“Give Me Your Hand and I’ll Teach You How To Build”: Travelling Practices of Participation in Housing, from Albania to the UK

In this thesis two stories of participation in housing entwine across space and time. The first involves a migrant community living in an informal, self-constructed neighbourhood called Bathore on the outskirts of Tiranë, Albania, who benefitted from a participatory upgrading programme with a local planning NGO, from 1995-2005. The second involves a group of individuals in housing need who built a prototype house in collaboration with the researcher, entitled ‘Protohome’, which was temporarily sited and open to the public in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, in 2016. The aim of this research is to locate and test alternative approaches to housing informed by, and embedded in, the conditions of the contemporary UK context: austerity, welfare cuts and caps, rising homelessness, housing precarity and the residualisation of social housing. The research is not simply a design exercise, but seeks approaches to housing which are collaborative, participatory and socially sustainable and which have learning and transformational potential for those in housing need at their centre. Consequently, the research translates learning from Bathore, where the practices and experiences of housing have been formed through conditions of protracted scarcity. Through a critical examination of the settling and house-building process, as well as the participatory strategies used in the upgrading programme, the objective of this research is to mobilise learning from Bathore for the Protohome project. In doing so, the research draws from post-colonial scholarship, and activates this through the philosophies and practices of Participatory Action Research. Within this translocal learning process, where knowledge is translated between seemingly different contexts, the research seeks to deconstruct preconceptions about who or where holds the ‘authentic’ knowledge with regards to urban development and housing processes. As a result, in the stories presented here, of designing, building and collaborating, knowledge is deeply embedded in place, people and histories, yet this knowledge can be remapped and used to inform an entirely new context. The research thus moves between the particularities of place and more general observations. It is simultaneously located and dislocated. The translocal lens employed thus goes beyond comparison, it actively tests approaches from one location to the other. Through this translocal learning process the research uncovers how participation in housing may operate as a tool for learning, capacity building and for the creation of new social networks. Yet this is not without the interplay of power. Furthermore this is set within an often obstructive institutional context and an increasingly punitive welfare state, which makes this story complicated and, at times, despondent. However, the research highlights that organised and politicised forms of participation in housing may open up routes for potentially marginalised people to ‘speak to’ and ‘with’ formal institutions of power. In the practical testing of housing approaches on a public-facing live build, the Protohome project not only grounds these conceptual ideas, but also offers an innovative approach to research methodology and dissemination through praxis, which has multi-scalar impacts. On the basis of findings, the thesis tentatively proposes an agenda for ‘participatory housing’, where housing is a route to learning as opposed to an economic product or mere bricks and mortar

Debating the foundational economy

The idea of the Foundational Economy has the potential to radically disrupt dysfunctional old assumptions about economic development strategy. It is already being used to do so in places like Barcelona and Swansea, where it works with trends to remunicipalise public services, build local wealth through anchor institutions, and promote mutualism. The Foundational Economy offers a new way of conceptualising the very purpose of economic development, and how it can improve the lives of the many, not just the few

Debating the foundational economy

The idea of the Foundational Economy has the potential to radically disrupt dysfunctional old assumptions about economic development strategy. It is already being used to do so in places like Barcelona and Swansea, where it works with trends to remunicipalise public services, build local wealth through anchor institutions, and promote mutualism. The Foundational Economy offers a new way of conceptualising the very purpose of economic development, and how it can improve the lives of the many, not just the few

THE EXPANDED CITY - STAGE TWO

For 10 years In Certain Places has focused on and shaped developments within the city centre of Preston. The Expanded City is a three-stage programme of artistic research, interventions and events, designed to inform a series of planned infrastructure projects on the outskirts of Preston. Part of Preston’s ‘City Deal’ – a central government initiative which aims to encourage economic growth by addressing strategic infrastructure challenges – the scheme includes the creation of over 17,000 houses as well as new roads and amenities. In the first stage of The Expanded City project (2015-2016) commissioned artists Olivia Keith, Gavin Renshaw, Emily Speed and duo Ian Nesbitt and Ruth Levene investigated the physical and cultural topography of the outskirts of Preston, ‘deep mapping’ the areas marked for growth. The artists share an interest in boundaries, routes, edges and the urban/rural binary, and work across a range of media, including film, photography and performance. This second phase running from 2017 until 2018 was a continuation of the artists' active research and saw the project expand with a series of Network events which brought external perspectives from experts and local communities directly into the development of the artists’ work. These included; Ruth Levene and Ian Nesbitt's 'Precarious Landscape Bus Tour' with archaeologist Bob Johnston; Gavin Renshaw's 'Routes in, Routes Out' in conversation event with cycling journalist Jack Thurston; Olivia Keith two week residency at the Final Whistle Cafe in Cottam culminating in a workshop 'Traces of Place'; Emily Speed's in conversation event with architect Lee Ivett on the topic of playspace 'What do we need in a Space for Play?'; and Lauren Velvick's 'Open House' event, an informal evening of music and discussion about the politics and practicalities of housing, leading to the creation of an 'Open House' publication. The second phase featured the 'Lie of the Land' symposium, a day of artworks, presentations and conversations, which drew on research undertaken by the artists to explore how our everyday lives are shaped by the ownership, management and development of land. The symposium featured talks by Peter Hetherington – journalist and author of the book 'Whose Land is Our Land: The use and abuse of Britain’s forgotten acres', and Julia Heslop – a Newcastle-based artist whose self-build housing project, 'Protohome' (2016), examined participatory alternatives to mainstream housing provision. The event also included a bus tour to sites in and around Preston, during which The Expanded City artists presented their research into issues of housing, cycling infrastructure and the changing landscape. The symposium was accompanied by 'The Expanded City Map' created by artist Claire Tindale. The map geographically locates and gives details of the main research insights generated through the projects by the commissioned artists This phase saw the finalisation by The Decorators of two pieces emerging from their research the 'Learning from Preston' report and the 'Garstang Road Stories' audio artwork. (https://podtail.com/en/podcast/the-decorators-on-air/garstang-road-stories/) Ruth Levene and Ian Nesbitt's research culminated in May 2018 with them curating 'Notes from a Precarious Landscape' – a community exhibition curated by in a vacant house in a new development in Cottam, North Preston, which included contributions from residents of Preston and its surrounding villages. The exhibition explored the ways in which the land around the city is changing or has changed in the past. Emily Speed’s research in phase two of The Expanded City culminated in the project ‘Model Village?’ in June 2018, during which she worked with members of the public, including local residents and school pupils of all ages to construct a temporary model village on the site of a housing development. Participants were asked ‘What would your dream place to live or play in look like?’ and had the opportunity to use coloured clay to build their ideal home, and make a mark on the village by creating, extending, squashing or customising its buildings, trees, parks and streets. Gavin Renshaw's research in this phase concluded with the production of a cycling map for Preston which collates routes, information relevant to cyclists, such as storage, topography and traffic black spots, and existing cycle infrastructure within a single, visual inventory. Olivia Keith's project 'Traces of Place' involved a two-week residency at the Final Whistle Café in Cottam during the summer of 2017, in which she collated memories and contributions from local people.. As a direct result of her work and the conversations hosted, Olivia was invited to contribute to the 'Streets of Change: Beattie’s Preston and Beyond' exhibition at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, where she created 'Setting in Place: The Making of a Jellied Map of Nether Bartle' a performance installation in two separate venues, Bartle Hall and Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston. Another outcome from her research was the creation of a linocut 'Nether Bartle map' as a prompt for discussions around naming and place. The Expanded City has been developed in response to an invitation from Preston City Council, to inform a programme of infrastructure projects on the outskirts of the city proposed by a £430m City Deal scheme. The City Deal scheme aims to deliver new jobs and housing, by addressing strategic transport, environmental, community and cultural infrastructure challenges

Cohort profile: HealthWise Wales. A research register and population health data platform with linkage to National Health Service data sets in Wales

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Insight into the evolution of the Solanaceae from the parental genomes of Petunia hybrida

Petunia hybrida is a popular bedding plant that has a long history as a genetic model system. We report the whole-genome sequencing and assembly of inbred derivatives of its two wild parents, P. axillaris N and P. inflata S6. The current assemblies include 91.3% and 90.2% coverage of their diploid genomes (1.4 Gb; 2n=14) containing 32,928 and 36,697 protein-coding genes, respectively. The Petunia lineage has experienced at least two rounds of paleohexaploidization, the older gamma hexaploidy event, which is shared with other Eudicots, and the more recent Solanaceae paleohexaploidy event that is shared with tomato and other Solanaceae species. Transcription factors that were targets of selection during the shift from bee- to moth pollination reside in particularly dynamic regions of the genome, which may have been key to the remarkable diversity of floral color patterns and pollination systems. The high quality genome sequences will enhance the value of Petunia as a model system for basic and applied research on a variety of unique biological phenomena

Hybridization as a threat in climate relict Nuphar pumila (Nymphaeaceae)

Field studies and conceptual work on hybridization-mediated extinction risk in climate relicts are extremely rare. Nuphar pumila (Nymphaeaceae) is one of the most emblematic climate relicts in Europe with few isolated populations in the Alpine arc. The extent of introgression with related lowland and generalist species Nupharlutea has never been studied using molecular methods. All biogeographical regions where N.pumila naturally occurs in the neighbourhood of the Alpine arc were sampled and studied using nuclear microsatellite markers. Furthermore, we used forward-in-time simulations and Approximate Bayesian Computation to check whether an introgression scenario fits with the observed admixture patterns and estimated the demographic parameters associated with this process. Our study confirms ongoing hybridization between N.pumila and N.lutea and validates it by the use of population models. More than 40 % of investigated N.pumila individuals were admixed and hybrids were found in over 60 % of studied populations. The introgression is bidirectional and is most likely a result of very recent gene flow. Our work provides strong evidence for rapid extinction risk and demographic swamping between specialized climatic relicts and closely related generalists. The remaining pure populations of N.pumila are rare in the Alpine arc and deserve high conservation priority

Copper complexes with potential radiopharmaceutical applications

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