Art Dialogues with a Place: An Approach Towards the Empathetic Learning of Estates Re-Made

Peevers, Jenny (2022) Art Dialogues with a Place: An Approach Towards the Empathetic Learning of Estates Re-Made. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Text Jenny Peevers PhD Thesis published_Final Version_Submitted Nov 2021_Final Award Sep 2022.pdf - Accepted Version Download (5MB)

Abstract

Lived experience is a missing knowledge within the hierarchical knowledge structures that inform housing regeneration practice. This thesis argues that without it, misinformation and misrepresentations of place narratives can manifest, leading to residents feeling stigmatised, unheard and displaced. I discuss outsider place knowledge as the dominant regeneration knowledge and examine the value of dialogical art-based methods that provide insight and understanding of the inside: lived experience.

The research aim of developing and defining spatial dialogical art practice as a method to learn lived experience is explored through an iterative and reflective practice-as-research methodology. A key pillar in my research is Re:connections, a curatorial project situated in Lee Bank, Birmingham, a former 1960s council estate that was part of large-scale housing regeneration. The project explores different dialogical approaches with residents through a series of artist-led activities and events. Methods of reflexive practice are applied to assess shifting perceptions and the development of place empathy.

In exploring the value of lived experience to housing regeneration practice, I investigate the hierarchical structures of knowledge that inform housing regeneration in England. These structures are set out in planning and design documents such as Government White Papers, Local Plans, Supplementary Planning Documents, masterplans and Design and Access Statements. I assess the outsider knowledge and outsider perceptions that informed the regeneration decisions of Lee Bank. Alongside this, I explore theories of place and how we experience it, with literature drawing on disciplines from human geography, philosophy, urbanism and anthropology. I investigate the unique role of art in providing opportunities to learn lived experience, and I consider critical writing on historical and contemporary socially engaged practice in assessing spatial dialogical art as a curatorial practice.

My research has led me to define spatial dialogical art practice as a framework that enables the embodied art dialogue. Facilitated by artists, the embodied art dialogues are activated through the playful and creative verbal and non-verbal, human-to-human, and human-to-non-human dialogical exchanges within a place. I have found that the embodied art dialogues create the empathetic learning space: a physical and philosophical space within which established place narratives are disrupted, and the multifarious, layered and shifting place rhythms are learned. As such, it is a method that provides new insights and understanding into learning lived experience of housing estates. The empathetic learning space, therefore, creates an ambition to disrupt and rebalance knowledge hierarchies in regeneration practice policy possible.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 1 September 2022 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Socially engaged practice, dialogic art practice, empathy, housing regeneration, place knowledge
Subjects:	CAH13 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01-01 - architecture CAH13 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01-04 - planning (urban, rural and regional) CAH25 - design, and creative and performing arts > CAH25-01 - creative arts and design > CAH25-01-01 - creative arts and design (non-specific)
Divisions:	Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > College of Architecture
Depositing User:	Louise Muldowney
Date Deposited:	17 Mar 2025 11:32
Last Modified:	17 Mar 2025 11:32
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16235

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