Artist-Led Housing: Summary and Recommendations Report. Presented to Arts Council North Staff Away Day.

This report summaries outcomes from a collaborative PhD undertaken with The University of Huddersfield and East Street Arts, Leeds, between 2016 and 2020.1 The research explored the provision of housing by arts and artist-led organisations, termed ‘artist-led housing’. This research involved an in-depth investigation of one case study (Artist House 45 in Leeds) over several phases and years, as well as a wider analysis of artist-led housing, encompassing historical and theorical analysis, and a review of contemporary examples/practices. This summary and recommendations report is also an extension of a collective manifesto writing process for artist-led housing which involved iterative workshops with staff at East Street Arts and participants of ‘Out and About: The Future of ArtistLed Housing’ workshop, Site Gallery, CIQ Square, Sheffield, 2 July 2022. This report makes several recommendations based on the research summary and outcomes, directed towards at policymakers and project initiators/commissioners

Commoning Artist-led Housing

A number of artist-led organisations and groups across the UK have recently launched housing projects. These organisations are providing housing for pragmatic reasons, as well as to develop collective and critical artistic practices in response to the housing sector and urban realm. Jonathan Orlek introduces ‘artist-led housing’ and explores how artistic approaches to housing intersects with practices and institutions of commoning. Jonathan draws from collaborative work undertaken with the artist-led organisation East Street Arts. From 20I6-2019 he embedded himself within East Street Arts and undertook an ethnographic study of an artist-led housing project they have initiated called Artist House 45

Moving in and Out, or Staying in Bed: Using Multiple Ethnographic Positions and Methods to Study Artist-Led Housing as a Critical Spatial Practice

This is a collaborative research project concerned with the provision of housing by artist-led organisations. It is also an embedded ethnographic study of a particular house called Artist House 45, located in South Leeds. Artist House 45 is a pilot project by the artist-led organisation East Street Arts. In this thesis I introduce the term ‘artist-led housing’ and stake a claim to studying it as a critical spatial practice. I adopt multiple, situated, research positions; each of which constructs a different relationship between Artist House 45, the architectural sites through which I work, and theoretical texts. This allows the roles and programming responsibilities of artist-led organisations to be analysed in new ways in relation to housing provision. In addressing the questions of why artist-led organisations are providing housing, what critical and spatial roles artist-led organisations are occupying in relation to housing and how embedded research can influence these, I make original contributions to knowledge. I argue that artist-led organisations are conceiving of housing projects as both collective artworks and interventions within the housing market and sector. As such, artist-led organisations are occupying roles which differ from those of other ‘alternative’ housing practices such as community-led housing. Artist-led housing doesn’t nest easily within preexisting participatory models or coalesce into a coherent housing movement with shared characteristics, demands and goals. In response to this, I have developed new strategies and approaches, rooted in and among the day-to-day processes of artist-led organisations, for communicating, translating and scaling artist-led housing. This has involved the use of collaborative mapping and ‘multivoice’ writing. By adopting multiple research positions in relation to Artist House 45, I have sought to critique the project from different, and competing perspectives. This ‘moving in and out’ has involved changing my physical proximity to the house (i.e. from library-based study to literally moving in to live in Artist House 45 as a Researcher in Residence). It has also meant moving between different ethnographic methods and writing styles. Through embedded ethnography, I have been able to feed research back to East Street Arts quickly, allowing responsive interventions to be made while Artist House 45 was unfolding

Factors associated with plasmid antibiotic resistance gene carriage revealed using large-scale multivariable analysis

Plasmids are major vectors of bacterial antibiotic resistance, but understanding of factors associated with plasmid antibiotic resistance gene (ARG) carriage is limited. We curated > 14,000 publicly available plasmid genomes and associated metadata. Duplicate and replicate plasmids were excluded; where possible, sample metadata was validated externally (BacDive database). Using Generalised Additive Models (GAMs) we assessed the influence of 12 biotic/abiotic factors (e.g. plasmid genetic factors, isolation source, collection date) on ARG carriage, modelled as a binary outcome. Separate GAMs were built for 10 major ARG types. Multivariable analysis indicated that plasmid ARG carriage patterns across time (collection years), isolation sources (human/livestock) and host bacterial taxa were consistent with antibiotic selection pressure as a driver of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance. Only 0.42% livestock plasmids carried carbapenem resistance (compared with 12% human plasmids); conversely, tetracycline resistance was enriched in livestock vs human plasmids, reflecting known prescribing practices. Interpreting results using a timeline of ARG type acquisition (determined by literature review) yielded additional novel insights. More recently acquired ARG types (e.g. colistin and carbapenem) showed increases in plasmid carriage during the date range analysed (1994–2019), potentially reflecting recent onset of selection pressure; they also co-occurred less commonly with ARGs of other types, and virulence genes. Overall, this suggests that following acquisition, plasmid ARGs tend to accumulate under antibiotic selection pressure and co-associate with other adaptive genes (other ARG types, virulence genes), potentially re-enforcing plasmid ARG carriage through co-selection

N-(2-Chloro-2-nitro-1-phenyl­prop­yl)-4-methyl­benzene­sulfonamide

In the title compound, C16H17ClN2O4S, the dihedral angle between the phenyl and benzene rings is 19.4 (2)°. The crystal packing is stabilized by inter­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, as well as by intra- and inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

Writing alone together: making sense of lockdown through hundreds

In late May, we established a tentative online writing project called The Hundreds. Adapting Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart’s project of the same name, our format has been to react to covid-lives in flash writing form – writing in 100-word multiples. Berlant and Stewart’s work flowed from their “Public Feelings Project”, where peers wrote on a “scene, thing, or situation” before reading the one hundred words aloud, and listening, “compositionally.” We have been meeting online, fortnightly, since June and sharing our work – on everyday encounters, conversations with theory, and daydreams – reading aloud to each other and sharing a live online document. Our website shows some of our examples here. Much of what we have written below has also been adapted from fragments of these Hundreds. Here, we want to dwell with the possibilities that [the method of?] hundred-ing presents to us, rather than the content of our experiments, but the examples on our website give a sense of the multifarious nature of our topics: the nature of zoom, writing that feels like kayaking, and a love affair with Milton Keynes are some spoilers

Plasmid classification in an era of whole-genome sequencing: application in studies of antibiotic resistance epidemiology

Plasmids are extra-chromosomal genetic elements ubiquitous in bacteria, and commonly transmissible between host cells. Their genomes include variable repertoires of ‘accessory genes,’ such as antibiotic resistance genes, as well as ‘backbone’ loci which are largely conserved within plasmid families, and often involved in key plasmid-specific functions (e.g., replication, stable inheritance, mobility). Classifying plasmids into different types according to their phylogenetic relatedness provides insight into the epidemiology of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance. Current typing schemes exploit backbone loci associated with replication (replicon typing), or plasmid mobility (MOB typing). Conventional PCR-based methods for plasmid typing remain widely used. With the emergence of whole-genome sequencing (WGS), large datasets can be analyzed using in silico plasmid typing methods. However, short reads from popular high-throughput sequencers can be challenging to assemble, so complete plasmid sequences may not be accurately reconstructed. Therefore, localizing resistance genes to specific plasmids may be difficult, limiting epidemiological insight. Long-read sequencing will become increasingly popular as costs decline, especially when resolving accurate plasmid structures is the primary goal. This review discusses the application of plasmid classification in WGS-based studies of antibiotic resistance epidemiology; novel in silico plasmid analysis tools are highlighted. Due to the diverse and plastic nature of plasmid genomes, current typing schemes do not classify all plasmids, and identifying conserved, phylogenetically concordant genes for subtyping and phylogenetics is challenging. Analyzing plasmids as nodes in a network that represents gene-sharing relationships between plasmids provides a complementary way to assess plasmid diversity, and allows inferences about horizontal gene transfer to be made

Factors associated with plasmid antibiotic resistance gene carriage revealed using large-scale multivariable analysis

Plasmids are major vectors of bacterial antibiotic resistance, but understanding of factors associated with plasmid antibiotic resistance gene (ARG) carriage is limited. We curated > 14,000 publicly available plasmid genomes and associated metadata. Duplicate and replicate plasmids were excluded; where possible, sample metadata was validated externally (BacDive database). Using Generalised Additive Models (GAMs) we assessed the influence of 12 biotic/abiotic factors (e.g. plasmid genetic factors, isolation source, collection date) on ARG carriage, modelled as a binary outcome. Separate GAMs were built for 10 major ARG types. Multivariable analysis indicated that plasmid ARG carriage patterns across time (collection years), isolation sources (human/livestock) and host bacterial taxa were consistent with antibiotic selection pressure as a driver of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance. Only 0.42% livestock plasmids carried carbapenem resistance (compared with 12% human plasmids); conversely, tetracycline resistance was enriched in livestock vs human plasmids, reflecting known prescribing practices. Interpreting results using a timeline of ARG type acquisition (determined by literature review) yielded additional novel insights. More recently acquired ARG types (e.g. colistin and carbapenem) showed increases in plasmid carriage during the date range analysed (1994–2019), potentially reflecting recent onset of selection pressure; they also co-occurred less commonly with ARGs of other types, and virulence genes. Overall, this suggests that following acquisition, plasmid ARGs tend to accumulate under antibiotic selection pressure and co-associate with other adaptive genes (other ARG types, virulence genes), potentially re-enforcing plasmid ARG carriage through co-selection

Typing plasmids with distributed sequence representation

Multidrug resistant bacteria represent an increasing challenge for medicine. In bacteria, most antibiotic resistances are transmitted by plasmids. Therefore, it is important to study the spread of plasmids in detail in order to initiate possible countermeasures. The classification of plasmids can provide insights into the epidemiology and transmission of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance. The previous methods to classify plasmids are replicon typing and MOB typing. Both methods are time consuming and labor-intensive. Therefore, a new approach to plasmid typing was developed, which uses word embeddings and support vector machines (SVM) to simplify plasmid typing. Visualizing the word embeddings with t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) shows that the word embeddings finds distinct structure in the plasmid sequences. The SVM assigned the plasmids in the testing dataset with an average accuracy of 85.9% to the correct MOB type