Museums and other heritage institutions often invite their visitors to contribute content to museum collections and exhibitions for a variety of purposes: to gather feedback and assess the effectiveness of their exhibitions, to enrich their collections with first-hand accounts of experiences with their objects, or simply to engage their audiences in interactions with their contents at a deeper level. Such examples date almost a century back, however, the whole notion of visitor-generated content has taken on completely new meaning with the advent of the social web. Users of the social web (including social networking sites, blogs, wikis, etc.) increasingly expect to be asked for their opinions and comments and to be offered opportunities to actively contribute rather than passively consume online content. Heritage institutions are already responding to this with a variety of projects that seek content from their online and/or on-site audiences. However, the sector yet lacks best practices for these projects to draw upon in order to tackle the many ethical and practical challenges of soliciting, using and disposing of visitor content. It is now critical to bring these projects together under a dedicated and structured forum to exchange experiences, to identify critical issues and challenges, to map future research agendas, and to encourage good practice. This network will provide this forum through four structured events, which will focus on the following topics: - The Shape of Things: New and Emerging Technology-Enabled Models of Participation through visitor-generated content - "It's my content 2.0" - IPR, ownership and ethics - "But it's my content too" - Democracy, trust and moderation - The Shape of Things to Come The events are intended to delineate and advance the debate over visitor-generated content versus institutional content as well as to unveil possible synergies. In doing so, they will contribute significantly to our understanding of the issues and challenges involved in integrating visitor content within heritage institutions, and will advance our practices and approaches.

George Eliot's novel Middlemarch, set in a fictional version of the city of Coventry, will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2021; the year in which Coventry itself is UK City of Culture. This project will reimagine George Eliot's radical artistic vision of 'provincial life' in the Midlands through creative collaborations in Coventry across 2021. There is evidence from a previous AHRC project led by PI Livesey that public interest in Eliot's life and legacy is sometimes held back by the perceived difficulty (and length) her work, but that this can be overcome through creative engagements with her work in the shape of new writing, the visual arts, and research-led social media campaigns. This project will work with diverse communities in Coventry in 2021 to retell Eliot's story and the ground-breaking literary experiment of Middlemarch, with the people living in the city which it fictionalised. The project will work with local and family history groups to build a collaborative online exhibition, telling the story of 19th century Coventry through a dozen professions and institutions that feature in the novel. The exhibition research will be in partnership with the Herbert Museum and Coventry Archives, and Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery and be told through materials in their archives and collections. This collaboration, drawing on Livesey's expertise in literature and public engagement, will enhance the ongoing work of these museums as they develop a new interpretation strategy for their extensive collections relating to Eliot. In order to draw fresh attention to Eliot's significance as an artistic innovator for audiences unfamiliar with her novels, Co-Investigator Olsen will work in dialogue with Livesey to research and direct an experimental short film. The film, 'Of that Roar Which Is...', will use Olsen's own poetic and filmic language to respond to Eliot's art of attention to life forms that might otherwise go unnoticed. The work will demonstrate Eliot's ongoing cultural influence of contemporary practice and draw on the physical landscape of contemporary Coventry and the collections of museum and archive partners. Building on Olsen's previous creative reinterpretations of museum collections and reputation for research-led film-making, the new film will be shown at partner museums. It will form a useful model for long-term reflections on the place of contemporary arts in reinterpreting the narratives of established collections. The final strand of the project will bring scenes from Eliot's novel to life in three sites in central Coventry during 10 public performances in autumn 2021. Partners Dash Arts will lead devising workshops with community groups in Coventry. The participatory process will identify key themes from the novel for contemporary Coventry. Participants will be offered opportunities to take part in the professional production, supported by Warwick Arts Centre, Principal Partner in Coventry City of Culture. Founded in 2005 Dash, develops productions, events and participation projects that enhance diverse audience's understanding of other peoples and cultures through an artistic lens. 'Scenes from Middlemarch' will use Eliot's novel and Livesey's research to open out conversations with often overlooked middle of Britain through participatory devising and performances. Emphasis is likely to fall on the novel's interest in narratives of public health, and the power of bankers, exploring trust and communication in a changing community.

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.)