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UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council supports world-class research which furthers our understanding of human culture and creativity.
AHRC is unique in the world as a national funding agency supporting both arts and humanities research. We use public funding of approximately £98m per annum to fund research among one quarter of the United Kingdom's research population.
Each year AHRC provides some 700 research awards, 2,000 postgraduate scholarships, and numerous knowledge transfer awards.
Can galleries be more than a visual experience? Yes, as shown by this AHRC-supported exhibition created by and with blind and partially sighted artists. Watch out for it this autumn!
"Please do touch."
This November, Beyond the Visual opens at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds – the UK’s first sculpture exhibition curated by and with the input of blind and partially sighted artists. The show is co-curated by Dr Aaron McPeake, a blind artist and associate lecturer at Chelsea College of Arts, UAL, alongside Prof Ken Wilder (UAL Reader in Spatial Design), and aims to challenge the widespread ‘ocularcentric bias’ in galleries.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the exhibition features works by artists including Lenka Clayton, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, and Henry Moore, and explores how tactility can transform public engagement with sculpture. As McPeake says, changes made for accessibility often lead to “blindness gains” - improvements that benefit everyone.
📅 Beyond the Visual runs from 28 November 2025 – 8 March 2026.
📖 Read the full article in The Guardian to learn more about this landmark exhibition and the ideas behind it: https://bit.ly/44NcAdB
Museums and science centres are perfect for bringing research to the public.
We’re excited to share insights from our Mindsets and Missions programme, which supported museums and science centres to engage underrepresented groups with knowledge, research and innovation.
Through this programme, 12 organisations across the UK engaged with 7,800 people – from those with learning difficulties to refugees and people in the early stages of dementia.
Some of the key findings include:
🔹 Museums and science centres can play a pivotal role in driving inclusive research and engagement
🔹Museums and science centres can develop new approaches to engage communities typically underrepresented in R&I
🔹Communities can connect with a wide range of research and innovation topics through museums and science centres
🔹Giving communities ownership over new research and knowledge production can make engagement more meaningful
🔹Underrepresented communities see museums and science centres as a powerful way to share knowledge about themselves and be represented in the wider world
Want to know more? Click here for the impacts of the studies, and the written and filmed case studies: https://lnkd.in/ert-qWR2
Or watch the video overview below 👇
Mindsets + Missions was funded by UK Research and Innovation in partnership with AHRC and delivered in partnership by Museums Association, Association for Science and Discovery Centres and The Liminal Space.
NEW RESEARCH! Definitions of child exploitation
New research says that inconsistent definitions of child exploitation are undermining the identification and protection of children who were exploited in forms such as sexual, labour and criminal exploitation, or domestic servitude.
- Children whose cases don’t fit one of the official definitions can fall between the cracks and not be identified as victims. Definitions can directly influence whether a child victim is seen, heard, and helped.
- The report found that out of 1,396 negative decisions for child referrals into the NRM in 2024, over 61% were rejected on the grounds that the case did not meet the definitional threshold required to proceed.
- Frontline practitioners described how children with clear signs of exploitation sometimes receive a negative NRM decision purely because their situation cannot be perfectly slotted into the legal definition or guidance.
- Definitions of child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation, child labour exploitation or domestic servitude entail different elements in separate parts of legislation and statutory guidance, causing confusion and meaning that children are not identified, and investigations/prosecutions affected.
For example:
o Statutory definition of CSE and guidance definition of CCE include coercion, deception, or manipulation, in contrast to international definitions of trafficking which underlines children can never consent to being exploited. In CCE, this often means children are treated as offenders perceived as making ‘choices’ to get involved criminal acts.
o In contrast to the international definition, domestic legal definitions of human trafficking focus on travel, which leads to UK practice often applying narrower thresholds and excluding children exploited online or locally.
o Age is a factor which clouds practice, for example the legal age of sexual consent being a barrier in the identification of child sexual exploitation for 16- and 17-year-olds or child criminal exploitation.
The report called for an urgent adoption of a clear statutory definition of child exploitation encompassing all forms of it.
The research was carried out by ECPAT UK with the support of Freshfields LLP, and was commissioned by the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) at the University of Oxford. The PEC is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Read more on our website: https://lnkd.in/e-CqAEhH.
We’ve been working with BBC Ideas on a series of short films that are based on research we have supported. The latest episode ‘'What happens when your mum goes to prison?' explores the consequences children face when their mothers are imprisoned and features Dr Shona Minson of the University of Oxford.
In the UK, more than half of women in prison are mothers. Research by Dr Minson, winner of Outstanding Early Career Impact at the ESRC 2019 Impact Prize Awards, has helped change practice for judges, magistrates and Probation Officers, encouraging them to consider how children will be affected by their parents’ sentence
Watch the film here: https://lnkd.in/eyNY5yzn
Dr Shona Minson. BBC New Generation Thinker; Impact; Innovator; Member, Women's Justice Board, England and Wales; Research Associate, Centre for Criminology @ University of Oxford . Family Law, Criminal Law, Advocacy
We made a film 🎥 🙌
A year ago I was introduced to the BBC Ideas team by UK Research and Innovation
They asked me to tell them about the impact of maternal imprisonment. By the end of the meeting they were shocked, upset & determined to make a film about it. I’ve worked with Anna Lavelle and Bethan Jinkinson over the past 10 months to develop the film.
Yesterday it went live.
Huge kudos to the women who took part in it💪🏼
🟡We hope that it will help people to understand what happens when a mum goes to prison.
🟡We hope that it will lead to less stigma and more care.
🟡We hope that sentencers, lawyers, probation stuff, MOJ policy people will watch it and see and hear the pain that is caused by maternal imprisonment.
🟡We hope it will do some good.
So please watch this less than 8 minutes of film, and share both inside and outside the criminal legal system bubble
https://lnkd.in/eHC5rzVr
In this Lunchtime Talk, on Fri 25 Jul, 13:00-14:00, Ruth McCullough, Executive Producer, and Michelle Rumney, Producer for England, share some key learnings from our first round of funding.
They will reflect on the types of projects and technologies that emerged, some of the common themes and challenges applicants faced, and what helped certain applications stand out.
Pervasive Media StudioWatershed
Book a free ticket: https://lnkd.in/ez_GuTbu
