Research and Development
Ignite Imaginations focuses on delivering creative and cultural work with local communities. We also support research and development work that helps improve the wider environment for creative and cultural activities. Recent projects in this area include the following.
Imagination and Well-being
Ignite Imaginations partnered with the University of Sheffield Psychology Department from 2016 to 2018 to deliver an Arts Council England-funded Research project called Imagination and Well-being. The research investigated how people’s everyday encounters with artistic imagination affects their psychological well-being. Despite the fact that people encounter other people’s imagination in many art forms, such as fiction, visual art, and drama, how such encounters vary in frequency and form and their psychological benefits are virtually uncharted. The project focused on adults from Sheffield and measured variation in cultural experience and its effects on psychological well-being.
Ignite delivered on-the-ground community activities as part of the research as well as delivering a major conference at the end of the research period. The research culminated in a day long conference where over 200 people listened to six speakers and took part in workshops exploring the topics of Imagination and Wellbeing.
Blog post on the research findings:
https://www.igniteimaginations.org.uk/single-post/imagination-and-wellbeing-research-results
Culture Everywhere
Culture Everywhere was a research and development project in 2015 and 2016 exploring how open data sets could be used to shed light on the need for, and impact of, artistic and creative interventions. It looked at the data available, what it did and didn’t tell us, and where the gaps were.
Ignite developed this project with open data social enterprise, The Better With Data Society. It went on to win first prize and development funding through the Nesta/Open Data Institute Heritage and Culture Open Data Challenge.
