Repurposing the Campus 2.0

Thank you to Sarah Shalgosky, Principal Curator, University of Warwick for gathering so many great people in the one room, across the one day, to talk about how we think about the university campus in our post-covid condition.

I was asked to talk about what placemaking is, and about my trauma informed placemaking project (with Dr Anit McKeown), and then pose questions of what placemaking could mean to the university and what the campus could be through this approach. Bringing in findings from my TCCE/NCACE research around REF2021 (forthcoming) and Cultural Compacts, I asked the university to think about itself as neighbour and as accountable to the human and non-human of its campus.

We were expertly stewarded through the day and out thinking by our chair, Tracey Sage, and following a welcome from Warwick Art Centre Director, Doreen Foster, we heard from Rosy Greenlees OBE on university cultural strategies, from Claire Doherty MBE on working in the public realm, and from artist Ling Tan who talked about working in a way that opens up ideas about society and offers a site for engagement, ownership and legacy.