FOAR2000 - Projects for 2019-20
There are nine projects running as part of FOAR2000 2019-20.
There are places still on the following projects:
Community Faith Exhibition
Project Leads: Melanie Prideaux and Patrick Bourne, Assistant Community Curator, Abbey House Museum & Kirkstall Abbey
In 2020, Abbey House Museum in Leeds will be hosting an exhibition with the community exploring the topic of Faith. We are looking for willing students to help us create and facilitate a programme of events throughout the lifetime of the exhibition, which will run until the end of 2020. The project aims to provide a good experience of collaborating with Leeds Museums and Galleries but also the potential to work with a variety of groups and individuals from different backgrounds. The ability to think creatively and have enthusiasm for the topic of Faith is essential, experience of working on staging community events beforehand might be advantageous but is not essential. The post will be based at Abbey House Museum and Kirkstall Abbey but may involve occasional travel to places of worship or other religious centres. It would also be desirable if successful candidates can be available on Sunday 17th November 2019 from 11am til 4.30pm to assist in the running of our annual ‘Light For Leeds’ interfaith event at Kirkstall Abbey.
Men, Women and Care
Project Lead: Jessica Meyer
The Men, Women and Care project is a European Research Council-funded project which is compiling a database of 22,829 personal pension files relating to British soldiers disabled as a result of service in the First World War. Students on the strand will use images of primary source documents from these files to enter data into the Access database which has been designed for the project. They will use this experience to design a finding aid or users' guide for the database which will be published alongside the database when it is made publicly accessible. Students on this strand will thus be asked to consider not just the historical importance of the primary source material but who will use this material and how they might use it in future, thus making a significant contribution to historical practice.
Tibetans in China
Project Lead: Timothy Thurston
The everyday life of Tibetans in China is rapidly changing. The People’s Republic of China’s policies have drastically altered traditional lifeways—moving nomads into fixed dwellings, enclosure movements, limiting numbers of monks, and encouraging urbanization—while the emergence and affordability of new technologies has provided tremendous opportunities for Tibetans to engage with and consume an increasing amount of content from around the world. As Tibetans enthusiastically adopt and adapt to these new technologies and artforms, the digital realm has become a dynamic space for reformulating what it means to be Tibetan in the twenty-first century. And yet, scholarly attention to these changes and adaptations is disappointingly sparse.
In this module, we will examine digital Tibet. From hip-hop to social media, to documentary filmmaking, live streaming, and new religious practices, we will examine the Tibetan experience of the digital world in contemporary China. Combining background reading with active experience and interviews directly with some of the key figures in Tibet’s digital realm. Students will conduct interviews online (in Chinese) with Tibetan hip-hop artists, software developers, filmmakers, and more to examine digital Tibet. In doing so, they will gain experience with interviewing, public communication, and digital storytelling, as well as video editing, audio editing. Due to time differences, some interviews may need to be conducted at unusual hours. Because most of the interviewees do not speak English, students will need a decent command of the Chinese language.
Skipton’s First World War Training and Prisoner-of-War Camp
Project Lead: Anne Buckley
This project will help you to learn more about the First World War and in particular what life was like for German prisoners of war in Britain. You will develop a range of transferable skills including research skills, time management and working in the museum and heritage sector.
For the last three years a team from the University of Leeds and the Craven and the First World War project based at Craven Museum in Skipton have been uncovering the forgotten story of the town’s First World War military training camp, which then became a prisoner-of-war camp for over 900 Germans. The work has included the translation of a 330-page book written by the German prisoners about their experiences in the camp.
A number of archaeological digs have taken place on the site of the camp and have unearthed some exciting objects. You will be developing an activity pack to be used alongside the box of ‘finds’ for use in schools and in Craven Museum. The aim would be to use an object as a starting point to explore an aspect of life in the camp.
There are no particular time or travel requirements for this project, although you will be given the opportunity to visit the site of the camp and the museum in Skipton.
You will need to be enthusiastic, creative and willing to work as part of a team.
The following projects are running 2019/20 but are full:
LGBTQ lives from the 1960s to the present
Project Lead: Richard Cleminson
This research project centres on LGBTQ lives in Leeds from the 1960s to the present and brings to bear a comparative perspective with another European country such as France, Portugal or Spain during the same period. It seeks to recuperate voices from the past and assesses their resonance in today's Leeds and beyond. Students will research the impact of the 1967 partial decriminalization of homosexuality in Britain and of Stonewall in 1969 on emerging subjectivities, visibility and public discourse, especially in the press, in Leeds and other European localities. It will assess the understandings of identity and will plot the physical presence of queer spaces from the 1960s onwards.
Sex and relationships ethics in schools
Project Lead: Natasha McKeever
This project will involve producing either a set of resources, lessons, or an event, which could be delivered by you and/or used by teachers in secondary schools or sixth form colleges to promote good sex and relationships ethics among the students. We will seek to get interest from at least one local school and will also work on ways to promote the materials produced. This project could benefit schools by saving them time producing lessons and resources, and it recognises that some school students might be more open about sex with university students than with their teachers, and might be more willing to engage with materials produced by them.
You will research key issues in sex and relationship ethics, consider which are most important for young people to think about, and then decide on the best way to encourage thinking about these issues. Issues which might be included are: #MeToo, consent, body positivity, sexuality, gender relations, ‘sexiness’, porn, and how to navigate difficult issues in relationships. This might include designing a series of lessons, resources, and/or an event, all of which could be added to a website. You will develop skills in teaching, lesson design, communication, and possibly web design and promotion.
You don’t need experience of teaching or of studying ethics to apply for this project, enthusiasm and an appreciation of the importance of the subject area are enough.
The project is not likely to involve ‘out-of-hours’ activities, but it might involve some travel to a local school.
Exodus – Refugee Stories from Leeds
Project Leads: Chris O’Connor, Kash Arshad, Kerri Wood & Alison Fell
For this project students will be working on researching refugee stories in Leeds and developing a short 15 minute audio/video documentary of these stories. This documentary will then be aired along side a 45 minute performance of Exodus, written by Chris O’Connor and directed by Kash Arshad.
Exodus is a radio play, performed live, which details the story of a family having to flee Leeds to Africa due to the onset of nuclear war in Europe. The piece will be accompanied by a musical score so there will potentially be the opportunity to look at musical influences from the specific origins of each story and this could be incorporated into the music for the piece.
Students will be working with local refugee groups and will be developing their research, interviewing and creative skills in order to best tell the stories they uncover. Videography or editing skills would be desired but not essential. A passion for theatre and telling stories in a creative medium is also desired but not essential.
Radicals of Leeds
Project Leads: Tess Hornsby Smith, and Antony Ramm, Librarian-Manager Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library
Leeds has a great tradition of radicals, from poets such as Tony Harrison or Tom Maguire, political activists such as Suffragettes Mary Gawthorpe and Leonora Cohen, chartists Robert Nicoll and John Francis Bray as well as anti-slavery campaigners George Donisthorpe Thompson and Wilson Armistead. We also have radicals in technology and science such as being the home of moving pictures, the birthplace of the discoverer of oxygen and the “world’s oldest continuously working railway”.
Leeds’s contribution in the UK is often overlooked and we want you to help raise awareness of these pioneers. Working with the wealth of resources in Leeds Central Library as well as other archives in the city, such as the Special Collections and the Thoresby Society, you will identify radicals that you would like to showcase and come up with a strategy to share their stories. This project will culminate in developing an Out There Challenge, https://www.facebook.com/OutThereChallenge/, which could be run for both university students and members of the public. You don’t need to have any experience with archives!