Uncovering communities

What is community for and what can it achieve? Professor Shearer West writes on how arts and humanities research can help shed new light on modern society.

It is not mere coincidence that the seven UK research councils (RCUK) – like the RSA - are currently developing a research programme on ‘Connected Communities’, but it will perhaps be a surprise to some that the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is leading on this initiative. The mission of the programme is ‘to enhance economic prosperity, health, sustainability and wellbeing in increasingly interconnected, mobile and diverse communities by systematically addressing the opportunities and challenges they face through multi-disciplinary research’. The programme will aim to engage communities themselves in the research and, while it will embrace a variety of disciplines across the social, medical, natural and physical sciences, arts and humanities research will be a core component.

The continuities that exist between 21st-century communities and those of the past are countered by enormous changes in the very concept of what a community is for and what it can achieve. While contemporary communities continue to share identities, cultures, beliefs, or simply physical environments, they are also more multi-faceted than ever before, and virtual forms of communication have created new communities that transcend geographical boundaries. The challenges of environmental change, an unprecedented scale of cultural and ethnic diversity in cities, new technologies of social networking, demographic changes (including an ageing population) and the collapse of trust in public life are just a few of the new pressures with which contemporary communities are contending.

In order to address these societal challenges, RCUK are revisiting an Enlightenment aspiration to ensure that our researchers are engaged with others outside the academy. Hume recognised in 1742 that the ‘learned’ and ‘conversable’ worlds - or intellectuals and the public - had become divorced to the detriment of both, and he expressed a wish for them to reconnect. Research across disciplines and with communities are two of the ways in which RCUK intends to bring these worlds together in order to address the challenges and opportunities of 21st-century community life.

Research in the arts and humanities is fundamental to this ambition. Community archaeology brings local people together with professional field archaeologists and researchers to examine material evidence unearthed locally, while community history draws upon the deep understanding of local history, culture and contexts that non-professional researchers can contribute to the study of the past. Practice-led research in the field of community arts involves researchers, practitioners and the public in collective endeavours that are frequently and beneficially undertaken in deprived areas.  

Existing projects reinforce these connections. Simon Popple at the University of Leeds has worked with the BBC on archive footage of the 1984-5 miners’ strike to consider how regional audiences interact with images from their own turbulent history, and the ‘Design against Crime’ project at Central St Martin’s has brought designers together with local police to reduce bike theft in Camden.

While working with communities is fundamental to the ethos of this research programme, arts and humanities research has a particular contribution to make to active citizenship, social cohesion, wellbeing, tolerance and civic responsibility. When Pierre Bourdieu wrote about ‘cultural capital’, he represented this as potentially divisive and hierarchical. Individuals who accrued ‘cultural capital’ were seen to have a necessarily more powerful position in their societies than those who did not have access to it. The evolving concept of ‘civic capital’ contains more democratic and empowering connotations. The emphasis here is on universal accessibility of both knowledge and culture to enable individuals to develop a deep understanding of the history, identity, values and cultural diversity of their communities and through this to become more engaged citizens.

With the empowering potential of civic capital as a way forward, research in the arts and humanities can contribute to a paradigm shift in the way communities function. Sustainability is not only a technological issue, but one that involves individual and communal beliefs, behaviour and actions. In the context of the collapse of trust, the abdication of responsibility and the loss of civility that unfortunately are all too prevalent in contemporary public life, research in arts and humanities contributes to a future-facing ethical, moral, cultural and social landscape. Research in these areas engages with the relationship between the past, present and future by exploring how the past is and was understood, narrated and reconceived. Working with communities, researchers will be able to address what communities and individuals value, why and how they value it, and how values are defined, identified, expressed and transmitted.  


Professor Shearer West FRSA, is director of research for the Arts and Humanities Research Council.


RSA Citizens of the Future
This article reinforces preliminary findings from the RSA's flagship Citizens of the Future project, which suggests that developing 'civic capital and 'pro-social behaviour’ at a local level is vital if a shift towards a more participative model of local democracy in which citizens are at the centre of decision-making processes is to be realised. Based on a partnership with Peterborough City Council, Opportunity Peterborough and the Arts Council East, the ambitious Citizens of the Future project represents a programme of work led by the RSA to develop practical and durable solutions for cultivating civic engagement in Peterborough city.