Third ICSC Away-day, 18th June.

The work of UCLan’s new Institute of Citizenship, Society and Change is now well underway, after a busy summer of meetings and events to plan and develop new forms of research. The ICSC’s third away-day (of workshops, discussion and planning) took place on 18th June 2018 at the Tickled Trout Hotel, Preston. This event built on the two previous Institute away-days this year, in January and April which were both held at Preston’s Gujarat Centre.
The Institute CSC now has 36 active members, all research academics from across the different faculties, schools and disciplines at UCLan. The three awaydays have brought this collective strength together to create new forms of transdisciplinary research.
On 18th June we began in the morning with a presentation on recent developments of the Institute, including the hire of new core staff and progress in establishing new collaborative projects and funding. After a group discussion and warm-up session, participants broke off into cross-disciplinary clusters to explore how their different research approaches can combine to address the pressing issues and challenges facing the world today. In these sessions, Institute members worked together on a range of these challenges including sustainability, social inequality, health and citizenship – and the connections between these.

As with the previous away-days, a number of concrete proposals for events and projects emerged from the collective deliberations, which the Institute will now act on.
We would also like to thank the artist and cartoonist Pen Mendonca, who joined us as a ‘graphic facilitator’, presenting key themes emerging from the discussion in colourful wall charts as we progressed. (Above, top) One of Pen Mendonca’s outputs from the day.