Grants and Funding
Each year, Goldsmiths’ Public Engagement Strategy Group invites academics to develop new projects to inspire the public.
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Researchers at all career stages are encouraged to make proposals for up to £1,500 of internal seed funding to initiate small projects and design events that spark curiosity and get the public involved with their work.
Find out what the PESG look for when they're allocating funding and what an academic's application must include, as well as what projects are being supported in 2022/23.
Applications are judged on the following criteria based on guidance from the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE):
- Academic-led - Clear, strong connection to the applicant's research, practice, or scholarship
- Focus on publics - Evidence that the activity is aimed at specific public(s) with appropriate partnerships or collaborations
- Mutual Benefit - The activity is participatory and benefits participants, research/researcher(s), and any external collaborators/partners in demonstrable ways
- Distinctiveness - The activity uses creative and appropriate modes of engagement to maximize its reach and deepen engagement
- Quality - The activity is well planned with evidence of clearly defined aims and appropriate evaluation methods
- Sustainability - The activity and its outcomes have the potential to inspire future activities and/or a tangible legacy in the form of concrete outputs (interventions in the public realm, publications, digital outputs: video/audio)
Creative Workshops on Creating Space and Community for Girls’ Skateboarding
Dr Sheryl Clark, Lecturer in Education and Dr Esther Sayers, Senior Lecturer in Education
A series of activities taking place across four Girl Skate Jam Sites in the UK, involving joint creative poster activities, skateboard tagging and a focus group discussion on experiences of skateboarding. The creative workshops are aimed at facilitating empowering and sustainable access to public space for girls, women and other non-traditional skateboarders with a focus on fostering local friendships and community activism.
This project builds on the research-led City-mill skate project and you can read an interview with Dr Esther Sayers published in Free Skate in 2018 on the topic of Skateboarding, Pedagogy and Motherhood.
Speaking textiles – Hearing textiles – Seeing Textiles
Rose Sinclair, Lecturer in Design Education
Building on the successful research exhibition, Althea Mcnish: Colour is mine, currently on display at the Whitworth gallery in Manchester, this project centres around the prospect of decolonising the archives in the field of textiles. The exhibition, which first began at Goldsmith’s Constance Howard Gallery, celebrates the work of artist and designer, Althea McNish, the first of Caribbean heritage to gain international prominence.
This project will utilise various technologies to bring the exhibition to audiences with hearing, movement, and sight impairments. This includes the use of Brightsign technology to translate textile designs, a 3D interactive walk, and the use of braille to create ‘accessible images’.
Read more about the exhibition’s time in the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow.
Potato Computer Club
Becca Rose, PhD Candidate
Potato Computer Club is a series of playful workshops that reimagine what computers might look like if we made them on a potato patch in Marina Allotments, Hastings. The hour-long sessions combine experimental making and discussion. Each workshop will focus on a material – such as potato sensors, nettle-twine wiring, and bacterial batteries. It’ll get muddy and may involve real live bugs, giving new meaning to the phrase “debugging”!
Take a look at Becca Rose’s other work here.
Nightmare in New Cross: An evening of murder (investigation), entertainment and education
Fiona Gabbert, Professor of Psychology and Dr Adrian Scott, Senior Lecturer in Psychology
Learn about exciting research at Goldsmiths by taking part in our immersive theatre event hosted by the Forensic Psychology Unit and the Department of Theatre and Performance. It is 1989 and we have an unsolved murder to investigate in London. We invite you to join our Police Detective Training Agency for one night only (police badge, notebook, and courtesy donut will be provided). Your task is to gather evidence that will help us arrest the murderer before the night ends!