Research Projects

Dr Hackney is an internationally recognised scholar with research interests in the fields of design history, crafting and creating-making, health and wellbeing, gender, media and print studies. She has an active track record of research and collaborative working with academics (in the UK and elsewhere), community groups, and third sector agencies. Her research explores the themes of agency, culture and community identity, media and everyday creativity, with a particular emphasis on history as a means of promoting community engagement and enhancing social and cultural capital. These themes are developed in the Material & Visual Culture research group, which she co-convenes at Falmouth University, and associated publications exploring creativity, health and wellbeing, participatory and collaborative working.

She has acted as co-investigator and principal investigator on a number of funded research projects within the AHRC Connected Communities funding strand, which focus on creative-making and crafts and well-being. Recent projects include Co-creating CARE: Community Learning Through Collaborative Making, an intergenerational skill-sharing project working with embroidery, knitting and crochet groups and CARM: Community-appropriated Research Model, which explores community radio podcasts as a means of community learning and sharing.

Beyond the Toolkit Symposium February 2014

This Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded Symposium was organised by Falmouth University in collaboration with Arts for Health Cornwall to examine the under explored benefits of crafts and creative making for health and well-being. Whereas, evaluation tends to rely on ‘toolkit’ models, ‘Beyond the Toolkit’ considered the distinctive experiential affects of crafts practice and how these might shape new approaches to impact assessment.

The Symposium involved national and international speakers, workshops led by creative practitioners and an exhibition of work by community groups in a range of arts for health settings. Speakers and workshop leaders included: Clive Parkinson, director Arts for Health, Manchester Metropolitan University; visual artist Monika Auch; Jayne Howard, director Arts for Health Cornwall; Sarah Desmarais AHRC-Collaborative doctoral student Falmouth University; Betsan Corkhill, psychotherapist and director Stitchlinks; Dr Anni Raw, Durham University; Alison Gilchrist, community development consultant and researcher; Sarah Corbett, director Craftivist Collective; Mah Rana, Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design; crafts practitioner Shane Waltener and curator, writer and educator, Katy Bevan.