In June 2015 Productive Margins was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to run activities in the national Connected Communities Festival fortnight providing the programme with an opportunity to explore creative ways to widen and deepen community engagement. Each of the research projects ran an event co-produced between the researchers and the community partners:
Isolation and Loneliness of Older People. The project hosted activities to complement and enhance the ongoing work with older people in each of the community locations. The groups worked with local artists in their neighbourhood to raise awareness of the research.
Full description of the event in Bristol : CC2015ILOPsouthville Full description of the event in North Merthyr : CCILOPMerthyr
Regulation of Food Habits. The activity bought together the 3 community groups to visit a local community food-growing project. Discussion and ideas around shopping and eating habits were shared: Full description of the event CC2015food
Mapping, Making and Mobilising in Merthyr. The project team put on the event Graphic Moves an exhibition of film, sculpture, and sound created by young artists from Merthyr Tydfil about their about their relationship with their town and landscape
The life-chances project used arts methods: stitching and story telling to introduce researchers to each other and to the research. This was the first time that both community organisations had worked together and both workshops were a good introduction. Full report CC2015lowincome
