What we do

"Ecology is the study of how living organisms, including humans, interact with their physical environment - Ecology is important because it helps us understand the interdependence between people and nature." (Ecology Society of America).

The study of ecology is critical to the wellbeing of humans and that of all forms of nature. This theme supports an emergent and thriving strand of enquiry that combines ecology as an established facet of scientific research with experimental arts methods.

We are unequivocal in our interest in nature, a thriving natural environment, greater biodiversity and what the arts and ecology offer as an interdisciplinary research agenda. 

This theme encompasses a ‘naturally’ emergent area of research defined by a motivated and active community of collaborating postgraduate and early career researchers, as well as experienced academic researchers at the University of Brighton and beyond. We are situated within, and as a recognised part of, the internationally significant UNESCO Brighton Biosphere and Downs area.

Achievements in this area include:

• Making Nature: Mapping making and nature interations in UK and Indonesia. Gant and Laffiansyah (British Council).
• ‘Rewilding Design’ and ‘Diversity creates diversity. Gant and Sandom (Heritage Lottery and NERC).
• Ecological Citizenship, 'The Wild House'.  Gant, Tooze and Eldridge (Forestry Commission and EPSRC).
• Pavlov and the kingdom of dogs: Storying experimental animal histories through arts-based research explores the viability of arts-based methods for centring animals and their relationships in specific human-animal domains. Adams, Wilson (AHRC).

Image above: An ecology-of-things augmented reality portal linking a locally sourced urban house kitchen to an immersive, interactive feed from the woodland which in turn benefits from regenerative resourcing. Developed as part of the EPSRC-funded Ecological Citizenship ‘Wild House’ project.  .

Medicine often prides itself on the science that underpins it, but we believe that art is equally important, as a way to understand and change the practice of healthcare. We want to see art as more than a decoration on waiting room walls, we need art to resist, persist and flourish in healthcare.

We are interested in what happens when we are not well, and in making sense of illness through art. Art can transgress the patient/professional boundary, helping us to accept that: 

“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1978.

Arts-based research affords us new ways of seeing illness, disability, trauma and caregiving which can resist or challenge mainstream epistemologies. Arts-based practitioner research can illuminate clinical practice, education and leadership, showing us how to change the culture of healthcare, even (and especially) in times of crisis.

Achievements in this area include:

• Doctoral thesis: Comics-based practitioner research in the healthcare humanities
• Developing impact through enabling people to share sensitive and emotive stories as part of the BSMS ‘Ethical preparedness in genomic medicine’ project: Helix of Love, a collection of poems written and co-produced with parents of children with rare genetic conditions exploring the lived experience of rare disease.

Image above: Muna Al-Jawad [aka Old Person Whisperer], illustration from What has medicine done to me? A Research Project through Comics. 2014. (Courtesy of the artist, full copyright retained).

The ways in which individuals and societies make and communicate their stories influences identity, builds understanding and resilience, shares diversity and nurtures equality. 

This research theme considers how storytelling can be used to extend cross-disciplinary communities of practice across health, the humanities and the arts. It operates a programme of symposiums that inform our Creative Writing with Wellbeing BA, and a book series with Intellect.

Achievements in this field include:

• The immobilities of gender-based violence in the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Clothes on our back, exploring the role of storytelling in decolonising pedagogy in Higher Education 

Image above: Responding to surveys that showed unresolved issues around Minority Ethnic student participation within Higher Education, Dr Jess Moriarty and Tony Kalume led community workshops to explore identity and heritage using clothing cultures. Participants devised texts about their identity that they then inscribed using textiles within garments that have significant meaning to them. The workshops also generated material for an exhibition during Black History Month and initiated an interdisciplinary network.

Through the act of making - our choices and uses of materials, and the ways we make our world from those materials - we are involved in critical decisions that impact upon wellbeing throughout society.

This resarch theme brings academic and creative attention to making, materials and craft techniques, with research that is applied to a diverse range of fields, from health to climate change, the impact on education, sustainability and innovation.

Expert understanding comes from a range of scholarly and practice disciplines including fashion, textiles, craft, material sciences and architecture. Research has investigated issues such as the relationship between textiles, repetitive processes and mental health, particularly in relation to the rites of bereavement, as well as creative research into materials to enhance sustainability dialogues in order to bring about change.

Achievements in this area include:

• Remaking Guernica. Nicola Ashmore uses film and commissioned tapestry making to explore political inclusivity and protest.
• Sustainable Materials in the creative industries. Jules Findley’s AHRC-funded work examined fashion and textiles as part of a UK-wide study highlighting waste in many creative industries.
• Textiles and scabies, using textiles as a medium to explore scabies in care homes, in collaboration with Brighton and Sussex Medical School.
• Sussex S.E.E. Chairs AHRC, Design Museum Future Observatory, 2024.

Image above: Sussex S.E.E Chairs AHRC Design Observatory funded project remaking William Morris’ 'Sussex Chair' through the prism of the social, economic and environmental (SEE)-benefit mediated by making resources. The project was formed in partnership with and for the charity Making It Out, which supports individuals moving on from prison, homelessness and addiction.

Performance and Communities celebrates, challenges, disrupts, nurtures and researches the various modes of performance (voice, body, space, movement, language, sound, texture, shape, words) embedded within or working with diverse communities and in a boundless range of spaces.

We consider how work on performance can engage, work with and learn from existing, evolving and new communities of people and how performance impacts on individual and community wellbeing, inclusion and participation. This strand takes ‘performance’ in the broadest sense and is focused on uplifting research into the role of performance in community building and wellbeing.

This theme provides the home needed for a community of scholars, practitioners and students working on the community impacts of performance to create networks and collaborate, developing aspects of performance and wellbeing by expanding in the Centre for Art and Wellbeing’s supportive community of research and practice.

Achievements in this area include: 

• Towards brown gold: Safe and sustainable sanitation in the small towns of Asia and Africa combines social science, law, engineering, microbiology and creative arts to address the challenge of sustainable and safely managed sanitation in rapidly growing ‘off-grid’ urban areas in Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Nepal.
• Telepresence stage for disability performing arts utilises Professor Paul Sermon's research in telemetry for performance to identify new features, techniques and bespoke solutions specifically for the disability performing arts sector.

Image above: As artist in residence at the Korean Disability Arts and Culture Centre (KDAC) in Seoul, inclusive arts researcher Alice Fox brought together four South Korean artists with learning disabilities alongside four artists in residence to make a site-specific performance work, ‘In-Out’, in response to the collections and architecture of the public foyer space in the Seoul Museum of Art.

A sustainable community is one that is economically, environmentally and socially balanced, healthy and resilient.

This theme aims to understand the role of diverse and collaborative arts in helping foster sustainable communities. It investigates issues and opportunities related to healthy ecosystems and biodiversity, collaboration in achievement of low waste and low emission communities, inclusive place-making and neighbourhood development and socio-economic wellbeing. 

Our achievements in this field include:

• Facilitating the circulation of reclaimed building elements in Northwestern Europe A sustainable architecture project that aims to double the amount of reclaimed building elements being circulated on its territory by 2032.
• Waste its mine its yours at wasteland - graced land. The development of new enterprises positively utilising waste for social and environmental change. 
• Co-designing creative design methods through the creation of a community garden. The inclusion of communities in health care engaging with sustainability. 

Image above: The Grangemeade Carehome design project explored ways in which 'circular economy' thinking towards better material resource management could be applied within the context of care. It revealed the value and role of collaborative making using 'waste' and a range of materials to support inclusion of users with complex needs in the 'sustainability' problem and solution space in really relevant and practical ways. These enhanced self-esteem and the material contribution that can be made by diverse members of the community.

Our most recently funded projects