The Story of Lidice and Stoke-on-Trent: Towards Deeper Understandings of the Role of Arts and Culture

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This project seeks to improve our understanding of the potential of arts and culture to develop reflection and empathy across geographical divides. It offers a unique case study: that of the relationship between Stoke-on-Trent and Lidice, a tiny village in the Czech Republic that was destroyed by the Nazis on 10 June 1942. In response to this horrific event, local Doctor and Councillor Barnett Stross launched the 'Lidice Shall Live' campaign in September of the same year, rallying the local working people of Stoke-on-Trent to donate to a fund that ultimately contributed to the rebuilding of the village after the war. That ordinary working miners and pottery workers donated in many cases up to a week's wages to this campaign in the middle of the hardship of the Second World War is an astounding testament to the ability of people to demonstrate empathy, compassion and understanding. The village of Lidice today expresses its story through arts and culture: visitors from all over Europe travel there to visit the largest rose garden in Europe, and the museum and art gallery that sit adjacent to the new village. A commemorative event takes place each year on the anniversary of the tragedy, attended by around 5000 visitors and Ambassadors from all over the world. In recent years, the links between Lidice and Stoke-on-Trent have been refreshed with cultural exchanges between the two places, involving a range of arts projects and events that celebrate the cultural ties between the two places. It is striking that in all of the civic engagement and partnership working recently developed between these places, we choose to explore, express and celebrate these ties almost exclusively through arts and culture. Our project addresses the limited understandings that we have of the relationship between arts and culture and empathy, compassion and understanding, despite the fact that evoking such responses is often an implicit objective of arts and cultural activities. Since there is little literature that directly addresses the topic in question, this project seeks to generate new knowledge and understandings by engaging with academics and creative practitioners to explore their understandings of empathy, compassion and understanding; how this impacts on practice, and in what ways this supports and demonstrates the value of arts and cultural activities. The research will focus specifically on story-telling approaches in the contexts of community and participatory arts projects and museums and exhibitions. It will therefore consider both active engagement and the visitor experience. A working group of interdisciplinary academics and creative practitioners will contribute to the development of new approaches and tools that will be utilised when designing and evaluating new arts projects. The findings and tools will be tested by applying them to the chosen case study. It provides a unique opportunity for creative practitioners in both geographical locations to contribute to addressing the research objectives in a variety of ways. As well as analysing existing arts and cultural activities by applying the research findings and outputs, there will also be a funding proposal developed for a new research-informed arts project. This further demonstrates the value of this particular case study, as the relationship between Stoke-on-Trent and Lidice is an on-going one, and there will therefore be opportunities to test, sustain, and further develop the outcomes of this research project in the context of future activities. The findings and outputs of the project will be shared in ways that reach academics, practitioners and the wider public. The project will offer new insights and understandings of the value of arts and culture in terms of empathy, compassion and understanding, and we anticipate that this will influence policy makers as well as contributing to more informed practice across a very wide geographical area.