Cultural Placemaking in East London Studentship

Applications are invited for the fully-funded AHRC Collaborative PhD studentship held at the Institute for Creative Futures, Loughborough University London, in collaboration with the Hackney Wick Fish Island Community Development Trust and Creative Wick, on the theme of Cultural Placemaking in East London.

The award is being made through Techne: a consortium of nine universities in London and the South-East that form an AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership which awards studentships each year across a range of arts and humanities disciplines. Techne supports outstanding students in the pursuit of research through innovative, interdisciplinary, and creative approaches.

Hackney Wick and Fish Island (HWFI) is a world-renowned cultural quarter, home to over 600 artists’ studios, making it an area with one of the highest concentrations of artists in Europe. The creative and artist communities living and working there have long struggled with issues of gentrification, loss of studio space, rising house prices, redevelopment and displacement – common to creative urban communities worldwide – and continue to do so to this day. HWFI has largely weathered the storm, retaining a distinctive creative identity.

This project seeks to understand the challenges between artist and regeneration in East London – working closely with two community-based arts organisations; and, working with the archives of the Greater London Authority (GLA) over the past 25 years, the project seeks to understand the role of governmental policies in creative placemaking.

We invite proposals for a project that seek to explore how cultural policy has shaped the HWFI creative cluster and how the artists and communities there have influenced policy-making. Proposals might consider what the story of HWFI tells us about fostering sustainable creative ecosystems, the role of urban cultural policy and the role of local communities in urban place-making.

The candidate will have access to a unique GLA cultural archive, and to a range of HWFI community assets and the network of artists and practitioners in the area; by working with the University Policy Unit, they will also receive guidance and support on policy interactions with the GLA and other partners.

The CDA will be co-supervised by Professors Graham Hitchen and Mikko Koria, of the Institute for Creative Futures at Loughborough University in London, and Alex Russell and William Chamberlain of the HWFI Community Development Trust.

Apply now: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-degrees/phd-opportunities/cultural-placemaking-in-east-london/