Assessing Culture-Led Regeneration - 13th November 2006

Theoretical frameworks and methodologies for Impacts 08 - The Liverpool Model
European Capital of Culture Research Programme

This seminar was held at the University of Liverpool Management School. The schedule for the day is detailed below, with links to the presentations given by each speaker (speaker biographies are given at the foot of the page).

Impacts 08: Research model presentation

• Dr Steve Miles, Management Group, Impacts 08: Welcome and Introduction
• Dr Beatriz Garcia, Director, Impacts 08: Setting a framework for regeneration research: academic and consultancy models
• Ruth Melville, Research Fellow, Impacts 08: Developing appropriate research methodologies

Open discussion

• Can we aspire to establish replicable research models?

Project presentations: Researching economic and social impacts

• Dr Alan Southern and Prof David Sapsford, ULMS: Economic and business impacts of 2008: Towards an analytical framework
• Dr Pauline Marne and Dr Sara Parker, Base line, LJMU: "It's our world isn't it?" - Participatory mapping as means of engaging with young people in Liverpool

Open debate

Closing remarks

Speaker Biographies

• Dr Beatriz Garcia is the Director of Impacts 08, a longitudinal research programme into the impact of Liverpool's becoming European Capital of Culture jointly developed by the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. She is an urban sociologist focused on the study of cultural policy and event-led city regeneration. Previous projects assess the image legacy of cultural programming within major events such as the Olympic Games (Barcelona’92 onwards), the Commonwealth Games (Manchester 2002), and the European Capital of Culture (Glasgow 1990, Liverpool 2008). Beatriz is a member of the Culture and Education Advisory Committee of London 2012 Olympic Games and is the Editor of the ‘Culture @ the Olympics’ magazine. [www.beatrizgarcia.net, www.culturalolympics.org.uk]
  
  
• Ruth Melville is Research Fellow, Impacts 08. She is a researcher with ten years of experience in applied research and research management in Liverpool with particular skills in the field of regeneration, social exclusion and participatory research. She has developed a range of techniques for carrying out in-depth qualitative work involving the research participants in every stage of the research process and has a strong belief in partnership research and research for change. Major projects include research on social inclusion in Speke and Dingle, a Community Engagement and Recycling programme in Liverpool 8 and the evaluation of Knowsley’s Sure Starts and Children’s Fund. She acts as a research advisor to a number of local voluntary, community and public sector organisations in Merseyside.
  
  
• Dr Steve Miles is Reader in Sociology and a member of the Management Group of Impacts 08. Steve played a role, alongside Ruth Melville, in putting together the Impacts 08 bid for submission to Liverpool City Council. His principal research interests are concerned with the impact of consumption upon city life and the potentially socially exclusive nature of aspects of cultural policy. Before arriving in Liverpool he was responsible for a ten year longitudinal research project that looked at the impacts of cultural investment on NewcastleGateshead Quayside. Steve recently co-edited a Special Edition of Urban Studies on Culture-Led Regeneration. He also wrote a report for the United Nations on young people and globalization and, as such, is particularly interested in young people's use of urban space. Steve's other publications include Consuming Cities (Palgrave Macmillan with Malcolm Miles) and Consumerism as Way of Life (Sage) and he is currently working on a further book entitled, Spaces for Consumption.
  
  
• Dr Alan Southern is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool Management School.  His research interests are focused on enterprise and regeneration with projects underway on sustainable enterprise in areas of deprivation, new enterprise initiatives through housing-led regeneration, and methods of measuring new business formation. Alan supervises research students working on aspects of small business (on Merseyside).  He currently works with the Small Business Research Trust on their quarterly survey of UK smaller businesses and in recent years has provided evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Small Business Group, and support to the North West Development Agency and to the Merseyside Entrepreneurship Commission.
  
  
• Prof David Sapsford joined the newly formed University of Liverpool Management School in August 2002 as Edward Gonner Professor and Head of Economics. Prior to this he was Professor and Head of the Department of Economics at the Lancaster University Management School.  David has undertaken research on a wide variety of topics relating to labour markets and local and international development issues.  David was previously employed in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. and has served as consultant to numerous international bodies, including the U.N., the I.L.O., the OECD, the Australian Government and the World Bank.
  
  
• Dr Sara Parker has a wealth of experience of action-oriented research with women in Nepal.  In particular her research has looked into the importance of education to the empowerment of communities and explores the role of non-formal education in encouraging participation of women in the wider community.  She has been involved in supporting and evaluating Action Aid’s REFLECT programme in a conservation area in Nepal.  Utilising participatory research techniques was central to this process.  Recent papers have been presented at international conferences such as the Learning Conference in Granada and the Learning & Livelihood Conference in Oxford 2005.  As well as working on the Impacts 08 Young Liverpool project, Sara worked on a Base Line project team evaluating the impact of the innovative Streetsmartz DVD for Liverpool City Council.  She is also an active member of an ESF Work Life Balance project comparing the UK and the Netherlands. 
  
  
• Dr Pauline Marne is a graduate of Liverpool John Moores University who gained her PhD at the University of Liverpool in 1997.  For her PhD Pauline examined the ways in which local communities related to Sefton Park in Liverpool, as well as other public and private spaces in the city.  As part of this she has investigated fear of crime in such communities, including that of young people.  Pauline still has strong research interests and has both presented and published papers on Victorian Liverpool and on the contemporary city.   She returned to JMU in September 2005 to lecture in the criminology department after spending 8 years at the University of Salford and also works part-time for the Open University.  Pauline has been employed at JMU mainly to lead an innovative new degree in Crime and Urban Culture.  She is also an active researcher with Base Line.