Commercial forces have a large part to play in shaping attitudes and expectations about personal mobility. Even as basic a function as transport has long been marketed partly on the basis of the social distinction it confers on purchasers. Transport companies recognize this when they develop the aspirational marketing of their services, come up with corporate images and brands which may themselves be marketable, and design the likes of vehicles, uniforms and travel facilities to project an attractive images to potential customers. \n\nThe railways were the first transport industry to work in this way, providing a model not only for their later competitors but also many other kinds of business. By the 1900s all the major British railways had adopted measures designed 'to induce people, who would otherwise not do so, to travel by rail, and to encourage such as would travel a little, to travel more'. Road competition after 1918 intensified their efforts, and the railways' commercial language increasingly echoed that familiar today with the term 'customer', for example, often replacing 'passenger' from the 1920s. The railways were also leaders in the shift from text-based to more visually orientated forms of marketing in Britain, with their widespread use in the late-19th century of pictorial posters and then, from the early 20th, of photographs and films. And, despite political and popular prejudices to the contrary, the nationalized railway was from the mid-1960s a world leader in developing brands such as 'British Rail' and Inter-City and the stylish High Speed Train. Today's privatized Train Operating Companies simply employ more sophisticated versions of the same methods. \n\nThis project deepens our knowledge of how and why the railways developed such techniques, helping us to understand just how entrenched in British society are the commercial imperatives to travel more. It will enable the National Railway Museum to develop an exhibition that shows how the railways' commercial cultures fits into the wider history of British cultural, social and business history, and offering detailed knowledge of how these were built up and delivered to potential travellers through a wide range of media. \n\nThe research explores three crucial periods in this history: the late-19th century, when the Midland Railway anticipated the Ryanair revolution in aviation by bringing in low-cost travel for the masses; the inter-war years when companies like the Great Western Railway successfully competed with road transport for long-distance traffic by marrying tradition with modernism; and the Inter-City revolution of the modernizing, post-Beeching railway. \n\nFor each of these periods and businesses, the project explores collections at the National Railway Museum to map the totality of ways in which the railways sold the idea of travel to the public. It also analyses in more depth the contribution made by just one particularly innovative medium in each of these periods: posters and other visual material on the Midland; publicity photographs on the Great Western; and the industrial design of express trains on British Rail. \n\nThe outcome will be an exhibition that celebrates the inventiveness of a little-appreciated aspect of Britain's railways whilst also sounding a warning note about whether such practices are sustainable in a world in which transport - including that by rail - is an increasingly important contributor to global warming, and where constraints on capacity pose ever greater challenges to our seemingly insatiable desire for personal mobility.

York is one of the most visited places in England. With major attractions such as the York Minster, the National Railway Museum and a plethora of historical city churches, York attracts close to 4 million visitors per annum, with just over one million arriving by train. A staggering 3.38 million visitors attended city museums and churches in 2005, of which a very high proportion attended York Minster. In the month of September, the number of visitors in the city usually totals 351,360 and this number will swell this year because of the Festival. The visitors are regionally and culturally diverse arriving from all continents with a multitude of interests, for example, theology, architecture, history, engineering, art and photography. The interest may be either professional-based or merely social such as a hobby. We appreciate some of the audience will be international, and possibly non-English speaking. Language is not a barrier since one part of the engagement is visual. Stunning liquid crystal images, 5 m wide by 10 m high, will be digitally projected on to the east wing of York Minster together with picture galleries in venues across the city, including inside the Minster and at the National Railway Musuem.With such a large, diverse and captive audience the impact of our public engagement and participation will very high. Not only will members of the public have access to stunning scientific imagery across the city, but also a unique chance to engage in public debate with three internationally leading experts in the field of liquid crystals, Professors Gray, Goodby and Raynes, as part of a Caf Scientifique event.Publicity will be at the highest level possible since it forms part of the Festival. The Festival boasts the highest rates of press coverage, national and international, of any annual UK Science event ensuring worldwide media exposure. Publicity and dissemination will be further enhanced using the network of media and public relations experts at York City Council and the University of York. The production of leaflets, programme cards, radio and possible television interviews are envisaged.We are disseminating science through visually stunning artwork. The nature of the artwork as such is mobile and can be easily transported. We envisage dissemination as part of a travelling exhibition, making it accessible to various parts of the country, for example to Tate Modern.

Study of photography as cultural history is relatively new and under-exploited discipline. It is important because the early history of photography coincides with significant global scientific, industrial, artistic, social, political and economic changes that inform understanding of the spread of scientific ideas, the relationship between science and art, the interplay between new technologies, popular culture and commerce, and the creation of personal and national identities. Access to photohistorical resources is essential for future cross-disciplinary research but these resources are often ephemeral, fragile, widely dispersed, poorly documented and difficult to access, although of enormous scope. Poor and inconsistent levels of documentation make it difficult to assess the significance of material beyond the relatively small nucleus of already well-known and heavily researched artists and scientists. However, image collections are increasingly being published online and search engines are becoming increasingly powerful, creating a timely opportunity to match photographs with other textual sources that can enrich our understanding without travel to numerous archives. De Montfort University has created an extensive corpus of digital resources for researchers of 19th century photography comprising photographic exhibition catalogues and collections of letters. This includes two databases of the earliest known photographic exhibition catalogues: Photographs Exhibited in Britain 1839-1865 (PEIB) http://peib.dmu.ac.uk and Exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society 1870-1915 (ERPS) http://erps.dmu.ac.uk. These combined resources comprise the single most comprehensive record of British photographic exhibitions at this time. But these early exhibition catalogues were often devoid of pictures. A further problem is that amongst the visual arts, photography is unique - multiple versions of the same image can be produced and exhibited simultaneously at diverse locations. Photographs were commonly exhibited/published more than once, at different times, with different titles and even by different people, thus associating a specific exhibition catalogue reference with a specific image published elsewhere can be a complex and involved process. This project will develop and test computer based "finding aids" that will be able to recommend potential matches between historical exhibition catalogue entries and images of photographs in online collections even where there is not a precise match. Incomplete data sets and imprecise information are common problems in arts and humanities research so the results of this research will be widely applicable across a wide range of subjects, allowing researchers to save considerable time and travel in the early stages of their research when identifying material most likely to be of interest to their studies and suggesting possible connections that would not otherwise be easily recognised using conventional research methods. The project outcomes will enable museums, libraries and archives to enhance the value and utility of their collections and of their online services through increased information, improved accuracy and functionality. Within the UK alone over 10,000 galleries, museums and archives could potentially benefit from this research. Within the private sector, beneficiaries will include commercial dealers and auction houses concerned with attribution and value. More accurate identification of artefacts such as photographs can help buyers and sellers and even help to prevent inadvertent export of nationally important treasures. The general public will benefit from improved accuracy and detail of information about objects in museums, libraries and archives, and lay communities of interest such as those carrying out genealogical or local history research will benefit in particular from increased access and awareness of information about historical photographs and related objects.

This unique consortium draws on the research excellence of interdisciplinary and complementary design innovation labs at three universities - Lancaster University, Newcastle University and the Royal College of Art and connects it with public and private sectors, linking large and small-scale businesses, service providers and citizens. Together, our expertise in developing and applying creative techniques to navigate unexplored challenges includes that of designers, artists, curators, producers, broadcasters, engineers, managers, technologists and writers - and draws on wider expertise from across the partner universities and beyond. The Creative Exchange responds to profound changes in practice in the creative and media-based industries stimulated by the opening of the digital public space, the ability of everyone to access, explore and create in any aspect of the digital space, moving from 'content consumption' to 'content experience'. It explores new forms of engagement and exchange in the broadcast, performing and visual arts, digital media, design and gaming sectors, by focusing on citizen-led content, interactive narrative, radical personalization and new forms of value creation in the context of the 'experience economy'. The primary geographic focus is the Northwest of England centred around the opportunity presented by the growth of MediaCityUK and its surrounding economy. The three universities act as local test beds with field trials in London, Lancaster and Newcastle prior to larger public facing trials in the northwest. This will support the North West regional strategy for growth in digital and creative media industries, whilst generating comparative research and development locally, nationally and internationally. The Creative Exchange has been developed in response to a paradigm shift in content creation and modes of distribution in a digitally connected world, which has profound impact for the arts and humanities. This transformational-change is taking place within the landscape of a growing digital public space that includes archives, data, information and content. How we navigate and experience this space - and how we generate content for and within it - is central to how we create economic, social, cultural and personal value. The Hub draws on new and agile approaches to knowledge exchange for the creative economy that have been previously developed by the partner universities and new ones co-developed with specialist arts organizations, sector organizations and communities of users.