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Professor Timon Screech's scholarship on under-researched areas of Japanese art, history and culture has reached a range of audiences outside of academia. Notably, it has produced a significant impact on cultural life, demonstrated most clearly by its influence on the renowned author David Mitchell in the writing of his best-selling historical novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, set in Japan in the late 1700s (2010). Mitchell drew extensively upon several of Screech's publications to inform and, ultimately, enrich his work of fiction, furnishing it with historical contextual detail unavailable in any other scholarly source.
Members of the University of Exeter's Programme for Creative Writing and Arts have translated their research-as-practice into regional, national, and international impact by introducing innovative forms of contemporary writing to a range of audiences through publications, several of which have had notable public acclaim; an events programme; and training workshops. Funded projects to develop new writing have strengthened relationships between academic and creative sectors and inspired new and successful writing careers. The main impacts of this research-as-practice have been to:
University of Glasgow researcher Zoë Strachan has helped Scottish Opera to expand and diversify its audience through the creation of two new operas, Sublimation and The Lady from the Sea. Submission was commissioned as part of Scottish Opera's innovative Five:15 programme, designed as a platform for the development of new operas by new artists with the aim of attracting new audiences to the art form. Five:15 brought together five pairs of well-known writers and composers who were `new to opera' to create five 15-minute `shorts', to be performed at venues across Scotland. By encouraging younger people to engage with opera, the project was intended to address funder and public perceptions that its audiences come from a narrow and ageing demographic. Sublimation (2010) played to sold-out venues around Scotland and was chosen by Cape Town Opera in South Africa to open its new programme in November 2010, being performed to a total of 3,437 people. The Lady from the Sea had its premier at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2012 before touring to Glasgow, reaching a combined audience of over 1,800. Both productions attracted critical acclaim in broadsheet and music press.
Research carried out primarily by Robert Crawford helped raise the profile of Burns's poetry in the media, serving to generate greater interest in, and engagement with, his cultural legacy. The Bard, Robert Burns, A Biography (2009) was featured in Scottish Government-sponsored public events to mark the 250th anniversary of Burns's birth, a major focus of Scotland's 2009 `Homecoming' event, generating significant additional tourist revenue for the Scottish economy. Subsequently Crawford's research was central to a £20M+ refurbishment of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway, responsible for a significant increase in visitor numbers and bringing much-needed tourist revenue to the area. Finally, Crawford's research inspired Norman McBeath to new ways of thinking that resulted in the creation of a new art project. This case study therefore involves several types of impact: (1) promoting public interest in Burns and interpreting literary heritage to a broad audience; (2) assisting government initiatives to stimulate tourism and create economic prosperity at both national and regional levels; (3) inspiring new forms of artistic expression. The users of this research are the Scottish Government; the National Trust for Scotland; a freelance photographer; the tourist sector of Scotland and the reading and museum-going public.
Dr Paul McDonald is an award-winning writer whose comic novels, short stories, and poetry have established him as a leading figure in the literature of the Black Country. His creative output is informed by scholarly research into humour and humour-writing that has national and international reach, and has contributed to the public knowledge of the history and cultural significance of humour. Specifically, he has:
The Stevenson project, in collaboration with the National Library of Scotland, has built bridges between general and scholarly readers of a major, popular Scottish author. The project helped to change the ways in which members of the public understand the significance of editorial work and book-history. Providing readers with practical skills with which to approach varying editions of Stevenson's work, it promoted broader understanding of how we encounter the work of major authors. It has also influenced the ways in which the National Library of Scotland (NLS) communicates its central mission to the public, by demonstrating how to expand appreciation not just of literary works themselves but also of the Library's collections and its role in preserving and presenting our literary heritage.
James Hogg (1770-1835) is an important but hitherto little known nineteenth-century Scottish author and songwriter. In recent years, Stirling research has demonstrably expanded the audience for Hogg's songs and poetry in Scotland, the wider UK, and USA. Contemporary writers and artists have become more engaged with Hogg's work, and among the public this research has generated greater appreciation of the Scottish literary and music tradition in particular, while promoting Scottish cultural heritage in general, at home, and around the world.
The Department has worked proactively to bring creative writing out from the institutional sphere and into the public domain. While creative writing is often perceived as a niche activity largely confined to university writing programmes, Warwick's writers have broken new ground with their approach that writing can take all forms, that creativity is open to everyone, and that writing has the power to intervene meaningfully in the world. This commitment is demonstrated through a range of activities that include active involvement in campaigns for the freedom of expression, the foundation of distinctive literary prizes, widespread communication of interactive material through social media, and the establishment of new publishing houses and literary magazines.
The impact of Professor Nigel McLoughlin's work has two main, interrelated facets. The first is the public dissemination of his poetry through a variety of media, including mass media. His work takes the Irish troubles as a main context, and addresses themes of violence, invasion, identity, belonging, and tradition. He has published widely and has been invited to perform his work to public audiences at numerous literary festivals. The second is his academic research into pedagogy and poetics. Here his academic work examines the creative process and principles of making poems and his research reflects how one can explore and teach the various textual, musical, rhythmic, formal and thematic considerations of poetry. His own poetry bears out this reflective relation to expressivity through its perpetual experiments with formal and musical considerations, imagery and the relationship of the poetic whole to multi-sensory images and embodied thought.
Making a major contribution to English recovery research in the Unit, work associated with this case study has brought to a wider public:
1) the works of writers whose livelihoods were principally earned through manual labour or craft skills;
2) radical and neglected writing across a range of periods, genres and cultural contexts.
This has led to impact through enhancement of public understanding of literary and cultural value.
Underpinning research began in 1994; subsequently three principal routes to impact have evolved:
1) the development of open access online resources, in particular, `Labouring-Class Poets Online';
2) NTU publishing imprint, Trent Editions, which combines scholarly research with dissemination of neglected radical writing;
3) engagement with literary societies and related organizations.