Media, Communication and Production

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/13

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Bring me a Souvenir: Performing Herstory on Ayr beach
(Taylor & Francis, 2020-04-17) Bianchi, Victoria
This article employs Massey’s conceptualisation of gendered space to explore the ways in which the unrepresented narratives of women in heritage sites can be promoted through site-specific performance practice. It focuses on the development and creation of Souvenir, a site-specific play performed at Ayr beach in South Ayrshire, Scotland in 2017. The project involved the development of a public performance work inspired by stories shared by local women at reminiscence workshops. Implementing a practice-as-research (PaR) methodology, this performance was created to celebrate the narratives of ‘ordinary’ women so often unrepresented in heritage spaces. The aim of this study was to extrapolate principles of feminist performance practice that can be used to respond to the lack of women’s stories, termed ‘Herstory’, in such sites. This article delineates the development process of Souvenir, noting the particular frameworks and methods employed to foreground Herstory. The performance process drew upon Smith’s mythogeography and Berger’s hydrological dramaturgy in order to explore how creative practice could highlight the feminist possibilities of the space. The combination of practice and theory serves to interrogate the performance methods used in representing marginalised narratives of women, while simultaneously exploring how personal conceptualisations of space can be altered through such work.
Building a capabilities framework with learners from high-poverty neighbourhoods
(Routledge, 2021-07-15) Ward, Sarah; Bynner, Claire; Bianchi, Victoria; Chapman, Christopher; Ainscow, Mel
Children and young people from high-poverty neighbourhoods are key stakeholders in the debate on improving educational practice and developing local capacity for sustainable change. However, they are rarely invited to participate in any consistent way. The capabilities approach (CA) is a philosophy that can help to focus our efforts to engage with and empower learners to contribute consistently to debates on policy and practice. Children and young people living in high-poverty neighbourhoods face significant barriers in relation to educational equity. Factors such as poor housing, food insecurity and ‘disadvantaged neighbourhood’ are associated with poor educational outcomes, as well as emotional and behavioural issues. The CA aims to address social justice concerns by generating dialogue on wellbeing with those who are directly experiencing inequalities. The result is a framework of wellbeing goals based on what each person has ‘reason to value’.
Co-creating a Rooted Herstory: Participatory practice with primary school children, and the case of Anne Livingstone, Countess of Kilmarnock
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-12-04) Bianchi, Victoria
This article explores the development of a new herstorical play co-created with primary school children in Kilmarnock, Scotland. The play, which centred on the life of Countess Anne Livingstone Boyd, was produced through a series of workshops with the children and facilitated by the author. The process of exploring herstory with school children is the principal focus of this article. Through an exploration of methods and responses from participants, the author suggests key principles for the planning and delivery of such creative work in the primary classroom, and how these can be understood within a new framework termed rooted herstory.
Flexible characterization: Herstorical performance in heritage sites
(Cambridge University Press, 2020-12-03) Bianchi, Victoria
This article explores how performance and character can be used to represent the lives of real women in spaces of heritage. It focuses on two different site-specific performances created by the author in the South Ayrshire region of Scotland: CauseWay: The Story of the Alloway Suffragettes and In Hidden Spaces: The Untold Stories of the Women of Rozelle House. These were created with a practice-as-research methodology and aim to offer new models for the use of character in site-specific performance practice. The article explores the variety of methods and techniques used including verbatim writing, spatial exploration and Herstorical research in order to demonstrate the ways in which women’s narratives were represented in a theoretically informed, site-specific manner. Drawing on Phil Smith’s mythogeography and responding to Laurajane Smith’s work on gender and heritage, the conflicting tensions of identity, performance and authenticity are drawn together to offer flexible characterization as a new model for the creation of feminist heritage performance. Victoria Bianchi is a theatre maker and academic in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow. Her work explores the relationship between space, feminism and identity. She has written and performed work for the National Trust for Scotland, Camden People’s Theatre and Assembly at Edinburgh, among other institutions.
Glasgow Green: Alternative Histories
(Open Virtual Worlds, 2023) Bianchi, Victoria; Henry, Andy; Miller, Alan
In the app, you’ll find words, photos, augmented reality sculptures and videos that share these stories, alongside space for you to share your own stories of the Green in the Get Your Voice Heard section. There is also lots of information about how you can get involved in the local community, and in causes you’re passionate about. The stories we’ve gathered have been organised into ten different themes that open up some of Glasgow Green’s fascinating history. You can explore everything today, just the bits that interest you, or come back another time; the stories will still be right here.
The Green and the seen/unseen: strategies for reimagining urban heritage in Glasgow Green
(Taylor and Francis, 2025-04-21) Bianchi, Victoria; Henry, Andy
This paper explores the dynamic and multifaceted heritage of Glasgow Green, the oldest urban park in Scotland. Recognising the historical and contemporary significance of public tourism spaces, this research examines the interplay between authorised and marginalised heritage narratives within the park. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, incorporating archival research, practice-as-research, and community interviews. This methodological bricolage illuminates the plurality of stories within Glasgow Green, highlighting the importance of both recognised and overlooked histories. Drawing on key themes – such as access, ownership, spatial rules and behaviours, and marginalised or hidden narratives – this study develops and proposes a new framework: the Seen/Unseen. The Seen/Unseen framework is conceptualised as a tool for researching and representing the heritage of public parks. Within this framework, the diverse histories of Glasgow Green are brought together, offering a call for sustained public engagement and providing a tool to enhance the inclusion of marginalised voices in heritage tourism.
Intergenerational learning and place-making in a deindustrialized locality: “Tracks of the Past” in Lanarkshire, Scotland
(Cambridge University Press, 2022-05-19) Gibbs, Ewan; Henderson, Susan; Bianchi, Victoria
This paper contributes to scholarship on the long experience of deindustrialization. It emphasizes contemporary place-making in navigating the much-changed socioeconomic landscapes that the closure of mills, mines, shipyards and factories have left behind. The ‘half-life of deindustrialization' suggests these experiences have been received through understandings of labour and community with origins in the industrial era. ‘Tracks of the Past' was a school-based education project themed around workers' occupation of Caterpillar's earth-moving machinery plant in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The occupation was a response to Caterpillar's shock closure announcement and the loss of 1,200 jobs. It lasted 103 days between January and April 1987 when closure was reluctantly conceded. A Caterpillar Workers Legacy Group (CWLG) commemorated the occupation's thirtieth anniversary. During 2018, academics collaborated with the CWLG to develop a curriculum for a local high school class. ‘Tracks' produced lessons where students engaged with archival sources and physical objects, interviewed members of the CWLG and conducted online research. The ‘learning journey' montages that the students produced combined conversations in 2018 with sources from three decades earlier, often reflecting on the occupation as a historical episode in a highly localised context. Others implicated the closure within an international pattern, linking Caterpillar’s divestment to the actions of multinationals in the contemporary global economy. In neither case did the invocation of the occupation lead to a straightforward translation of the occupation into contemporary workplace justice issues as the CWLG had hoped. However, these results did suggest a creative deployment of the past that rationalised the occupation with reference to contemporary deindustrialized contexts. These findings demonstrate the utility of the half-life through a lingering industrial past, but also demonstrate the need to conceptualise agents or custodians of labour history and challenge the linearity of passing time that an incrementally receding industrial era implicates.
Not fewer resources, but different: Creative responses to practice and research during Covid-19
(2022-06-30) Bianchi, Victoria; Mastrominico, Bianca; Schrag, Anthony
The cultural and creative industries have been one of the hardest-hit by the international Covid-19 pandemic. In the wake of this seismic shift, there has been a proliferation of events and publications exploring how artists have responded to living and working in a pandemic. There exists a sense of lamenting those things that seem lost or, at the very least, placed on pause. However, while Covid-19 has undoubtedly had a lasting impact on practitioners, the temporary digitisation of artistic practice has resulted in new possibilities for practice and national / international collaboration. It was this sense of possibility that was the focus of a seminar series recently held at Queen Margaret University, which forefronted the potential positive adaptations within practice research due to Covid-19. Certainly, the cultural and creative domains have been significantly impacted by the Covid-19 crisis, but the series aimed to argue that creative practitioners are experts in exploring new ways of thinking and being and suggested that in these difficult times we don't have fewer resources; rather we have different resources. The central thrust of these seminars, therefore, was to reflect on positive changes to practice. Keywords: online performance, covid adaptation, practice research, media, performance
The path to CauseWay: Developing a feminist site-specific performance practice at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum
(Department of Drama & Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2015) Bianchi, Victoria
This article analyses CauseWay (2014), a feminist site-specific performance work created for the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum and Cottage (RBBM) in Alloway, South Ayrshire. The performance, which explored the history of two suffragettes who attempted to blow up the cottage in 1914, challenged the dominant, androcentric heritage narrative of the RBBM by exploring the hidden female history of the space. Drawing on Doreen Massey’s concept of gendered spaces, this article applies a feminist lens to the relationship between performance and space. Beginn–ing with an exploration of the gendered nature of heritage tourism, the narrative of the suffragette attack is discussed. The development of CauseWay is then analysed by employing a theoretical framework of performance studies, human geography and heritage studies. Practical discussions of intertwining feminist theory with site-specific performance are offered with a view to further exploring the relationship between heritage, site, gender and performance. The article concludes by considering the relationship between gender and heritage and proposing live performance as a potential tool for the development of a more representative heritage sector.
Seminar Report: Not fewer resources, but different: Creative responses to practice and research during Covid-19
(Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, 2022-06-30) Bianchi, Victoria; Mastrominico, Bianca; Schrag, Anthony
The cultural and creative industries have been one of the hardest-hit by the international Covid-19 pandemic. In the wake of this seismic shift, there has been a proliferation of events and publications exploring how artists have responded to living and working in a pandemic. There exists a sense of lamenting those things that seem lost or, at the very least, placed on pause. However, while Covid-19 has undoubtedly had a lasting impact on practitioners, the temporary digitisation of artistic practice has resulted in new possibilities for practice and national / international collaboration. It was this sense of possibility that was the focus of a seminar series recently held at Queen Margaret University, which forefronted the potential positive adaptations within practice research due to Covid-19. Certainly, the cultural and creative domains have been significantly impacted by the Covid-19 crisis, but the series aimed to argue that creative practitioners are experts in exploring new ways of thinking and being and suggested that in these difficult times we don't have fewer resources; rather we have different resources. The central thrust of these seminars, therefore, was to reflect on positive changes to practice.