Practising Place | Elaine Speight, Amelia Crouch, David Cooper

This book is the latest project within the wider 'Practising Place' programme, which explores our relationship with place through a collection of co-authored texts, visual essays, creative projects and conversations between artists and academics. Featuring new and existing artworks and covering a range of themes, including rural mythologies, urban noise, boundaries and seaside nostalgia, this highly visual book demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary discourse and presents an approach to the study of place as a creative and critical practice. Since 2013, the programme has developed relationships between artists and academics from fields such as human geography, landscape archaeology, history and sociology, with a view to generating new understandings of places through the sharing of ideas and approaches. These conversations have been made public through commissioned essays and a series of events across the north and Midlands in venues such as the Bluecoat (Liverpool), Tyneside Cinema (Newcastle), and Nottingham Contemporary. Building on these activities, the publication features creative explorations of places across the north of England including a Cumbrian Center Parcs resort, Stanlow Oil Refinery, working-men's clubs, Manchester Central Library, and the edgelands of Preston and Sheffield, as well as more general themes such as urban planning and digital space. Practising Place has been developed by In Certain Places, an art-led research project based at the University of Central Lancashire.