Dr Vedrana Velickovic and Charlotte Wilcox from the School of Humanities and Social Science have won Ignite 3.3 funding from the University’s Impact Acceleration Account, funded by the AHRC, to capture and evaluate the intergenerational conversations at the Coast is Queer festival in partnership with the main organiser, New Writing South.   See the event here: What’s On (coastisqueer.com)

With its diverse queer community, Brighton is perfectly placed to examine the many seen and unseen, formal and informal intergenerational conversations taking place in the city. This project aims to add to the growing area of intergenerational queer research by focusing on how literature shapes our understanding about what it means to be a part of the queer community in the past, present, and future, bringing generations together in ways that enable mutual learning and knowledge exchange. 

 The research will take the form of a polaroid exhibition and short interviews with the participants and the writers; a roundtable participatory activity on Sunday 13 October led by Lois Weaver; and a production of creative work commissioned by AFLO the Poet, Coast is Queer’s Poet in Residence, in response to these activities and conversations. Last year’s student curators, Alexa Rusakoff and Sandy Swain, will also be working on the project. 

About Ignite –  

Ignite began as a pilot programme funded by UKRI and designed and delivered by CUPP to develop a set of new community-university knowledge partnerships. The model was developed further using funding by Research England. With funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), Ignite 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 build on the learning from the previous programmes to deliver impact from arts and humanities research. The next Ignite call will be announced in 2025.