cultural identity. In terms of the aesthetics of Danish visual arts of this period, this project will also give close scrutiny to an examination of the progressively experimental and 'modern' nature of Kobke's practices, particularly his regime of outdoor sketching and a fascination for painterly spontaneity and immediacy that set his work apart from that of his contemporaries and has seen his infuence proliferate into the Modern and Contemporary periods.

RQ: How will the first full textual edition of the works of Allan Ramsay enable us to define the development of Romanticism, Enlightenment, ballad opera and literary Scots in the eighteenth century? R Context: The Works of Allan Ramsay is the first full and consistent scholarly edition of the works of Allan Ramsay (1684-1758), the poet, early Romantic song-collector and cultural entrepreneur, creator of the first established theatre in modern Scotland and probably the first subscription library in the UK. There is one existing textual edition, which is the Martin, Oliver, Kinghorn and Law edition (1945-74). This was assembled by a diverse group of editors without a single unifying textual policy over time. Not only does it not always have a consistent approach to textual editing: it also often does not utilize extant MS readings, and further MS readings (and 130 MSS) have of course come to light since its publication. More can be expected to be identified once an edition is under way: the Burns edition has now identified 160 new MSS not known at the time of the publication of the relevant volume of The Index for English Literary Manuscripts. The Index entry on Ramsay notes the current edition's serious limitations and inadequacy as a scholarly text in uncompromising terms: ...deeply flawed as a scholarly edition. It is badly organised; its transcription of MSS...is unacceptably inaccurate; its contents pages, titling, indexes and apparatus are variously inadequate, inconsistent and error-ridden. (IELM II:3, 172) R methods: There is in no sense, then, a satisfactory textual edition of Ramsay extant. The 'Edinburgh Ramsay' (under contract with Edinburgh University Press, together with supporting monograph) is based on new archival research and is a comprehensive scholarly annotated edition based on contemporary textual editing methods (the PI's work in this area has been described as setting 'new standards for primary research in eighteenth-century song-texts'), with the addition of primary research supportive of both scholarly and KE/Impact outcomes under the University of Glasgow strategy (http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/rsio/knowledgeexchange/). The 'Works' will deal fully for the first time with Ramsay's use of music and the issues raised for the development of Scottish song and its historic performance more generally. The 'Works' will make Ramsay's texts readily available for the first time in many years. Associated web learning resources (including Scottish Qualification Authority relevant resources for schools thanks to the link between Education Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence resources and the University of Glasgow) will support the development of a separate paperback edition of the Poems. The 'Works' will be accompanied by a volume devoted to the contexts and themes of Ramsay's Edinburgh: art, music, politics, urban environment and many others. This will be supported by a web resource on Ramsay's Edinburgh, which will include an online bibliography, song performances (including historically informed ones) , a section on people and clubs of Ramsay's Edinburgh, a prosopographical study of the subscription list for Poems (1721) and a resource on Ramsay's reception. A concert will be arranged to complement the online song recordings. Reflective scholarly material will accompany recordings. We will also work with external partners, including an exhibition with the National Library with an accompanying symposium highlighting their Ramsay treasures. We will work with the National Galleries of Scotland on their collections policy in the new £17M Celebrating Scotland's Art project CAPEX based on our research findings on the art trade in Edinburgh, and with the University of South Carolina on collections development. We will also lead the continuing development of the Allan Ramsay Literary Festival at the Allan Ramsay Hotel, Carlops (http://www.allanramsayhotel).

The UK has a world-leading cultural and creative economy, and every year there are hundreds of thousands of events, festivals, concerts, plays, and gigs, varying in scale from the very small and informal, to the large and coordinated. Events tell us much about the creative landscape: however, although data has been produced about them to facilitate listings, and ticket sales, there does not exist a service by which researchers can access this recently produced commercial data in order to generate accurate data-led analysis and visualisation of the UK's creative sector. Additionally, the data created by the events industry is large, and complex, involving commercial providers who have generated novel business models around data scraping, gathering, and dissemination. Any researcher who wishes to use this data has to navigate access to data, but also access to compute at scale, to generate novel understandings that may be of use in event planning, policy, or to identify potential trends, or opportunities for investment and support. Of particular interest at the moment is gathering accurate information on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the UK's events industry: although events data exists, no accurate reports have used this to understand the effects of the pandemic, and industry recovery. To provide such a data service that could support researchers, there needs to be an investigation into how best to provide this data to Arts and Humanities (A&H) researchers, many of whom have not undertaken data-analysis at this scale. Therefore, a particular needs-analysis requires to be done with A&H researchers, whilst also working closely with industry contacts to understand the landscape of events data, and how this - as an example of the type of data that is produced by the UK's cultural industries - can be provided to A&H researchers as a supported service that negotiates relationships between data providers and processors. Any service in this area needs to also consider privacy, copyright, and intellectual property, as well as looking at particular user needs. Our research will support the development and design of a data repository for the capture and analysis of UK cultural and creative industries data at scale, focussing particularly on events-based data. We will undertake a range of scoping and user needs analysis with a diverse community from industry, academia, and data service providers. We will show how A&H researchers are already using, or could make future use, of events based data, and the impact this type of research may have in understanding our economy, cultural environment, and physical infrastructure planning. We will undertake a pilot study, with our project consultants The List, who are the UK's major events listings based data provider and have over 15 years of experience operating in this area. We will aim to understand how researchers can analyse over 2GB of data covering 2.5m events organised in the UK between 2017 and 2021. Our outputs will include a specification for a cultural and creative industries data service that includes capital, operational, and support costs, providing a roadmap for how to build a service that can support the UK's A&H researchers in understanding the cultural and heritage industries at scale. We will also propose a skills and capacity building programme for the A&H research community in accessing and using this type of creative industry information from a large-scale data service that utilises High Performance Computing and Data Analytics. The University of Edinburgh is uniquely placed to be able to carry out such a study, given the conjunction of expertise which exists, and collaborations, between national UK computing infrastructure, major events such as the festivals, creative industry researchers, and the university's recent major investment into digital approaches across the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences in the Edinburgh Futures Institute (www.efi.ed.ac.uk).

Professor Anna Fox is one of the most acclaimed British photographers of the last thirty years and was recently awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. Since 2016 she has instigated, developed, and promoted Fast Forward: Women in Photography, a research and development project which has created a global network with far reaching impacts on the equality, diversity, and inclusion for women through photography. This ED&I Fellowship offers an opportunity to build on the Fast Forward project and the aims and objectives of the 2020 Manifesto, to support junior colleagues and to work in partnership with a progressive-thinking group of collaborator organisations to support a community of marginalised women. Through a series of innovative workshops and mentorship activities, the aim is to increase awareness of women's unheard life stories using photography and story-telling practices by increasing their skills to use photography to create new work. Most recently the coronavirus crisis has made the telling of women's stories all the more urgent, highlighting the inequalities within society for marginalised groups of women. Each workshop will run for between five and ten days and will involve tutors and mentors as well as at least six participants who are in contact with the partners. By promoting practical skills, networking skills, and industry knowledge, the women will develop confidence to tell new stories using the language of photography. The four workshops will be run by the partners starting in February 2021 and will be followed by a period of mentorship up to the end of the project enabling professional development in terms of networking and the production of high quality outputs, owned by participants, and widely disseminated, with permission. The work created and key moments in the processes undertaken at the workshops will be recorded, with participants' permission, on film and/or sound and aim to show the development of skills, confidence, and understanding. By working with the partner organisations, we will actively connect women to new networks, new experiences, and valuable role models, and set up a sustainable mentorship scheme. Outputs include artists books and prints made during the workshops. An exhibition of works will be organised along with a series of smaller scale exhibitions in local libraries and community centres, and a series of podcasts of interviews/discussions with both participants and mentors will be disseminated, designed to inspire women outside the project as well as to act as a legacy (These may vary with the restrictions due to the Covid situation). Outputs will be designed to create maximum impact through effective use of the website and social media of Fast Forward and through that of the partners and host institution, and will include promotion of exhibitions, publications, short films, and podcasts. The outputs will also be presented at the conference Decolonising the Curriculum (working title only) at University for the Creative Arts in late 2021. This work offers an approach to improve conditions and opportunities for marginalised women in UK society (such as refugees) by using the tool of photography. We will also be developing our relationships with our partners enabling future ways of working together to support women in photography. The work of this fellowship is designed to improve well-being, creativity, and employability of those involved. By bringing practical experience and new knowledge to the women taking part in the workshops and mentorship activity they will gain understanding and grow confidence in their newly acquired skills and inspire new creativity and abilities that will contribute to future well-being. It is vital to give marginalised women a voice and the opportunity to tell their stories, stories that have frequently been hidden. Photography has the ability to tell stories in a way that neither the written nor spoken word can do.