Exploring the Boundary-Crossing Nature of ‘Creative Placemaking’: The Stove as ‘Adaptor/Converter’

The Stove is a cultural organization based in Dumfries and Galloway, in the South of Scotland, that works alongside their local community within their particular context, with a vision to “use arts and creativity to encourage, to gather, learn and bring life back to our town centre and wider region.”[1] Such place-based, community-oriented, creative activity, however, is not a new phenomenon and there are significant historical examples that exemplify this practice: From 1968 to 1978, the artist David Harding became Town Artist during the construction of Glenrothes New Town (Scotland) in which he was committed to “involve the people of the town in making their own contribution to their own physical and cultural environment.”[2] The Black-e (Originally the Blackie) in Liverpool similarly began operating in 1968 as the “the UK’s first community arts project”[3] where artistic practices were central to address the concerns of local communities, and has been operating for over half a century now. The Craigmillar Festival Society[4] began in 1962, operating with a cultural methodology to speak to the site-specific concerns of the local population including industry, employment, identity, among other subjects and, despite a pause from 2015 – 2021, has recently been reinvigorated by citizens of Craigmillar looking to artistic activities as a way to speak to their specific contexts. More recently, other similar projects such as Rig Arts (Inverclyde) or WHALE Arts (Mid Lothian) operate in their localized area, using a creative methodology to explore the intersection of people and place, including interventions into education, social life, civic governance, and food production.[5] Alongside these artistically driven projects, there are a multitude of place-oriented policies and funds within the UK that have guided a host of short- and long-term projects, including the Creative People and Places fund (Arts Council England), Place Partnerships (Creative Scotland), Place, Space & People, and Spatial Policy (Arts Council Ireland), and Ideas, People, Places (Arts Council Wales), to name a few.http://field-journal.com/editorial/exploring-the-boundary-crossing-nature-of-creative-placemaking-the-stove-as-adaptor-converterinpressinpres

Understanding Creative Placemaking: A Literature Review

Anthony Schrag - ORCID: 0000-0001-8660-7572 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8660-7572This working paper, Understanding Creative Placemaking: A Literature Review, presents the first phase of commissioned research in relation to a major regional Placemaking project in Scotland. The purpose of this paper is to broaden the understanding of a specialised type of Placemaking known as Creative Placemaking and situate it within the broader practice, in order to consider how the broad notions of these terms relate to what is being developed in Scottish rural contexts. This paper’s publication correlates with an increasing interest in placed-based approaches within Scottish cultural and economic policy and is likely to be of interest to a wide variety of different stakeholders including lecturers, researchers, leaders, practitioners as well as policymakers (Scottish Government, 2020; Scottish Government, 2022). As such, this paper has consulted both scholarly and ‘grey’ literature sources in an effort to provide a holistic understanding of this topic that may be useful to all interested parties.https://www.qmu.ac.uk/research-and-knowledge-exchange/working-paper-series/qmu-understanding-creative-placemaking-a-literature-review/pubpu

Amine- and Sulfide-sensing Copper(I) Iodide Films

Copper(I) iodide films were cast onto glass from solution. The CuI films absorb vapor-phase amine and sulfide molecules, producing a range of photoluminescent emission colors. Spectroscopic data suggest the presence of low energy CuI cluster-centered transitions

National Evaluation of the Culture Collective programme Part one: ‘Unprecedented and revitalising’ - Emerging Impacts and Ways of Working: Reflections from the first year of the Culture Collective, Reporting from Queen Margaret University March 2023

David Stevenson - ORCID: 0000-0002-8977-1818 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8977-1818Anthony Schrag - ORCID: 0000-0001-8660-7572 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8660-7572The Culture Collective is a network of 26 participatory arts projects, shaped by local communities alongside artists and creative organisations, and funded by Scottish Government emergency COVID-19 funds through Creative Scotland. This report captures a snapshot of the programme a year into their work.https://www.creativescotland.com/resources-publications/research/archive/2023/national-evaluation-of-the-culture-collective-programmepubpu

Prevalence and predictive value of ICD-11 post-traumatic stress disorder and Complex PTSD diagnoses in children and adolescents exposed to a single-event trauma.

BACKGROUND: The 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) made a number of significant changes to the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We sought to determine the prevalence and 3-month predictive values of the new ICD-11 PTSD criteria relative to ICD-10 PTSD, in children and adolescents following a single traumatic event. ICD-11 also introduced a diagnosis of Complex PTSD (CPTSD), proposed to typically result from prolonged, chronic exposure to traumatic experiences, although the CPTSD diagnostic criteria do not require a repeated experience of trauma. We therefore explored whether children and adolescents demonstrate ICD-11 CPTSD features following exposure to a single-incident trauma. METHOD: Data were analysed from a prospective cohort study of youth aged 8-17 years who had attended an emergency department following a single trauma. Assessments of PTSD, CPTSD, depressive and anxiety symptoms were performed at two to four weeks (n = 226) and nine weeks (n = 208) post-trauma, allowing us to calculate and compare the prevalence and predictive value of ICD-10 and ICD-11 PTSD criteria, along with CPTSD. Predictive abilities of different diagnostic thresholds were undertaken using positive/negative predictive values, sensitivity/specificity statistics and logistic regressions. RESULTS: At Week 9, 15 participants (7%) were identified as experiencing ICD-11 PTSD, compared to 23 (11%) experiencing ICD-10 PTSD. There was no significant difference in comorbidity rates between ICD-10 and ICD-11 PTSD diagnoses. Ninety per cent of participants with ICD-11 PTSD also met criteria for at least one CPTSD feature. Five participants met full CPTSD criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Reduced prevalence of PTSD associated with the use of ICD-11 criteria is likely to reduce identification of PTSD relative to using ICD-10 criteria but not relative to DSM-4 and DSM-5 criteria. Diagnosis of CPTSD is likely to be infrequent following single-incident trauma

Strengthen causal models for better conservation outcomes for human well-being.

BACKGROUND: Understanding how the conservation of nature can lead to improvement in human conditions is a research area with significant growth and attention. Progress towards effective conservation requires understanding mechanisms for achieving impact within complex social-ecological systems. Causal models are useful tools for defining plausible pathways from conservation actions to impacts on nature and people. Evaluating the potential of different strategies for delivering co-benefits for nature and people will require the use and testing of clear causal models that explicitly define the logic and assumptions behind cause and effect relationships. OBJECTIVES AND METHODS: In this study, we outline criteria for credible causal models and systematically evaluated their use in a broad base of literature (~1,000 peer-reviewed and grey literature articles from a published systematic evidence map) on links between nature-based conservation actions and human well-being impacts. RESULTS: Out of 1,027 publications identified, only ~20% of articles used any type of causal models to guide their work, and only 14 total articles fulfilled all criteria for credibility. Articles rarely tested the validity of models with empirical data. IMPLICATIONS: Not using causal models risks poorly defined strategies, misunderstanding of potential mechanisms for affecting change, inefficient use of resources, and focusing on implausible efforts for achieving sustainability

Promoting healthy futures in a rural refugee resettlement location: A community-based participatory research intervention

The resettlement of refugees in rural areas is presenting new challenges for healthcare. This article reports on a community-based participatory research project that explored understandings of health and care across the life course in a refugee-background community in regional south-east Australia. Participants identified key challenges, including lack of access to local services that address their complex needs and problems created by communicating across languages, cultures, and ontologies. Clear opportunities were identified for improving local health services to meet the needs of refugee-background communities. Building on participant recommendations, we argue that appropriate, high-quality healthcare requires the cultivation of dialogue and respect across different understandings of health and care. We suggest that approaches grounded in an ethos of collaboration, power-sharing and dialogue provide a way forward, not just for research, but for embedding practices of cultural safety in rural and regional resettlement

A cluster randomized controlled platform trial comparing group MEmory specificity training (MEST) to group psychoeducation and supportive counselling (PSC) in the treatment of recurrent depression.

Impaired ability to recall specific autobiographical memories is characteristic of depression, which when reversed, may have therapeutic benefits. This cluster-randomized controlled pilot trial investigated efficacy and aspects of acceptability, and feasibility of MEmory Specificity Training (MEST) relative to Psychoeducation and Supportive Counselling (PSC) for Major Depressive Disorder (N = 62). A key aim of this study was to determine a range of effect size estimates to inform a later phase trial. Assessments were completed at baseline, post-treatment and 3-month follow-up. The cognitive process outcome was memory specificity. The primary clinical outcome was symptoms on the Beck Depression Inventory-II at 3-month follow-up. The MEST group demonstrated greater improvement in memory specificity relative to PSC at post-intervention (d = 0.88) and follow-up (d = 0.74), relative to PSC. Both groups experienced a reduction in depressive symptoms at 3-month follow-up (d = 0.67). However, there was no support for a greater improvement in depressive symptoms at 3 months following MEST relative to PSC (d = -0.04). Although MEST generated changes on memory specificity and improved depressive symptoms, results provide no indication that MEST is superior to PSC in the resolution of self-reported depressive symptoms. Implications for later-phase definitive trials of MEST are discussed

Genotype-free demultiplexing of pooled single-cell RNA-seq.

A variety of methods have been developed to demultiplex pooled samples in a single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) experiment which either require hashtag barcodes or sample genotypes prior to pooling. We introduce scSplit which utilizes genetic differences inferred from scRNA-seq data alone to demultiplex pooled samples. scSplit also enables mapping clusters to original samples. Using simulated, merged, and pooled multi-individual datasets, we show that scSplit prediction is highly concordant with demuxlet predictions and is highly consistent with the known truth in cell-hashing dataset. scSplit is ideally suited to samples without external genotype information and is available at: https://github.com/jon-xu/scSplit

A comparison of MEmory Specificity Training (MEST) to education and support (ES) in the treatment of recurrent depression: study protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Depression is a debilitating mental health problem that tends to run a chronic, recurrent course. Even when effectively treated, relapse and recurrence rates remain high. Accordingly, interventions need to focus not only on symptom reduction, but also on reducing the risk of relapse by targeting depression-related disturbances that persist into remission. We are addressing this need by investigating the efficacy, acceptability and feasibility of a MEmory Specificity Training (MEST) programme, which directly targets an enduring cognitive marker of depression - reduced autobiographical memory specificity. Promising pilot data suggest that training memory specificity ameliorates this disturbance and reduces depressive symptoms. A larger, controlled trial is now needed to examine the efficacy of MEST. This trial compares MEST to an education and support (ES) group, with an embedded mechanism study. METHODS/DESIGN: In a single blind, parallel cluster randomised controlled trial, 60 depressed individuals meeting diagnostic criteria for a current major depressive episode will be recruited from the community and clinical services. Using a block randomisation procedure, groups of 5 to 8 participants will receive five weekly sessions of MEST (n = 30) or education and support (n = 30). Participants will be assessed immediately post-treatment, and at 3- and 6-months post-treatment (MEST group only for 6-month follow-up). Depressive symptoms at 3-month follow-up will be the primary outcome. Secondary outcomes will be change in depressive status and memory specificity at post-treatment and 3-months. The 6-month follow-up of the MEST group will allow us to examine whether treatment gains are maintained. An explanatory question will examine variables mediating improvement in depression symptoms post-treatment and at 3-month follow-up. DISCUSSION: This trial will allow us to investigate the efficacy of MEST, whether treatment gains are maintained, and the mechanisms of change. Evidence will be gathered regarding whether this treatment is feasible and acceptable as a low-intensity intervention. If efficacy can be demonstrated, the results will support MEST as a treatment for depression and provide the foundation for a definitive trial. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT01882452 (ClinicalTrials.gov), registered on 18 June 2013