British South Asian Dance (BSAD) is a marginalised sector within the wider sector of British dance. Yet, what is seldom recognised and examined, are the different kinds of marginalisations that exist within this already marginalised sector. BSAD has historically tended to be the domain of dominant caste, class privileged, able-bodied, heterosexual and cis-gendered women of Indian heritage. "South Asian Dance Equity (SADE): The Arts that British South Asian Dance Ignores" is a networking grant project designed to examine processes and categories of minoritisations that lead to the systemic erasures of specific South Asian arts and artists within the BSAD sector. The network will examine these minoritisations under five identified categories: the dominance of Indian dance forms and Indian heritage artists within BSAD; LGBTQI+ artists; caste-oppressed artists; disabled artists; and folk and adivasi (indigenous) arts and artists. SADE responds to global concerns around equity and accountability in relation to South Asian dance. The principles of equity, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of this network's design and remit. It seeks to question power imbalances, lack of diversity, and systemic exclusions in the BSAD sector. It turns to the concept and practice of "equity" as an intellectual and action-focused framework that is driven by social justice agendas. It recognises that all BSAD artists do not start with the same opportunities in life, and that power asymmetries are replicated in the BSAD sector. The network aims to highlight the need to create bespoke adjustments and additional opportunities so that resources and attention can be directed towards minoritised dance arts, artists and researchers. The SADE network will bring together marginalised artists from South Asia and the UK to explore how inequities in each place are both intertwined and distinct. Over the course of one online and four one-day hybrid workshops across four cities -- London, Birmingham, Leeds and Leicester -- artists from the UK and South Asia will share their artistic practices and exchange ideas and experiences regarding equity. The SADE online project launch will be co-ordinated by Akademi (London) with the title 'South Asian Dance and Decentring India'. The second workshop titled 'South Asian Dance and LGBTQI+ Identities' will foreground LGBTQI+ artists and lives, and will be coordinated by Baithak Arts (London). The third workshop titled 'South Asian Dance and Caste', will examine the BSAD sector's caste privileged foundations, ideologies and aesthetics. This will be coordinated by Sampad Arts (Birmingham). The fourth workshop on 'South Asian Dance and Ableism' will foreground disabled artists and critique the dominance of ableism in the BSAD sector, and will be coordinated by Balbir Singh Dance Company (Leeds). The final and fifth workshop titled 'South Asian Dance, Adivasi & Folk Identities' will address the systemic minoritisation of folk and adivasi (indigenous) arts and artists in BSAD. This will be corrdinated by Nupur Arts (Leicester). The SADE network project will culminate in a two-day conference which will take place at Senate House, University of London. The conference will include panels, keynote speakers, and plenaries. On both evenings of the conference, dance artists from South Asia who participated in the project will share their practice at The Place Theatre, London. The conference will also showcase a practice-based collaboration between South Asian and British South Asian artists, which will become a model for future collaborative work. The conference and dance performances will be accessible to the public via free registration. The SADE network's activities will be disseminated through a fully accessible project website as well as a special issue journal publication on equity in South Asian dance.

Many families possess a 'family archive'; documents, photographs, heirlooms, scrapbooks, recipes and a whole range of other items that reveal insights into past generations and preserve family stories for future ones. They may never have thought of their collections as 'archives', but by retaining and preserving possessions kept in shoeboxes, under beds, on top of wardrobes and in garages, people use these items to mould a sense of family identity. This project explores the concept of the family archive through time, considering what, how and why families have archived personal items for private purposes. Making use of both historical case studies and contemporary focus groups, the project team will investigate how the family unit makes conscious use of curated possessions - including documents, images, objects and other materials - in order to develop a familial identity based on past and present generations, and how this is transmitted to future family members. The project will ask: what stories and memories do older family members pass to future generations through family possessions? How has this changed over time? How does this impact upon a family's collective identity? And how do families relate their own histories and memories to wider national and international historical events? In addressing these questions, we will explore the past, present and future of the 'family archive'.

Cultural intermediation is a process which connects different kinds of communities into the creative economy and wider society. It plays a critical role in raising aspirations, upskilling and building confidence, all of which are vital to allow people to engage with and benefit from one of the most dynamic sectors of the contemporary UK economy. Individual artists, professional networks, events, festivals, commissioning bodies, creative businesses, arts and cultural organisations both large and small can all play intermediary roles. Some of the most exciting opportunities for research in this area are occurring in the city regions. In part this is because of their size and multiplicity of cultural resources, but also because these areas have large concentrations of communities suffering multiple deprivation who are being left behind by the post-industrial creative economy. Investigations undertaken as part of developing this research project revealed that those individuals and organisations undertaking cultural intermediation are coming under significant pressure. Public sector funding cuts and a new agenda of localism are changing the relationship that intermediaries have with the state, requiring a reappraisal of their activities. The 'Big Society' agenda places an emphasis on community-led activities at the same time that the institutional support for capacity building in those communities through cultural intermediation is being squeezed. The creative sector is itself highly fragmented with weak connections between different sectors, different communities and policy processes. So-called 'hard-to-reach' communities remain disconnected, suffering multiple deprivation, social disenfranchisement and exclusion. Acknowledging the importance of cultural intermediation, the research asks to what extent these processes meet the needs of urban communities in the 21st century and how they might operate more effectively. The aim of the research is to discover how the value of cultural intermediation can be captured and how this activity can be enhanced to create more effective connection between communities and the creative economy. The objectives of the research are to: create new ways of measuring value; analyse the historic development of cultural intermediation to inform current practice; examine how intermediation fits within the existing policy landscape and the governance of relations between the different actors; explore the effectiveness of intermediation activity from a community perspective; design new forms of intermediation through a series of practice-based interventions; and reflect on the process of working across and between disciplines and sectors in order to enhance practice. The research has a number of key applications and wider benefits. In providing a means to capture the value of intermediation, policy makers and practitioners will be able to foster better practice. This is of particular importance given the shifts in the governance and funding landscape, particularly within the public sector. The historical material, will provide a crucial evidence base situating understandings of intermediation, providing lessons to current practitioners. Those creative intermediaries directly involved in the interventions will receive training in research methods in order to analyse and improve their own practice. A subsequent 'how-to' research guide will disseminate these lessons more widely. Academically the research will make a major contribution to debates on: creativity and valuation; the historical evolution of the creative economy; governance and localism; practice-based methods; interdisciplinarity and epistemic communities; and the role of culture in connecting communities.

With the launch of the Coalition's plans to mark the centenary of the Great War, the Communities Secretary observed: 'As the First World War moves out of common memory into history, we're determined to make sure these memories are retained', but which common memories did he have in mind? Remembering, just like forgetting, is always a political act. The war was a global conflict which left its mark on the local. Was it experienced differently in urban and rural areas? What were the relationships between soldiers and civilians during and after the war? Did it shape individual and community identities? Did it have different meanings for contemporaries? There was a consensus that the dead were to be commemorated and remembered, but there was less agreement over how the example of sacrifice was to be understood and the meanings to be attributed to and experiences to be drawn from acts of commemoration. How have these meanings changed over time? How will it be understood today? Is it a truism that 'the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there'? Certainly, Britain today is a very different country to that of 1914 and has been described by Parekh (2000) as 'a community of communities.' What sense will young people make of the local memorials to the dead which sit in the urban and rural landscapes and the acts of commemoration organised by an older generation which will centre upon them? What meaning will the war have for young people who have grown up in a society where live reports of conflict are readily available on a smartphone and where the return of the dead from Afghanistan is instantly reported in the media? How will they connect the past with their present and their future? As the First World War moves out of memory into history, what will be the record of commemoration they will have experienced that will be left after 2018 for future historians to reflect upon? These are just some of the questions which have been generated by reflecting on the joint Arts and Humanities Research Council/Heritage Lottery Fund commemorative project. These reflections have in turn shaped the 'Voices of War and Peace: the Great War and its Legacy' project proposal. At the core of this cross disciplinary project is an institutional commitment to community engagement with research and a professional commitment 'in a mission of understanding' to investigate, analyse, apprehend, criticize and judge and thereby translate Edward Said's idea of 'communities of interpretation' into practice (Said 2003). Using Birmingham, the UK's second city, as its primary place of memory, the project will reach out to multiple communities/publics both local and national to explore through dialogue issues around memory, remembering and commemoration. The research network will respond to community requests for support in terms of capacity building and support community driven research agenda. Working with other funded centres and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) the project will invest in developing the community engagement experience of early career researchers. A strength of the network beyond its relevant knowledge expertise is the experience embedded within its membership of effective partnership working. As an internationally engaged network, it will seek out relations with cultural institutions in Birmingham's sister cities and through the Universitas 21 network to understand other national and local processes of commemoration and thereby further illuminate our understanding of memorial activities in the UK. Sharing knowledge, expertise and resources, it is intended that the project will leave its own legacy for community/academy relations in terms of the capacity for the co-design and co-production of research, an understanding of the complicated relationship between remembering and forgetting and a desire to continue to 'think forward through the past'.