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REF impact found 17 Case Studies

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Making films and changing lives: enriching community life and film culture through The Arbor

Summary of the impact

Conceived, directed and edited by Clio Barnard, The Arbor (2010) explores the life, work, and legacy of the playwright Andrea Dunbar. Among many other prizes and nominations, the film won the Grierson Trust Award for Best Cinema Documentary, and The Guardian First Film Award, both in 2011. It has achieved a wide-ranging and significant impact, informing public debate, transforming the lives of those depicted in and working on the film, bolstering cultural heritage in West Yorkshire, generating sustainable employment in the film industry, influencing fellow filmmakers and making a significant contribution to UK cultural life.

Submitting Institution

University of Kent

Unit of Assessment

Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies

Visual Mass Observation: Facilitating public engagement with a new collaborative ethnography

Summary of the impact

The MyStreet project explores a new collaborative anthropology by training and facilitating filmmakers in in using techniques some of which were inspired by study of Mass Observation. This is achieved through a competition and online film archive with a global audience, and the annual Open City Docs film festival which has led to new partnerships with private and community organisations, and inspired a similar project in Prague. Through DocinaDay, about 350 students and community groups from high-exclusion areas received training in filmmaking and a screening platform, with positive impacts on social cohesion and individual welfare.

Submitting Institution

University College London

Unit of Assessment

Anthropology and Development Studies

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Human Society: Anthropology
Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies

Cultural Influence through Critical Writing on Documentary

Summary of the impact

Elizabeth Cowie's scholarship centres on the intersections of art, politics and the cinema. The impact of her research lies in the challenges she makes to existing paradigms, challenges that resonate within and beyond the academy. Widely taught in Higher Education (HE) across Europe, North America, and Australia, her research on documentary is also particularly significant for its influence on artist filmmakers. Insights gained from her arguments on aesthetics, spectatorship, and political engagement have been taken up by artists whose own work seeks to explore complex ideas about art, politics, trauma and memory.

Submitting Institution

University of Kent

Unit of Assessment

Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies

A Scottish Self-Portrait: The Northern Lights Documentary Project

Summary of the impact

Northern Lights was a University of Edinburgh research project that engaged members of the Scottish public in documenting their lives on camera. Its objective was to create a novel, multi-perspective documentary portrait of the Scottish nation in 2012. The project had enormous scope: press and media impact reached over 4 million people. Northern Lights made its impact by empowering the 1,500 individuals who contributed video portraits to explore issues such as addiction, disabilities and mental health. Northern Lights thus opened up a unique opportunity for participants to represent their experience, voicing, for themselves and for a wider, national audience, often poorly understood and neglected sectors of society.

Submitting Institution

University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

Modern Languages and Linguistics

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

'I Am Breathing': raising awareness about, and lending a voice to, people with Motor Neurone Disease

Summary of the impact

I am Breathing, a feature-length documentary directed by Emma Davie (ECA) and Morag McKinnon (unaffiliated) and released in 2012, builds on experiments in co-creativity in film, and explores the ethics and the aesthetics of making a film with, rather than about a man dying of Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Neil Platt wanted to use the film to raise awareness about MND, and since his death, I am Breathing has not only been screened 242 times in thirty-four countries, but has been distributed in concert with the MND Association, raising awareness about the disease, contributing to increased sign-ups to the Association, and lending people with MND a new public voice.

Submitting Institution

University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Neurosciences
Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies

Rebound Project

Summary of the impact

REBOUND is an interactive, media-based drug prevention programme targeted at young people in Europe. Researchers at the University of Greenwich worked with young people to redesign the curriculum and materials for a British audience and produce a series of short educational films which are being used in the programme's resilience training. Preliminary results show a reduction in drug and alcohol harm amongst participants including a drop in binge drinking, reduced cannabis use, increased search for help and greater harm reduction knowledge. After using the films, young people are making their own videos as educational tools to pass on their learning.

Submitting Institution

University of Greenwich

Unit of Assessment

Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services
Studies In Human Society: Sociology

Towards a new British Cinema

Summary of the impact

Elliott, Haillay and Young are central to our research in film-making. Theirs is a socially-engaged but elegiac cinema of contemporary times. Elliott (writer and director), Haillay (producer) and Young (writer/producer) have, over the REF period, collaborated with one another, and with others, to create an influential body of work. The innovative approaches to narrative and the visual beauty of their cinematography have had an important impact on cinema audiences nationally, even more so internationally. They have participated in numerous international film festivals and won awards. With new productions currently at an advanced stage, the trajectory of their research is still upward. The standing of their backers and finance-providers attest to their growing international prestige, and audiences for their work continue to grow.

Submitting Institution

Teesside University

Unit of Assessment

Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies

The Act of Killing

Summary of the impact

Michael Uwemedimo's research on re-enactment in non-fiction filmmaking has contributed to the development of innovative methods and approaches to documentary practice as a means of precipitating critical national and international reflections on histories of political violence. The Act of Killing (2012, 116mins) demonstrates the potential of film production and exhibition as a means of popular mobilization and political intervention through which accepted discourses around history and genocide are reframed. This work has had a significant impact in the following contexts:

  • Influencing critical understandings of documentary practice and reaching new audiences;
  • Intervening in and reframing the cultural representation of the 1965-66 Indonesian genocide both nationally and internationally
  • Mobilising debate about Indonesia's history of political violence.
  • Contributing to wider public understanding of basic standards of human rights.

Key indicators of the reach of this impact include the range of stakeholders in the project, such as local advocacy networks in Indonesia, the Indonesian Government's National Human Rights Commission, human rights NGOs, and international documentary makers, programmers and audiences.

Submitting Institution

Roehampton University

Unit of Assessment

Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management 

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Changing Minds: Engaging with Science through Creative Documentary

Summary of the impact

This research, led by Amy Hardie and the Scottish Documentary Institute from 2006 onwards, investigates the practice of communicating and engaging with science through creative documentary filmmaking, developing a screening strategy heralded as 'a completely different paradigm of cinema' (5.1). By drawing out human stories in award-winning, critically-acclaimed films, it has mainstreamed complex subject matter about stem cell research, redressing public and media misconceptions along the way. One film has been watched over 112,000 times in 190 countries, while behind the camera, it has forged cross-disciplinary collaborations between artists and biological scientists that have been discussed and admired by policy-makers in Brussels and Tokyo.

Submitting Institution

University of Edinburgh

Unit of Assessment

Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Psychology
Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies

The Grierson Trust and British Documentary Film (CS2)

Summary of the impact

Jo Fox's research on the British Documentary Film Movement has benefited:
(1) the Grierson Trust, by enabling its members to contextualise the Movement's purpose and, through them, assisting film-makers to have better understandings of the documentary form and its heritage;
(2) nominated and award-winning film-makers, by promoting their work to an international audience and to the film and television industries;
(3) Lambent Productions, by profile-raising and assisting it to secure further contracts with the BBC and other television stations;
(4) the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, by promoting the significance of Film Australia collections to wider audiences.

Submitting Institution

University of Durham

Unit of Assessment

History

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

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