Creative placemaking

This Research & Knowledge Exchange Doctoral Project brief summarises our priority areas of research interest under the heading of: Creative placemaking

We welcome all research degree applications aligned with and in response to this brief.

Project brief details

Creative placemaking invokes arts and culture as legitimate tools for revitalisation and regeneration. These tools can be utilised to explore, interpret, and animate the environment through curating narratives around the local heritage and culture of society.

Through organic or deliberately purposive actions the essence of a place can be captured, animated, and celebrated to produce more vibrant and inviting spaces. This allows for meaningful places to emerge and can shape the nature of connection found between humans, non-humans, and nature. Further, by the utilisation of seeing place and space through different and perhaps alternative perspectives, offers innovative ways of seeing and being within placemaking.

The tangible, intangible, and mixed elements of place can be explored within this brief, to animate open spaces, create storyscapes, or curate peoplescapes. But caution is required, as whilst the unique and distinctive attributes of place may be explored, there may be a call to protect the ecological and social systems of place from commodification and commercialisation. The brief therefore requires you to position yourself as a co-creative and mutually evolving participant in the ecosystem. This will require you to immerse yourself within a place and explore what nature requires to ensure the community can forge a stronger connection with place alongside the agency of place. The impact of any creative practice should be assessed through a regenerative lens, to carefully consider the people you wish to represent and explore the ecosystem within which they are positioned. As a result, all causal puzzles are welcomed, and interest from creatives, event-based practitioners, and researchers are encouraged.

Strategic alignment

Projects deriving from this brief are expected to sit within the Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy and the following Department.

Centre	Centre for Heritage, Culture and Society
Department	Cornwall Business School

All successful research degree project proposals must emphasise a clear alignment between the project idea and our Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy.

Project brief lead

Natalie Semley

Project Supervisor: Natalie Semley

Growing up in a traditional seaside resort on the North coast of Cornwall, Natalie Semley has a detailed understanding of the tourism industry. Her career path has taken many turns and her experience varies, from delivering visitor services to working in academia.

Natalie's engagement in industry and academia over the years has helped to establish her passion for, and understanding of, the tourism industry. She has been recognised for her contribution by the Tourism Management Institute and is currently employed as a lecturer in Sustainable Tourism Management.

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