Stone is a fundamental material upon which human culture has evolved over millennia. Yet stone as a creative material has become image, surface and a tool of 'spin'. A senior group of artist-researchers consider the heritage of stone, and question whether this shift from structure to meaning has to be the inevitable course of stone into the future. \n\nWe propose to research relevant stone craft skills - a rich repository that, like the material itself, has accumulated over a long timescale. Many traditional stone working techniques and attitudes are in danger of being lost. Is the material of stone destined to become culturally peripheral, or can it be revisited and invigorated in new ways? Our focus is to examine stone's potential for future use in our environment. To do this effectively, we will look back and forward, to energise the project in two directions. This will involve archiving traditional skills, and so create an accessible legacy for future generations.\n\nThe project will be led by three experienced artist-researchers, supported by a research assistant and PhD student. Over a three-year period, our research proposal will be rolled out in phases, each exploring related and interconnected facets of stone carving. \n\nFirstly, we will visit quarries and stone-working locations world-wide to identify a broad range of practice and lineage, and so capture some of the varying attitudes toward stone in cultures such as Japan, China, South America, South Africa Italy and India. (From the Mahabalipurum craft-workers of India whose approach to carving stone is essentially abrasive, to Japan where there is a tradition of using the chisel to explode individual crystals in granite.) Informed by the research process, the researchers will invite 10 artists of cultural diversity with varied stone working approaches, to engage in the research project. In all cases, they will be artists with acknowledged reputations and expert stone technique. The artists will be invited at the end of the first year to study our accumulated research material, and consider new ways of how stone might be reinvigorated in art and the contemporary environment. Following this event the artists will return to reflect on the research and develop a stone artwork proposal.\n \nSecondly, Edinburgh College of Art will host a month long event entitled 'The Big Carve', within the environs of eca. The selected artists will come to Edinburgh to make 10 new innovative artworks / thereby creating a new research community, through the amplification of each other's energies and enthusiasms. 'The Big Carve' will inject energy into contemporary stonework made by relevant, articulate artists.\n\nWe are not aware of precedents elsewhere in the world that focus on stone in this particular way and address themselves to artists at this level. (Although minor carving symposia exist worldwide, they tend to cater toward younger or more traditional artists, who work for free and leave their stones behind.) \n\nThe quarried stone used will be sourced from the UK and Ireland and that broadly incorporates all major stone categories (i.e. slates, granites, sandstones, limestone). Synchronising the event with the Edinburgh International Festival is considered an additional catalyst in recruiting high quality artist participation and knowledge transfer to an international audience. As a focus and counterpoint for the material-driven activities central to 'The Big Carve', the event will also be underpinned by a series of 10 cross-disciplinary lectures and discussions, led by philosophers, scientists, anthropologists, historians, palaeontologists, archaeologists, and poets.\n \nLastly, the research project will culminate in a series of outputs that will address the research questions, aims & objectives, through travelling exhibitions; an illustrated publication; documentary films; a permanent STONE archive; a website; and a successful PhD award.

Testing Sci-Fi Hot Tub' aims to develop a method of testing the effect of an artwork on its audience. The intention is to produce a generally applicable method by focusing research on one specific artwork. 'Sci-Fi Hot Tub' is intended by the artist Zoe Walker to operate as a catalyst for wellbeing to all who encounter It. It will be a sculptural object in the form of an inflatable hot tub island to cocoon a number of participants in warmth and comfort whilst floating in sublime and sometimes hostile environments, increasing their emotional and physical wellbeing. A team composed of artists and medical scientists led by Zoe Walker one half of the artistic duo Walker & Bromwich will undertake the research. The research forms part of the wider project 'Panacea: the art of wellbeing' an evolving touring exhibition and events program which proposes ways in which art can act as a panacea healing the ills of society. Panacea has toured venues in England and France and has received substantial funding from The Welcome Trust, Arts Council England and others. The intention is to adopt the methodology of drugs testing to test the effect of Sci-Fi Hot Tub on a group of healthy volunteer subjects. A clinical pharmacologist, Dr Mark Down, with ten years' experience of working on drugs trials, will work under Zoe Walker to develop and implement the testing method. He will monitor and record the psychological state of the subjects before, during and after experiencing the artwork, using best clinical practice. Professor Adrian Renton Director Institute for Health and Human Development, University of East London will analyse the results of this process. The tests will be carried out at three contrasting venues. The first, Kielder Water in Northumberland, Is a vast, bleak reservoir. The second, Victoria Baths in Manchester, is an ornate Edwardian bath house in course of restoration which will be filled for the first time in twenty years to float Sci-Fi Hot Tub. The third environment is Comer house, Manchester, a 'white-cube' gallery space which might seem the natural home of an art object This is essentially practice led research and without going through the process it is impossible to know what will be discovered. Testing Sci-Fi Hot Tub will function as a participatory art event at each of the three venues, experienced by a wider audience as well as the test group. This is Waker & Bromwich's established way of working, developed in recent years though events such as Celestial Radio and The Friendly Frontier Picnic. As with these previous projects, a fundamental aspect of Testing Sci-Fi Hot Tub is the production of a documentary video that follows the progress of the testing procedure, capturing the essentially visual nature of the event at each venue. The DVD and a complementary written account of the research findings will be published in an integrated format and distributed in Jan 2008 along with the book produced to document Panacea: the art of wellbeing.

This Research Leave will allow the applicant to complete a set of major artworks as part of the programme 'Building: A Northern Mirror'. These art works are made specifically for Bury Museum, being situated both inside and outside the building. The works are concerned with space and how this relates to unique aspects of the built environment in Radcliffe, a part of Bury much altered by economic and environmental change. The site lies along the River lrwell, and an abandoned coalmine. It is now part industrial museum, part a reformed landscape of the 21st century, indicating and yet reflecting the past and the future. Bury through its public art programme is developing a world reputation for the innovative presentation of contemporary art. It shows how a community is realising its opportunities in a world where the ability to adapt and develop fresh forms in the articulation of the visual can bring a new focus to what has past, and establish a dialogue with other cities throughout Europe. Cities where art development of this quality has been seen to bring civic benefit. This benefit is based on a common experience of perception, a focused yet unexpected sight of art, fresh in its juxtaposed form, with the everyday. The externally sited art work will be open to all. A particularly interesting feature of 'The Bury Experience' is its international yet local dimension, in which a unique dialogue with the artist brings a serious interface in art and the city. In that context this new work by Johnston fits in to a series of ambitious international commissions. In making this work the artist has been researching Bury's history and urban form, engaging himself in the nature of Bury and its physical structure, exploring the various communities in the city, and intimately recording through drawing and photography the nature of the place. From these explorations the nature of the work to be made has gradually emerged. The applicant feels it is essential to find something in the very varied environment that pinpoints its particular identity, expressed as set of spatial experiences which highlight a visual tension or counterpoint. Where for example a particular aspect, dimension, view and characteristic texture heightens the awareness of site and context even reflect a certain memory of other urban landscapes and cultures where a form of architecture, e.g. industrial, has its origins. In developing this as an external work there is the intention to have a permanent structure bring life to a site through the use of glass, and reflection. There is the possibility that the work can be used for a range of roles it could be adapted say for domestic or for social use, yet it could also remain as a static emblem of place. A reminder of what had passed here as an aspiration of the work place, yet maintain a jewel-like presence as an essence of place. Major themes addressing place, history, change and intervention will be presented through a website. A major event drawing the public, practitioners, curators, writers and urbanists would be arranged after the work is completed in March 2007. This event will be related to other cities experience in such developments. Workshops essential to the project and seminars will take place. This is important as the project is predicated on dialogue and mutuality. The applicant has indicated he will also develop a programme with his graduate students. This idea has come from projects undertaken in Japan where such a dialogue is common.

The Community Web2.0: Creative control through hacking project sought to explore whether concepts and vocabularies emerging in relation to the Internet could usefully be applied to understandings of off-line contemporary community relations and practices. The project particularly focused upon the role of hacking and read-writing as a characteristic of contemporary online practices and how this is mirrored in aspects of actual life within and across communities. The project was largely based within the Wester Hailes area of Western Edinburgh, where a network of residents and community based organisations worked alongside the academic team to establish design methods that put into practice the theoretical framework that had been developed through the project. Using storytelling as an initial method with which to investigate social practices, the team identified the principle of 'writing back' to a subject as a form of hacking. Subsequently the team ran a series of workshops that encouraged community members to 'write' their memories of the area on to photographs that were taken from the archives of a local newspaper. As a result of this formative work, the team (including the community partners) developed two design interventions for the area that would offer 'write back' facilities as constructive hacking platforms.

The research poses the following primary research questions:\nWHY? / Given the agreed need for wider social participation in the design process, why is there limited communication between research into and practice of the subject?\nWHO? - Who gets involved and how does the user/architect role affect the client/architect role, and within this the client-user relationship?\nWHAT? / What activities in design are participated in, and to what extent does the architect see this role as guiding the user as opposed to investigating the user's existing interests/awareness?\nHOW? / How social and technical tools for participation can be used. How can non-specialised language and tools be used to communicate more openly in the process, and how will this affect use of resources?\nWHERE? / Which types of buildings might be more or less suited to participation of users and the general public in the design process?\n\nThe research questions identified above will be investigated through:\n- a review of past and current trends and examples in wider social engagement in the architectural design process, whether 'community', 'individual' or other \n- identification of key social and technical methods of widening participation, drawing from allied areas of the built environment \n- identification of good practice case studies and key informants referring to a Steering Group\n- identification of key institutions with potential interests \n- isolating good practice and possibilities/constraints for wider social involvement in the architecture design process, through case studies\n- identifying implications of the research findings for the profession, institutions and the wider public, including issues for future development\n- making specific recommendations for research development activities and assisting in setting agendas for future activities to promote more systematic and wider social involvement in the architecture design process\n\nThe research methods include:\na) setting up a participatory process, based on a steering group, for confirmation of key issues, identification of case studies and relevant techniques\nb) undertaking an international literature review of participation in design of the built environment;\nc) implementing in-depth investigation of representative case studies from a broad initial sample where user or wider public participation has been engaged in the architectural design process across the UK, using semi-structured interviews and focus group meetings to identify how these have been assessed\nd) undertaking a review of visualisation techniques currently used or in development and their actual / potential role in widening participation in building design \ne) implementing a series of interviews with relevant organisations engaged in issues of public interest in design for new and existing buildings concerning initial findings.\n\nThe research is speculative in that it seeks to establish a consensual agenda for future research and action by Government and professional bodies. The proposal is essentially exploratory, but the outcomes have the potential to be of particular value to the research community as well as other relevant audiences and constituencies. The study may well assist in challenging existing models of architectural design and perceptions of how wider social participation can be incorporated into these, or change these. In addition it will permit an assessment of the feasibility of tools and techniques (some new and some relatively new to architecture). Finally it is seen as a scoping study for further development work, including research possibilities as well as practical application in the profession.