The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies: connected collaboration, connected communities and connected impact

伯明翰当代文化研究中心（CCCS）是现代英国学术界最大的品牌之一。它激发了一个学科领域的创立。它开创了对大众文化、亚文化、种族和大众传媒的分析，并引入了新的理论方法。2014年将是它成立50周年。伯明翰大学承诺举办一次会议来评估该中心的工作和影响，以纪念这一事件。它还开始根据与该中心有关的主要人物的文件的证词，从斯图尔特·霍尔的文件开始，建立一个中央情报中心档案。该项目将侧重于CCCS的工作实践。虽然CCCS的产出是众所周知的，但CCCS工作人员的合作在多大程度上对他们的研究如何产生、他们的发现如何传播以及他们对城市和国家的影响至关重要。CCCS不仅对学术理论和研究产生了深远的影响，而且对更广泛的文化经济产生了巨大的影响。这项提议的论点是，这是该中心创新教学和研究实践的直接结果。只有2-3名工作人员，工作是由工作人员和研究生之间的合作进行的，通常利用与他们周围城市的主题的联系。教职员和学生一起成立阅读小组，开展研究项目，为硕士课程制定课程，并塑造中心的未来方向。他们不仅通过与大学同事的互动，还通过与伯明翰乃至更广泛地区的政策制定者和不同社区的互动来做到这一点。这意味着我们现在所说的影响是中央协调委员会工作的组成部分。此外，这意味着CCCS的遗产不仅局限于学术领域，而且持续存在于文化经济中：许多学生在CCCS期间不仅寻求对周围城市的直接影响，而且在伯明翰和英国的文化产业中担任重要职位时，他们继续从事文化研究。为了开展这项研究，该项目将扩大和增加对目前在伯明翰收集的材料档案的访问。它将与前成员进行一系列深入而全面的口述历史，这些成员要么继续具有开创性的学术生涯，要么参与社区工作，特别是在伯明翰。该项目将通过易于使用的在线资源、展览和更广泛的公众参与，使这些档案可以访问。该项目将设在伯明翰大学当代历史中心，并与吉百利研究图书馆（特别收藏）合作。学术兴趣和议程将为与CCCS有关的论文的存放、归档和编目提供信息，并将确保档案以最适合研究和公共使用的在线形式呈现。同样，对CCCS工作实践的学术研究将与档案保管员的工作一起进行：口述历史将成为档案的一个可访问部分，材料将被分析，然后将包括在新的米德兰兹艺术中心的展览中。该项目将不仅提供在该中心全盛时期学术生活的人种志，而且将展示学术研究如何产生更广泛的影响。该项目将促进中心本身所鼓励的参与形式。在这里，影响和研究不能被分开对待。通过与档案保管员、文化和遗产管理者的合作，以及通过展览和学校的工作与更广泛的公众的合作，它将展示文化研究的主题——社区本身——如何与学术研究联系起来。

The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) is one of the biggest 'brands' of modern British academia. It inspired the creation of a disciplinary field. It pioneered the analysis of popular culture, subcultures, race and the mass media as well as introducing new theoretical approaches. The year 2014 will mark the 50th anniversary of its launch. The University of Birmingham has committed to marking this event by hosting a conference to assess the work and impact of the Centre. It has also begun to establish a CCCS archive, based on the depositions of the papers of leading figures associated with the Centre, beginning with the papers of Stuart Hall. The project will focus on the working practices of CCCS. While its outputs are well known, less appreciated is the extent to which the collaborations made by CCCS staff were fundamental to how their research was produced, their findings disseminated and the impact they had on the city and nation. Not only did CCCS have a profound impact on academic theory and research, but it also greatly influenced the wider cultural economy. It is the contention of this proposal that this was a direct consequence of the Centre's innovative teaching and research practices. With only 2-3 members of staff, work was undertaken by collaborations between staff and graduate students, often utilising connections with their subjects in the city around them. Staff and student together set up reading groups, launched research projects and set out the curricula for the MA programmes, as well as shaping the future directions of the Centre. And they did so by interacting not only with colleagues across the university but with policy makers and diverse communities across Birmingham and the wider region. This meant that what we now refer to as impact was integral to the work of CCCS. Moreover, it means that the legacy of CCCS was not confined to the academic arena, but persists in the cultural economy: many students not only sought a direct influence on the city around them while at CCCS, but they continued to engage with cultural studies as they took up important posts in Birmingham's and the UK's culture industry. In order to carry out this research, the project will extend and increase access to the archive of materials currently being collected at Birmingham. It will undertake a series of in-depth and comprehensive oral histories with former members who either went on to have groundbreaking academic careers or who became involved in community work, particularly in Birmingham. The project will make the archive accessible through easy-to-use online resources, an exhibition and engagement with wider publics. The project will be based at Birmingham University's Centre for Contemporary History and is conceived as a collaboration with the Cadbury Research Library (Special Collections). Academic interests and agendas will inform the deposition, archiving and cataloguing of the papers relating to CCCS, and will ensure the archive is presented in an online form that is most suited to research and public use. Likewise, the academic research into the working practices of CCCS will be undertaken in conjunction with the work of the archivists: the oral histories will become an accessible part of the archive and materials will be analysed which will then be included in an exhibition at the new Midlands Arts Centre. The project will offer not only something of an ethnography of academic life during the heyday of the Centre but will show how academic research can have a wider impact. The project will foster those forms of engagement encouraged by the Centre itself. Impact and research are not to be treated as separate here. In its work with archivists, cultural and heritage managers, and with the wider public through its work in an exhibition and in schools, it will show how the very subjects of cultural studies - communities themselves - can connect with academic research.