ECR Spotlight: Research Impact Matters

In this talk, I will reflect on my artistic research in site-specific performance with a focus on intertidal ecologies. I will explore a case study based on work from the SOAK LAB (June 2024), three days of workshops in Plymouth waterside locations, alongside a discussion of research outputs in the form of new audio works developed in collaboration with local partner Soundart radio. This talk invites conversation about 'impact' in relation to site-specific performance approaches.

Sarah Blissett is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and dramaturg working at the intersection of visual art and performance. She is lecturer in Drama at the University of Plymouth where her research investigates how site-specific performance can remember and reimagine entangled human-nonhuman narratives at a time of climate crisis. Sarah is also co-director of SOAK Live Art CIC, a platform for experimental performance by South West artists.

The problem is that you've got to get the funding first and to do that you have to describe the beneficial impact that you're going to make. But what if you don't know what you want to do, exactly? Or what if you kind of do know what you want to do but part of what you want to do is to invite your participants (once you've got some) to figure out what they want to do? Then there's the question of what they would consider to be 'impactful'...

Drawing upon John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy, this talk has a go the instrumentality of the contemporary impact agenda in academia and proposes a model of abductive research through which impacts may be stumbled upon. A revised concept of impact will be presented, focusing less on scientific measurement of apriori value categories and more on provisional, cumulative assessments of the benefits that public participants may draw from taking part in artistic research activities.

Dr Jamie Harper is a Lecturer in Drama. As a practitioner-researcher of playful participatory performance, his scholarly work has been published in The Drama Review, Research in Drama Education and the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. His artistic work has been presented by a wide variety of arts organisations including the Camden People's Theatre, The Yard, Serpentine Galleries, the Baltic Centre for Participatory Art and The Box.

With an agenda dominated by government and institutional assessment, it’s easy to think of impact only from the perspective of “what is needed for the REF”. Taking a step back from this, I will draw on research findings about how academics embed impact within their research, to explore the idea of impact as part of academic identity and what this idea then means for early career researchers and their careers. Though conceptualising impact in this way, I will outline a more holistic and creative rather project or KPI-led approach to impact, and will suggest activities that may help build and develop impact in meaningful and productive ways, as well as outlining the support that is available for this within the Faculty, University and beyond.

Louise is Senior Impact and Knowledge Exchange Manager in FoAHB. She currently leads the development of impact within the Faculty, which includes co-leading the £600,000 AHRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) and managing several strategic external partnerships. She has also worked with academics to develop and write significant numbers of impact case studies for REF 2014 and REF 2021, and is now for REF 2029. She is co-author, with Professor Andy Phippen (Bournemouth University), of the 2024 Routledge monograph “Exploring Research Impact in Academia and Why it Matters” and is currently leading the development of an impact ethics toolkit following a research project (with Professors James Daybell and Mark Reed, and Dr Eric Jensen).