'Voice Notes' is a creative writing and sound arts initiative working with displaced communities in Nottingham and Slemani in Iraqi-Kurdistan. Building on my AHRC-funded 'Crossed Lines: Literature and Telephony' project, 'Voice Notes' engages international audiences with original research on the mobile technologies, literary communication and forced migration, and facilitates new pathways for knowledge exchange using innovative approaches to the telephone with a broad range of cultural organisations. Enabling emerging voices through transnational cultural exchange activities supported by the UNESCO Creative Cities network, the project will result in the co-creation of an interactive performance and exhibition, a mobile app, an online sound archive, a co-edited pamphlet of poetry, and a toolkit. Through these activities and outputs, it will engage refugee communities, NGOs, cultural partners, educators, artists, activists and members of the public with creative approaches to everyday technologies, shaping new ways of thinking about ethical networks, transnational communication, and the possibilities of talking and listening across borders. Offering new opportunities for transnational engagement and empowering under-represented voices, the project will involve a series of writing and spoken word workshops delivered in collaboration with refugee arts organisation Compass Collective. Supporting displaced communities in Nottingham and Slemani, these workshops will explore the transmission of the voice and the possibilities and limitations of telephone technologies in navigating and communicating experiences of exile. Extending the original methodologies developed during 'Calling Across Borders' (part of the 'Crossed Lines' project), young refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons will be invited to compose, perform and record their contributions on the phone, resulting in the co-creation of a multilingual collection of 'voice notes' left by and for people who have experienced forced displacement. These voice notes will form the basis of interactive performances and exhibitions produced by acclaimed Kurdish-Swedish composer Hardi Kurda to be held in Nottingham and Slemani. The events will make use of a directional sound bar that responds to the movements of audience members, enabling visitors to experience and contribute to the shaping of the project by moving through the exhibition and tapping into intersecting telephone calls. Members of the public will also have the opportunity to leave their own voice notes in response to the project; a selection of moderated responses will in turn feed into the dynamic and evolving telephone soundscape. Furthermore, the voice notes will be shared online through an interactive mobile app and sound archive on our project website, and selected voice notes will form the basis of a co-edited pamphlet of poetry developed in partnership with a refugee writer, with an accompanying toolkit produced in collaboration with Compass Collective and disseminated through Counterpoints Arts and the UNESCO Creative Cities network. This project has been co-designed with a number of international cultural organisations, NGOs and artists including Compass Collective, Counterpoints Arts, Hardi Kurda, New Art Exchange, Refugee Roots, Nottingham and Slemani UNESCO Cities of Literature and STEP. Developing the methodologies established with Compass Collective during 'Calling Across Borders' through participatory arts and collaborative exchange, and disseminating to a wider international audience the potential for innovative approaches to everyday telecommunication technologies to facilitate creative self-expression, the literary arts, civic dialogue, and cross-cultural communication, the project will significantly advance ways of thinking about the relationship between migration, literature and new developments in telephone technologies.

The birth of the British Black Arts Movement (BAM) in the early 1980s was responsible for a paradigm shift in UK art history, bringing to the fore the issues, concerns, practices and aesthetics of marginalised artists. Despite racial bias being recognised and acted upon (e.g., Equality Act 2010), racism is still a reality in British society. The systemic inequality in the representation of Black art history in Britain has come to the fore in the recent months, especially within debates around the killing of George Lloyd in the US, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the fall of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston. However, the history of the BAM and the role of cultural organisations in its development remain understudied. In preparation for the 40th anniversary of The First Black Art Convention in Wolverhampton (1982), this project aims to revisit and promote the region's unique and exceptional legacy in the development of the Black art scene, with a special focus on the role of cultural organisations in supporting artists of colour in the Midlands since the 1980s. The network will disseminate the impact of the BAM in the region, and foster a change of attitudes in the cultural sector towards a more equitable scene by identifying the challenges faced by artists of colour today and proposing recommendations to cultural organisations, policy-makers and advocacy groups. The network activities will benefit academics in the fields of visual arts, curating and Black studies; and non-academic audience working in the cultural sector and on non-for-profit organisations supporting artists of colour. The network activities include: two workshops 1) the first invites members of the BAM to explore the role of cultural organisations in the movement in the 1980s, providing new insights; 2) the second invites practitioners of colour to identify challenges and opportunities in the field for a more diverse and inclusive approach. The workshops will be followed by a public event to open the finds and recommendations to a wider public. Both workshops and event will be recorded and disseminated via the project blog that will outlive the funded period to continue benefitting scholars and practitioners working in the fields of art history, curating, institutional practices, visual cultures, museum studies, visual arts, and Black studies. Following up on these debates, the network will produce an advocacy document with recommendations for a more equitable art programming, workforce and audience development in the cultural sector, which will be effectively disseminated to funding bodies and policy-makers (Arts Council England; Contemporary Visual Arts Network; Midlands Higher Education Culture Forum). In addition, two papers will be published in peer-reviewed academic journals to benefit other scholars in the field, disseminate new knowledge, and influence related debates. The project will be led by PI Professor Carolina Rito and Co-I Professor Paul Goodwin. The network also counts upon the participation of academics and art practitioners of colour whose work has strongly contributed to a more equitable and diverse scene and has focused on the BAM (i.e., Agency for Agency, Dr Keith Piper, Dr David Dibosa, Marlene Smith); with Midlands groups promoting inclusion led by people of colour (Maokwo, Nottingham Black Archive); and four contemporary art galleries in the Midlands with relevant experience with the BAM (the Herbert Gallery and Museum, Wolverhampton Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary and New Art Exchange.)

The Network 'Writing, Translating, Analysing Dalit Literature' was created in 2014 by Dr Nicole Thiara, Centre for Postcolonial Studies at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), UK, and Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak, research centre EMMA at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (UPVM), France, following the award of an AHRC grant. The research conducted during the 2014-16 grant period explored and analysed Dalit literature in international, multi-disciplinary contexts for the first time since Dalit literature, produced by artists formerly labelled 'Untouchables', emerged as the most significant, prolific and controversial literary movement in India in the last 30 years. Despite the quality, vibrancy and experimental nature of this burgeoning literary tradition, it had received scant attention from the general public or in academia. To raise its profile, in Europe and globally, and to stimulate academic research and public interest, Thiara and Misrahi-Barak organised six academic and public-facing events in the UK (at Nottingham Trent University, University of Leicester, University of East Anglia), France (at UPVM) and India (at Savitribai Phule Pune University and Delhi University). They were a resounding success (450 participants in total) and the network produced a website, a digital communications channel and several publications. Follow-on funding will allow a series of festival events to be organised that focus on Dalit and Adivasi literatures and the performing arts in India, France and the UK. During the period of network funding, it became apparent that further collaboration is needed to ensure that work by socially precarious, economically challenged, and culturally marginalized artists becomes visible and is valued in both national and global contexts. It emerged that drama and poetry were among the most marginalised of genres, and received the least attention from scholars, even though these genres are among the most significant in Dalit and Adivasi activist circles and the most prominent in voicing resistance to continued caste discrimination and social exclusion. Even more significant was the insight we gained into the widespread perception amongst Dalit and Adivasi writers and performing artists that their literary and artistic output requires larger and more varied audiences in order to sustain its creative and experimental development. Dalit and Adivasi folk art forms are in danger of disappearing if they do not receive more support from a pan-Indian Dalit and Adivasi audience, and from cultural and state organisations, and can be both supported and enriched by new 'mainstream' audiences and international recognition.

Public opinion on complex scientific topics can have dramatic effects on industrial sectors (e.g. GM crops, fracking, global warming). In order to realise the industrial and societal benefits of Autonomous Systems, they must be trustworthy by design and default, judged both through objective processes of systematic assurance and certification, and via the more subjective lens of users, industry, and the public. To address this and deliver it across the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) programme, the UK Research Hub for TAS (TAS-UK) assembles a team that is world renowned for research in understanding the socially embedded nature of technologies. TASK-UK will establish a collaborative platform for the UK to deliver world-leading best practices for the design, regulation and operation of 'socially beneficial' autonomous systems which are both trustworthy in principle, and trusted in practice by individuals, society and government. TAS-UK will work to bring together those within a broader landscape of TAS research, including the TAS nodes, to deliver the fundamental scientific principles that underpin TAS; it will provide a focal point for market and society-led research into TAS; and provide a visible and open door to engage a broad range of end-users, international collaborators and investors. TAS-UK will do this by delivering three key programmes to deliver the overall TAS programme, including the Research Programme, the Advocacy & Engagement Programme, and the Skills Programme. The core of the Research Programme is to amplify and shape TAS research and innovation in the UK, building on existing programmes and linking with the seven TAS nodes to deliver a coherent programme to ensure coverage of the fundamental research issues. The Advocacy & Engagement Programme will create a set of mechanisms for engagement and co-creation with the public, public sector actors, government, the third sector, and industry to help define best practices, assurance processes, and formulate policy. It will engage in cross-sector industry and partner connection and brokering across nodes. The Skills Programme will create a structured pipeline for future leaders in TAS research and innovation with new training programmes and openly available resources for broader upskilling and reskilling in TAS industry.