Cemore Summer Seminar
Community, Politics and Creativity in Mobilities Research.
Register here for the online event
We are happy to introduce our three visiting scholars in this years Summer Seminar:
Simon Batterbury (Prof of Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne / CeMoRe British Academy Visiting Fellow)
Talk title: Community Bike Workshops, Community Development and Active Travel
The first Community bike workshops (or Bike Kitchens, CBWs) have been around since the late 1980s, beginning in Europe and North America. They offer safe spaces for members of the public to fix their own bike, learn those skills, and to socialise at the same time. A second workshop model is where charitable organisations receive used and abandoned bikes, repair them, and give them out to people in need. All are non-commercial, using some bike sales and small grants to sustain their operations. They often interact with local government and community development agencies. Workshops have largely been ignored by social scientists and especially by transport planners. For the half of 2014 I visited several workshops around Britain, from tiny community projects through to large social enterprises like Bike for Good in Glasgow and Recyke y’bike in Newcastle that have substantial floorspace and paid employees. Bicycle workshops are unified by a focus on the bicycle as a material object needing repair, and its components, but they diverge in terms of their contribution to the urban ‘bikespace’ and their contributions to mobility. Interviews across 60 workshops worldwide has revealed that urban bike mobility cannot be enhanced only by demand-side investment in facilities and infrastructure. It also includes ‘soft’ or demand-side institutions like CBWs. Lastly, CBWs deal with austerity and reflect social diversity, but do not always do so justly and equally.
Elisa Mozzelin (Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice)
Talk title: Reading Walking as a Political Practice
Can walking be considered politically relevant? And in what sense can we talk about the walking practice as a political one? Moving from a political-philosophical perspective, the aim of this talk is to lay the foundations for a political theory of walking that passes through a rooting of practice in the spatial and experiential dimensions. To this regard, we will attempt to explore the ineliminable relationship between the practice of walking, body and space, understood in their very lived, biographical and situated dimensions.
Aleksandra Ianchenko (Tallinn University, Estonia and Abo Akademi, Turku, Finland)
Talk title: Walking and Drawing as a Method for Urban Hauntings
This paper proposes the combination of drawing and walking as a method for exploring atmospheres of urban hauntings on the example of the closed tram routes in Turku, Finland. Although closed in 1972, Turku trams are still remembered and planned to be restored. The perception that trams are better is known as the ‘tram factor’ which is rather explained by subjective and emotional than rational reasons (Talvitie 2020). One of such reasons can be the atmosphere of trams which, in the case of Turku, seem to linger in the city despite their absence as functional public transport. This presence in absence allows me to imagine Turku trams as ‘phantoms’ and their former routes as ‘haunted tramscapes’ or an example of ‘mundane hauntings’ (Edensor 2008) when the past erupts into the present. The Turku tram factor is made of material traces, representations, and stories which I explored through walking and drawing. Walking has its tradition in art from Dada to Land Artists (Careri, 2002) and is used as a research method that unites embodied experiences, internal reflection and perception of the location (Lee and Ingold, 2006). On-site drawing is a part of artistic training and a visual ethnographic tool that combines documentation and imagination (Taussig, 2011). In the paper, I discuss how these two can be combined with the example of my experiments – Tram Chalk Walk (2021) and Sketch Walk (2023).
Chairs: Lynne Pearce (ELCW) and Jen Southern (LICA)
Register here for the online event
The campus event will take place in Bowland North Seminar Room 22 (tea will be available from 15.30pm), and we will also be broadcasting live online (link tba).
Those who would like to attend the event in person should contact Lynne Pearce (L.Pearce@lancaster.ac.uk)
ALL WELCOME
Image credits: Aleksandra Ianchenko 2024