PLaCE : Place Location Context and Environment
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PLaCE is a grouping of creative, practice led, academic research centers that address issues of site, location, context and environment at the intersection of a multiplicity of disciplines and practices. Originally located in the Department of Art and Design at UWE, Bristol, England, in the summer of 2011 PLaCE became an international consortium of four centers, with PLaCE at UWE Bristol (now PLaCE, England) being joined by PLaCE, Minnesota (University of Minnesota Departments of Art and Landscape Architecture; College of Design) and PLaCE, Scotland (University of Dundee, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design); and PLaCE, Australia (University of Melbourne).
As part of its commitment to international interdisciplinary work, the PLaCE Consortium and several of its constituent members are also founding members of the MST collaborative: • www.mappingspectraltraces.org.
Mapping Spectral Traces is a trans-disciplinary, international group of scholars, practitioners, community leaders and artists who work with and in traumatized communities, contested lands and diverse environments. MST network members have worked collaboratively and individually on projects that ‘map’ the unseen and unacknowledged difficult pasts that continue to structure present-day social relations.
The MST collaborative differs from PLaCE research centres in that it consists of individuals from multi-disciplinary backgrounds, many of whom are independent or self-employed, or who work for local communities. While there is a large overlap in their concerns, MST and PLaCE are separate research consortia.
PLaCE is committed to investigating, re-imagining, analysing, re-invigorating and intervening in the following areas of concern: commissioning and curating in and out of place; site-specificity and situated practices; creative intersections with urban and rural geographies; interdisciplinary approaches to renewal and the environment generally; and the intersections of memory, place, and identity - including issues of commemoration and conflict - through its research projects, creative programmes, educational activities and international partnerships. PLaCE pursues this mission in the context of the continual redrawing of boundaries - between art, design and media practices, their theorization, and congruent disciplines and practices. It recognizes the centrality of environmental issues and sustainability to art, media and design education – seen as a vital interface between individuals, society and the world as environment - by working with peers and by feeding research back into the curriculum through interaction with staff and through direct contributions to the learning environment.
The various PLaCE centers will also act as agents for ensuring the dissemination and impact of this wide-ranging research as it finds application within the community, as a commitment to socially engaged practices.
© 2012 University of the West of England, Bristol