Participation's "Others": A Cartography of Creative Listening Practices

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Participation's "Others": A Cartography of Creative Listening Practices asks how participatory research might be extended to become better able to 'listen' to voices that do not fall within the boundaries of the traditional individual human subject, such as past and future generations, non-human life, radically decentred minds, and objects and technologies. There is a growing recognition that addressing the mounting ecological problems facing environmental, social and mental life requires challenging the place occupied by the individual living human subject as the paradigmatic form of political and artistic agency. Addressing these global challenges requires inventing new ways of listening to alternative voices. This early career researcher-led project will build an international network of expertise in order to add value to the multiple and varied Connected Communities projects that challenge anthropocentric assumptions about the stakeholders of participatory research. The project will synthesize results from at least 15 related projects that address this theme, building a multimedia cartography of diverse projects that share the problem of how to involve agents who do not possess an ordinary 'voice' in participatory democratic processes and research co-production, and how to establish legitimate forms of authority to translate and speak 'for' these actors. The project will facilitate international collaboration to build new methods, approaches, case studies, frameworks and literatures around participation's "others". Activities include workshops in the UK and USA, residential 'slow thinking' retreats, and a symposium. At least six community partners and independent artists, in the UK and USA, will take an active part in the design of the project activities and outputs. The outputs will include an interactive online map, a collection of essays, and a public art project, as well as conventional academic outputs, all aimed at extending the legacy of Connected Communities research. The interactive maps will chart current and previous research projects that invent methods for engaging participation's "others", with search functions specifically developed in line with the plurality of modes of participatory inquiry identified in the workshops. This online resource will help orient, provoke and inspire current and future trans-disciplinary teams in formulating new research projects in a post-human context. A collection of short, accessible reflections on the project will be edited along the model of the well-received "Problems of Participation: Democracy, Authority, and the Struggle for Common Life", which was published by this research team as part of an earlier Connected Communities project. The public art project will be led by the artists at the retreat and will stimulate broader engagement with the inventive methods drawn together.