School of Humanities academic awarded grant to further research into visual arts and community

Dr Joseph Owen , Research Fellow in the Department of English, School of Humanities, has been awarded a £135k Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant through the new LUCIA–LGA Early Career Researcher Fellowship, exploring how the visual arts can support equitable access to culture, social participation, and help shape future cultural policy.

Joseph will not only lead his own research project, A New Model for Visual Arts Participation, but will also play a central role in the wider programme by convening and coordinating the five other LUCIA projects awarded across the UK.

A New Model for Visual Arts Participation

Running from 1 April 2026 until March 2027, the project will investigate how the visual arts can function as socially engaged practice and as a vehicle for meaningful public participation. Working in collaboration with the Contemporary Visual Arts Network (CVAN) and the Local Government Association (LGA), the project aims to develop a collaborative and equitable model that broadens access to the visual arts and enriches urban cultural life.

The project will deliver:

• A policy brief
• A practice framework
• Two practical toolkits designed to activate visual arts engagement in communities

These outputs will support a range of visual arts spaces – from non-profit studios and commercial galleries to volunteer-led classes and national funding schemes – helping to cultivate inclusive participation at multiple scales.

By drawing on experiences across painting, ceramics, photography, architecture, and other visual arts practices, the project seeks to strengthen how councils, community groups, and government bodies design and deliver cultural policy. This breadth of activity highlights the significant potential of the UK’s visual arts sector, while also signalling the need for new resources and models to unlock that potential fully.

Joseph said: “I'm delighted to be undertaking this work. It is motivated by the belief that the visual arts, in all its dissonance and multitude, can address the most pressing social concerns of our age.”
Joseph’s fellowship is funded through the AHRC Locally Unlocking Culture through Inclusive Access (LUCIA) programme. This new project complements the And Towns series of research projects – also supported by the AHRC – which Dr Owen has undertaken alongside SIAH colleagues over the last few years.

And Towns – engaging with place and place-shaping

And Towns is a series of Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities (SIAH) projects which focus on developing culture-led solutions for towns and small cities, aiming to understand the role of culture and place-based decision making and to creatively transform qualitative data into real-world policy solutions and outputs.
And Towns projects include:

• Towns and the Cultural Economies of Recovery – examining towns and the role of culture in their recovery, specifically during and after the COVID-19 pandemic;
• Feeling Towns – is there a correlation between place attachment and local cultural ecologies? This project used creative methods to understand what pride means to different communities;
• Neighbouring Data – how data on pride, culture, heritage, health and wellbeing can support local authorities and communities to inform their place-based decision making;
• Poetry, Policy, and Place – what role does poetry hold in place-based policy and decision-making? In this project, poetry was deployed as a tool for community engagement and for representing qualitative data, especially felt and lived experience;
• Mansbridge Heritage Project – this collaboration with Abri Housing Association led to the co-production of creative workshops to capture what residents feel and experience about living in the Mansbridge suburb of Southampton.

Mansbridge Heritage Project Toolkit launch

Earlier this month the Mansbridge Heritage Project hosted an event to launch a toolkit developed to provide practical, creative and place-based methods for engaging residents in conversation about pride, heritage and community identity. The toolkit aims to support housing professionals, community workers and volunteers, empowering them to better understand how people feel about where they live. The toolkit moves away from more traditional approaches to public engagement like surveys and helps organisations to build trust by strengthening the voices of residents to inform more responsive and sustainable neighbourhood development.

Highlighting the collaboration and partnership work which underlines both Mansbridge and all And Towns projects, the event showcased the project’s findings and outputs, which included the digitisation of historic photographs and documents, and the creative engagement methods used during the project.