Partecipatory @ Prato
Workshop 2 of the “Towards innovative mixed-methods approaches to studying living multiculture in small cities” seminar series organised by Stef De Sabbata, Katy Bennett, Matteo Dutto, Lee Eisold, Alex Govers Lopez, Maarten Loopmans and Giorgia Mascaro and funded by the (USF Seminar Series Awards).
Held online on Monday, March 4th, 2024.
About this event
In a new era of global migration, diverse forms of urban mobility, migration settlement, and resettlement have contributed to the reshaping of national populations and localities, paving the way for new encounters, exchanges, and tensions (Neal et al. 2017). In this context, cities are not only the terrain on which these entangled relationships unfold, but these relationships shape them. Indeed, studies on multiculture demand a new focus on place and space because they are vital to understanding how multicultural social relations are enacted and lived.
Informed by the recent postcolonial turn in urban studies that calls for a decentralisation of urban theory (Robinson 2006) and embracing a comparative case study approach (Robinson 2016), this seminar series will bring together academics, early career researchers and practitioners in thinking and learning about mixed-methods research practices (Bennett and De Sabbata 2023) for understanding and describing heterogeneous formations of multiculture across different local contexts: Leicester (UK), Prato (Italy) and Antwerp (Belgium). We aim to explore how a range of diverse historical and material processes have led Leicester, Prato and Antwerp to variously develop the status of “the multicultural” city in their respective countries. We will explore what “multicultural” means in the three different contexts, using geo-spatial, geo-political and cultural lenses to interrogate processes taking place.
The seminar series is structured into four events. This is the first of three online workshops aimed at allowing participants to showcase research conducted using three different methodological approaches or focusing on one of the three local contexts outlined above. We will then conclude the seminar series with an in-person, three-day event, including training and workshops to bring together these three different methodological approaches and apply them to develop a mixed-method project.
Participatory-action and arts-based methods
The second online workshop will focus on participatory action and arts-based research methods within superdiverse urban environments. The discussion will first centre on how to challenge traditional models of interaction between scholars, artists, educators and communities to develop nonlinear, more authentic and productive modes of cooperation and co-creation between academics and community members. The discussion will then explore how digital storytelling and visual representations of processes of emplacement can provide essential synchronic and diachronic perspectives on the complex and rapid changes that affect increasingly more diverse urban contexts.
Prato
The workshop will also focus on one of the three local contexts outlined above. Home to over 120 different nationalities (Ufficio di Statistica, Comune di Prato, 2020), the city is one of the most studied cases of multiculturalism in Italy and has become, over the years, “a European ‘hotspot’ for migration and integration issues” (Baldassar et al. 2015, 8). It is also a place where we witness first-hand how migration flows generate “transcultural edges” – that is, new and innovative spaces – “where unevenly distributed different cultural systems, representations, imaginaries converge and give rise to new transcultural practices” (Vanni 2016, 7). Within this context, participatory action and digital storytelling practices that weave personal stories with digital media, including videos, images, sounds, texts, geolocalized data, and other elements, are particularly effective since they can provide participants with engaging and interactive ways of expressing themselves and reclaiming their presence in the city (Dutto et al. 2024).
Schedule
| 09:00 - 09:30 | Welcome and Introduction to the seminar series, Matteo Dutto |
| Round of introductions | |
| 09:30 - 10:45 | Research Talks - 1 |
| Framing Prato, Matteo Dutto | |
| Cultural Change in Postmigrant Societies: Re-Imagining Communities Through Arts and Culture, Wiebke Sievers | |
| Creating Participatory Pedagogical Encounters, Paul Long | |
| 11:00 - 12:30 | Research Talks - 2 |
| Cross Innovation, STEAM and Maker Spaces, Steve Harding | |
| Making diversity of opinions, approaches and argumentations visible – Written conversation as method, Lee Eisold | |
| ARTIVISM in small cities. Community-building and claims-making through the arts, Monika Salzbrunn | |
| Cultural Hybridity in Space, Verena Jehle | |
| Collaboration More Than a Method for Collecting Data, Golnesa Rezanezhad Towards a Participatory Translingual Study, Matthew Skidmore | |
| 13:30 -14:30 | World cafè session |
| A) What Does Participation Entail? Framing Genuine Participationin PAR. | |
| B) Co-Creationand “Messy” research practices: Art-based methods and the politics of co-production. | |
| C) From PAR to Policy: Translating action into strategies to influence policy and effect broader level change. | |
| 14:30 - 15:30 | Discussion and wrap-up |
Materials
Where possible, we have made the information and materials related to this seminar series available through our OSF repo.
Acknowledgments
This workshop is supported by a Seminar Series Award from the Urban Studies Foundation, grant reference: USF-SSA-230312.
