‘Changing Places’ – The Sheffield Hallam University Space & Place Group’s theme for 2021/22 – a Call for Ideas

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“The more things change, the more they stay the same” (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose)

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1849)

The SHU SPG’s theme for this academic year will be ‘Changing Places’. As with last year’s (very successful) ‘Haunts’ theme, the plan is to have a number of self-contained events, each of which finds an inventive (and interdisciplinary) way to explore the year’s theme.

This is an invitation to anyone (at Sheffield Hallam University or beyond it) who would like to propose a contribution to the group’s examination of ‘Changing Places’, contributions could include:

• creative ways of recording both the material processes of changing places and the lived experience of such change (and whether by inhabitants, instigators or passers by)
• consideration of the role of changing places as a device within visual art and literature
• critical evaluation of documentary portrayals of changing places (e.g. Manctopia)
• analysis of stakeholder networks within bringing about (or resisting) changing places
• performative work that explores the interconnection of the two senses of changing places (i.e. changing identity and changing location)
• studies of the management of how places are changed, and what strange contingencies have to be provided for in order to make change happen either safely, or at all
• reflection on the connection between fear of change and the materialities of place
• philosophical reflections on incremental change (the Ship of Theseus) and/or attempts to change a place back to its ‘original’ form

Dependent on what expressions of interest we receive we will devise a programme of events accordingly to run between January and July 2022. At least some of these events will be online (thus enabling disembodied participation).

A couple of strands that we already have under development are:

• ways of researching the changing campus
• ways of re-presenting construction sites as modes of public engagement

We also have some interest in sessions on:

• evaluating how the covid-19 pandemic has caused places like hotels and convention centres to be reconfigured as places of healthcare
• considering how heritage conservation motivations are squared with urban regeneration projects within Sheffield city centre.

We intend to have a workshop to scope out a programme of events, and this will be held online (via Zoom) on Wednesday 15 December 2021, 2-4pm. So, please submit details of your proposed contribution to me (Luke Bennett: l.e.bennett@shu.ac.uk) by 10 December 2021, for consideration at that programme-planning meeting (at which all will be welcome to attend – I will circulate log in details nearer the time).

Picture reference: Luke Bennett, city campus development site, Sheffield (September 2021)

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