The Dear Green Bothy Evaluation Report

Evaluation Report

Evaluation

2022

Christie Dooley

Bilyana Palankasova

Nicole Smith

School of Humanities, University of Glasgow

with additional contributions from: Mark Banks, Sarah Cook, Minty Donald, Casi Dylan, Kevin Leomo University of Glasgow

The Dear Green Bothy was the College of Arts’ highly successful response to University of Glasgow’s COP26 programme, and focused on showcasing and organising different creative and critical responses to climate emergency.

This evaluation report was commissioned to engage with project participants, and to identify what the project achieved; including what it did well, or less well, in its initial phase.

We also asked the evaluation team to identify the potential for further development of The Dear Green Bothy as an interdisciplinary platform for hosting, showcasing and developing the range of the University’s arts and humanities research and teaching on key topics of environment, sustainability and climate change. This will inform the next phase of the project as it unfolds in 2022–23.

I would like to thank the evaluation team for their great efforts, and to further thank my colleagues Casi Dylan (Project Manager), Kevin Leomo (Project Assistant) and members of the Arts Sustainability Working Group who helped organise and lead our extensive programme of events in 2021.

Mark Banks

Academic Lead, The Dear Green Bothy, University of Glasgow.

Overview of the Arts Sustainability Working Group (ASWG)

The College of Arts Sustainability Working Group (ASWG) was established in January 2020, on the ini tiative of the Head of the College of Arts, Prof Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh, who invited Prof. Minty Donald to convene the group. ASWG comprises representatives from all Schools in the College of Arts; research and teaching (RT) staff; management, professional and administrative (MPA) staff; and undergraduate and postgraduate students.

The establishment of ASWG in early 2020 was prompted by Glasgow’s hosting of COP26, then planned for November 2020. As such, our initial focus was to create a platform for arts and humanities’ contributions and responses to COP26, as part of the University of Glasgow’s wider engagement with COP. In inaugural meetings we forged a set of shared principles that would underpin our engagement with COP26, and future ASWG activities. The principles are: to create a space that is inclusive and which embraces collaboration and participation within and beyond the University; to nurture and dis seminate creative, affective, and critical responses to climate change and sustainability; and to acknowl edge the wider geographical and historical contexts for climate change and sustainability, specifically highlighting issues of climate justice.

The concept of the bothy a space that is hospitable and non-hierarchical, where stories, songs, debates, and conversations are shared, and where access and interaction is negotiated emerged from discussion of these principles. The Dear Green Bothy was initially conceived as a physical space, with in-person activities and on-line contributions from international collaborators. Development of this iter ation of the Bothy halted in March 2020, however, when COP26 was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the first pandemic lockdown in Spring 2020, and due to other commitments, Minty stepped aside from leading ASWG’s COP26 initiative (while remaining as convenor of ASWG). Prof. Mark Banks took up leadership of The Dear Green Bothy, working in partnership with Casi Dylan, who was seconded to the Bothy on a fractional post as Project Manager. Members of ASWG (Matt Brennan, Minty Donald, and Dominic Paterson) formed a steering group for the Bothy.

The Dear Green Bothy programme aligns with the aims of ASWG in disseminating and extending the diverse range of research and creative activities relating to climate change and sustainability that take place across the College of Arts. It enabled arts and humanities researchers and practitioners (lecturers and students) to generate new projects and present ongoing work though an accessible and outwardly focussed platform, consisting of in-person and on-line events. It allowed researchers and practitioners to reach new audiences, to consolidate existing relationships and form new partnerships with external organisations. A key legacy of The Dear Green Bothy is its website: an archive of all the Bothy projects, including reflections by those involved as researchers, artists, participants, and audiences.

ASWG is committed to building on the legacy of The Dear Green Bothy. We are pursuing op portunities to disseminate and develop the material generated, through teaching, knowledge exchange, public engagement, and research activities. For example, a new, cross-College PGT course in sustainabil ity and climate change is planned, which will build on partnerships established through the Bothy and use materials from the website.

For more information see: https://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/arts/aboutus/aswg/

Minty Donald Chair, ASWG, University of Glasgow

Introduction

The Dear Green Bothy was conceived as the College of Arts’ contribution to the University of Glasgow’s COP26 programme. Devised by the College’s Arts Sustainability Working Group (ASWG), the aim of the project was to commission and showcase an interdisciplinary array of critical and creative responses to ecological emergency, foregrounding the vital role of arts and culture in helping to address the climate crisis.

At the time of writing, the Dear Green Bothy has organised over 50 events, involving over 2500 participants, and worked with over 30 HEIs and 25 external partner and community organisations. The Dear Green Bothy website has had over 37,000 views and is now actively used as a teaching and research resource both within and outwith the University.

Through its diverse range of virtual and in-person events, co-produced by researchers, artists and communities, The Dear Green Bothy has been identified as making a positive and original contribution to climate change debate in both the University and the city of Glasgow. Given the success of the project it is hoped that The Dear Green Bothy will continue to provide an interdisciplinary platform for hosting, showcasing and developing the range of the University’s arts and humanities research and teaching on topics of environment, sustainability and climate change. Preliminary agreement has been reached to continue to the project into 2022 23.

Working alongside The Dear Green Bothy organising committee, the evaluation team was commis sioned to engage with individuals working with and participating in the programme to better understand the impact of The Dear Green Bothy on all stakeholders involved, especially the organisers of events. The evaluation project aimed to conduct an examination of The Dear Green Bothy’s activities with the intention to identify and share key themes for impact which could in turn inform future arts and humanities programming at the University of Glasgow.

Methods of Data Collection

The evaluation team consisted of four interdisciplinary researchers (Smith, Cook, Palankasova, and Dooley). All members of the team undertake practice-based research and practice as research. Our work addresses the conceptual challenge of demonstrating impact of arts and humanities research, as well as the problem of assessing and defining value (Belfiore, 2014). We address these notions of impact and value throughout the analysis and reflections stages of this evaluation.

The research took an exploratory approach, using mixed qualitative methods to enable multi-strand analysis of impacts from event organisers, facilitators, and attendees. The methods employed are outlined below. The team worked with programme and event organisers to identify potential areas of strength and opportunity to inform future planning. This evaluation did not include the event feedback forms used by the individual organisers or by the University.

Focus groups

The research team held two focus groups a few weeks after the programme of events had occurred, inviting attendees via the Eventbrite mailing list. An incentive of a shopping voucher was offered as a reimbursement to group participants and the conversation took place on Zoom. One lunchtime and one evening event were held, to encourage participation from a mixture of attendees. The focus groups were facilitated by one researcher who posed a series of talking points to the group. Zoom’s automatic transcription was used and then edited to ensure accuracy. The questions guiding the discussions during the focus groups were:

What event or events of The Dear Green Bothy did you attend and why?

Was the event you attended what you expected or did anything surprise you?

What is your relationship to the environment and the environmental crisis?

What new things did you learn about the ecological emergency through attending The Dear Green Bothy events?

How has your understanding of what the arts and humanities contribute to the environmental conver sation changed as a result of attending these event(s)?

What did you like about the event(s) you attended?

What did you dislike about the event(s) you attended? Was there anything you would have changed or would have like to be different?

What events would you like to see or attend in the future that are organised by the University?

How did you find the balance of physical events and online events?

Interviews

We interviewed 20 organisers from 19 events.

Christie Dooley conducted 8 interviews representing 8 events: Peatlands Feel Field Green Poetry for Change Collective Care

So Help Me, Cabbage Games Sustainability Hackathon

Gotta Grow ‘em All Eco Echoes

Bilyana Palankasova conducted 11 interviews representing 10 events: Tears of Gold Greening Glasgow Bright Edge Deep

The Walking Library for a Wild City RCC (Rachel Carson Center) at the COP – An Environmental Humanities Exhibition Queer River, Wet Land Erratic Drift

Sound Thought

Rising Up: How to be a climate activist! Imagining the Future of Travel (with reference to the Past) Local Women of the World

We actively selected events to ensure that across the programme the selections were representative of the rich mixture of event types. For each event, the organisers were contacted via email and invited to interview. No incentive was offered as interviewees expected to be contacted for evaluation purposes as this was part of the conditions for receiving event funding under The Dear Green Bothy programme. Event organisers were a mixture of University-based researchers, partner institution representatives, com missioned artists, and volunteers with specific creative or lived-experience interests. The interviews were conducted online, via Zoom. Zoom’s automatic transcription was used and then edited post-interview by the interviewers to format the transcripts accordingly and remove transcription errors.

The events represented in the interview data are summarised below:

Online exhibition Bright Edge Deep

Online event Imagining the Future of Travel/ Greening Glas gow

Online screening/discussion So Help Me, Cabbage/ Erratic Drift

Online hackathon Games Sustainability Hackathon

Online musical event Eco Echoes

Online games Games Sustainability Hackathon/ Gotta Grow ‘Em All/ Eco Echoes

Hybrid online/in person music stream Sound Thought

In person multilingual poetry reading Green Poetry for Change

In person arts or music event Collective Care

In person walk Queer River, Wet Land

In person workshop Rising Up: How to be a climate activist!

In person exhibition Peatlands/ Local Women of the World, RCC at the COP/ Tears of Gold Artist residency/physical installation Feel Field

Twitter Forum

A Twitter-based lunchtime forum event was hosted by the evaluation team as a method for sharing some initial findings from the interview data analysis, and to elicit further reflections from event organisers. All programme participants were invited via email and Twitter using the #DearGreenBothy hashtag. This event was attended by programme participants already active on Twitter. A series of initial findings were shared alongside relevant challenges to The Dear Green Bothy in the future:

Finding 1: The Dear Green Bothy events made new connections between the University and the city, making physical links between the two.

Challenge 1: We need to find ways to work with the city, in synergy with other events.

Finding 2: The Dear Green Bothy provided a space for creative thinking from existing research and for improvisation to occur.

Challenge 2: We need to identify ways to acknowledge different working practices and languages for working.

Finding 3: The Dear Green Bothy fostered collaboration and multidisciplinary projects.

Challenge 3: We need to provide supported volunteer opportunities for events to develop skills and engage the next generation of researchers.

Focus Group Findings

The focus group transcripts were coded separately by evaluators Bilyana Palankasova and Christie Dooley using NVivo software. Initial findings were then compared, followed by further coding and analysis to promote consistency across the two transcripts.

Through the two focus groups we conducted, we found out that the audience’s expectations about the programme were met and sometimes exceeded. Some audience members thought the programme was diverse, though not always clear, one stating that it felt like a ‘loose home for a lot of different things’ (Focus Group A, 2022). Their motivation was a mix of curiosity, exposure to something new, need for inspiration, signposting to resources and meaningful conversation. Transformation & Impact, New Knowledge, and Perceptions of Research are three prevailing themes derived from our data analysis.

Transformation & Impact

Several of the participants in the focus groups were creative practitioners or researchers of different back grounds who found the programme valuable to their practice and investigations. Overall, the events they attended enriched their understanding of the ecological emergency and how they can incorporate and communicate ecological ideas through their work. One participant shared their enjoyment of the online exhibition Bright Edge Deep and found the Programmable Nature conversations with artists inspiration al, expressing, ‘it really linked in with work I’m doing at university at the moment and moving forward and taking my investigations further’ (Focus Group A, 2022).

Another participant felt their relationship to the climate crisis changed since attending The Dear Green Bothy events, stating:

I felt like I actually was literally involved, I was literally participating in piece through the events, even though obviously it was a very small participation, it felt. It felt, like, very active to me. So that was a big difference for me. Before and after or during it. Focus Group B

Participants reflected on the value of the programme as creating resources of various kinds. For example, a respondent adapted and tested the Sound Thought walks within their own community. Additionally, participants engaged in fruitful exchanges on social media with some of the artists involved and de scribed the overall experience as ‘enriching’ (Focus Group A, 2022). One participant shared they joined the collective ‘Culture Declares Emergency’ as a result of getting engaged with The Dear Green Bothy programme. Additionally, they stated that attending The Dear Green Bothy programme made them ‘more aware as citizens about the [ecological] challenges’ (Focus Group A, 2022).

New Knowledge

Our findings indicate that members of the public gained a heightened sense of knowledge regarding the climate debate by attending one or more of The Dear Green Bothy events. In some instances, this new understanding came as a surprise, even if they had expectations for learning. For example, one participant simply states, ‘I have gone away with so much more knowledge and interest than what I’ve probably even imagined that I could have done’ (Focus Group A, 2022).

Another participant had their expectations met, stating their main motivation was ‘to learn more, to establish the links between art, science and the eco emergency and I use this knowledge to enrich my artistic practice’ (Focus Group A, 2022).

The same participant goes on to clarify:

[my understanding of how the arts & humanities contribute to conversations on the ecological emergency] has changed tremendously […] at first it appears to be a paradox... how arts and hu manities can contribute to the ecological conversation. But it’s not, in the way that all these [events] showcased practices, highlighted very beautifully and that’s contributed to dispel that myth of the paradox […] arts and humanities research have a role to play in conversations around the environ ment and climate emergency. And that was a big win for the legacy of the project.

Focus Group A

In Focus Group B (2022), a participant explains they not only learned a lot of history, but gained a sense of continuity of climate issues:

I learned a lot of history […], it wasn’t just the [So Help Me] Cabbage event, the [Green] Poetry [For Change] event gave me […] a history of literature and poetry that I had no idea about. And the more current […] works about the place names and the new video about place names [A’ Chail leach], […] gave me a sense that […] it’s not new […], it really helped me have a sense of the continu ity of all the issues, as a continuum rather than just, all of a sudden there’s an emergency happening.

[…] There was a lot going on in the bigger picture that I simply wasn’t aware of before attending events. And, and it gave me a sense of what was going on in the arts [...]. There was a lot […] going on that I was really excited to learn about and even be a little bit part of. Focus Group B

Expanding the understanding of the audience of the many ways in which arts and humanities intertwine with science and the natural world was a fundamental goal for the Dear Green Bothy programme from the outset. Furthermore, diversifying audience understandings is key to making conversations around the ecological emergency more accessible.

Perceptions of Research

Participants showed interest in and curiosity about research outputs and research impact expressed through a public programme and engaging with the general public. One participant shared they:

enjoyed hearing about people’s own research and delving into the background of it and the rami fications of it and trying to change things […] about broadening my perspective and […] helping maybe guide me forwards in ways that I can take my own work […] and being able to tap into the wide-ranging depths of other’s research practices Focus Group A

Another participant echoed this statement, stressing that they felt they gained ‘a greater understanding of contributor’s research and practices rather than perhaps a greater understanding of environmental topic’ (Focus Group A, 2022).

A third participant stated that they were excited to explore the Being Human Festival from a re search perspective, which led them to attend The Dear Green Bothy events; and although they normally attend cultural events as a self-identified ‘writer and musician,’ they were ‘drawn to the ones that, where people were discussing, not only the issues [but] discussing the mediums,’ such as A’ Chailleach, Poetry and the Climate Crisis, and So Help Me, Cabbage (Focus Group B, 2022).

A fourth participant was particularly happy with the accessibility to research that The Dear Green Bothy provided through an informal and friendly atmosphere and events which were well structured and easy to follow (Focus Group A, 2022).

Other Reflections

Beyond the main findings above, there were a few other notable reflections which came out of the focus groups. While not as consistent throughout the data, they are nevertheless worth mentioning particular ly with reference to possible future programmes like The Dear Green Bothy.

Two of the participants linked the event they attended to mental health saying, ‘I did some of the online sound walks and from a mental health perspective’ and ‘I’m always on the lookout and something that’s ecological is something that definitely always piques my interest […] and with COP26 in mind and mental health being a prevalent issue, these were things that linked me in’ (Focus Group A, 2022). A third participant wrote in the Zoom chat in Focus Group B (2022) that understanding the ecological debate plays a ‘vital role’ in mental health.

Respondents also appreciated the hybrid platform, enjoying the opportunity to join in events remotely. For distance learners like one of the participants in Focus Group B (2022), having some online events ‘was a huge positive, not just because of logistics, but it’s just so easy,’ not taking away from lunch or research time and fitting into a daily schedule. Another said, ‘hybrid delivery puts the pressure on the organiser, the host, but might be convenient for the attendees. So, if I have the choice, I’d like to have that freedom of option.’ A third participant expressed similar feelings in saying, ‘The online events work great for me on many levels, and I would love to see more moving forward; I like that there’s a mix and, in the future, would still consider some in person events’ (Focus Group A, 2022).

Also in praise of the online options, one participant emphasised the hybrid platform:

actually offered a lot more opportunities for the format and what you can present and things that you can do. And I think that having […] the round table [...] with artists discussing the topic and being able to ask questions [...] because […] seeing people in action, live, [...] discussing these topics made a big difference for me and my perception of […] the climate emergency would have been very different if there wasn’t a lot of discussion happening.

Focus Group B

It was recommended as part of the focus group feedback that if there is a programme or similar project in the future, it should include community spaces as forums for conversation before or after events to continue conversations around specific themes (Focus Group A, 2022).

Furthermore, audience members were glad the website is still live and could serve as a resource, with one participant praising the website layout (Focus Group B, 2022). However, others shared some feedback that there is room for improvement, specifically pointing out that the website is heavily text based and does not offer audio/visual alternatives in terms of accessibility (Focus Group A, 2022). Mak ing the website screen reader friendly and embedding accessibility tools should be a priority.

Additionally, one participant said, ‘I’d like to understand how this sits within the University of Glasgow […] the About page is very short, it also talks about bringing together researchers, artists, and communities that I wasn’t sure where the latter came in as strongly’ (Focus Group A, 2022). Another stated that more detail in the website descriptions would be helpful, especially links ‘to the names, or their work, or a little more detail about what occurred’ (Focus Group B, 2022). With such a diverse programme, it is important to clarify how each event relates to the wider university structure, clearly indicating which partners, organisers and venues are involved and how they are connected.

Interview Findings

The interview transcripts were coded in two separate sets by evaluators Palankasova and Dooley using NVivo software. Initial findings were then compared, followed by further coding and analysis to promote consistency across data sets. Analysis was conducted by Palankasova, Dooley, and Beale. Below, we provide insight into the accomplishments, key themes and challenges derived from the data.

Promoting Arts and Humanities as a Lens for Global Challenges

Our research shows the essential need for arts, humanities, and social sciences research to tackle global challenges. The debate of the relationship between STEM and the disciplines of arts, humanities, and social sciences cannot be disentangled.

The difficulty of applying scientific objectivity to global (and moral) issues like climate change is directly addressed in an interview with Matthew Fox who stated the following about his online event So Help Me, Cabbage:

...the main message of the event is that it’s very difficult to cut a clear path between scientific objec tivity and morality. And that that strikes me as being the big problem with implementing policies regarding climate sustainability. And that you can find the same tension between attempts to come to an objective scientific view of the world that also have a kind of moral dimension so it’s that intersection between morality and science was at the heart...

Other areas of the interview data begin to explore strategies to overcome this difficulty. Some interview responses had indicators that arts, humanities, and social sciences research brings lived experiences into scientific research (McNaughton, 2011), and of the benefits of bringing mixed approaches to real world problems (Marcone, 2022). For example, Ruth Fletcher of the Hunterian proposed that ‘you can raise the focus of [climate change] through arts’, advocating for ‘the importance of arts in getting those mes sages across and [lending] an understanding to people’s responses to these things’ and challenging ‘the automatic assumption is that it’s the sciences that are going to be particularly involved in issues around climate change’.

Some of the observations on these demarcation lines between the ‘hard’ sciences and the arts and humanities evidence the interconnectedness of two areas of knowledge often thought of as opposed. While of course being concerned with scholarship, arts and humanities also increasingly interact more with non-specialised audiences. As Dominic Hinde described:

a kind of public intellectualism where we take the knowledge we have into the public space and we use it to help people understand what’s happening. I think there is some room in the REF for that too. One of the things we really feel strongly about […] in our department here at Glasgow is the idea of a public sociology as well. So we are able to engage with people in a way which is no intel lectually reductive and allow people who might not have had contact with these ideas before to get a hold on them and begin to bring them into their space as well […] for everyone’s benefit.

At the same time, COP26 was an event with huge magnitude which while international and expan sive was not necessarily accessible. One artist participating in The Dear Green Bothy programme, James Aldrige, shared that they often think of themselves and their practice as outsiders to conversations

happening on this level. Indeed, events such as COP are distinctly scientifically and politically oriented, despite the ecological turn in contemporary creative practices. That is not to say that COP26 didn’t in clude creative projects but rather that the spaces where higher-level ecological conversations happen are not usually intended for creatives and arts and humanities practitioners and researchers.

At the same time, the arts and humanities offer accessibility to often complicated scientific or social phenomena. This opens up space for engagement by and with voices underrepresented in such conversations. This proved particularly successful through the Local Women of the World exhibition, which created space for the voice of migrant women in the ecological conversation. The project organiser Zarina Ahmad spoke about the challenges of holding this space for vulnerable people in a way which does not jeopardise them and instead empowers them, while confronting the stereotypes about who is involved and cares about climate change and ecological challenges. Several projects that were part of The Dear Green Bothy programme were recognised by COP26 and included in their cultural programme as part of the Green Zone at the conference. These were Local Women of the World, Bright Edge Deep and the Games Sustainability Hackathon

Developing the Programme and External Synergies

Programming a series of interrelated events to focus on specific challenges resulted in improved aware ness amongst researchers of existing projects with potential synergies. Here are some examples of how this heightened awareness has resulted in (or fallen short of) achieving thematic links.

Based on their shared interests in creating opportunities for artists, the Feel Field project was made aware of an external arts organisation - the Bothy Project (not to be confused with The Dear Green Bothy); the two went on to collaborate, providing the participating artists access to ‘a real-life bothy up in Inschriach, next to Aviemore’ as part of the Bothy Project’s existing residency scheme in the Highlands. According to Casi Dylan, the residency conceptually complimented the Feel Field climate portal installation:

...it worked out quite nicely [...] conceptually that […] the bothy [...] was pretty much the same dimensions as the climate portal, which is a converted [...] shipping container. So there was […] a thread running through about ideas of confinement and the freedom in the natural world as well, that fed through that [...] but the fact that there were so many partners and so many collaborators to the project was one of the strengths, so [...] it’s been a been amazing to be able to offer two young artists this kind of opportunity [...] to go and spend time in a residency up in the Highlands and but it’s not without its complications as well […] there’s lots of spinning plates and […] different agendas to manage as part of it...

The Collective Care project at The Hunterian Museum also made productive thematic links instigated by their education-driven involvement in The Dear Green Bothy, as well as the Being Human Festival’s annual theme of renewal. This resulted in new partnerships with The SHARE Programme (Scienc es, Humanities and Arts Research Exchange), which included musical collaborators from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, as well as internally collaborating with The New Normal (a local arts project conceived by a curatorial studies student based at The Glasgow School of Art) and Polish Treasures (led by the research of DF exploring human migrations via the lens of contemporary art). According to Ruth Fletcher, ‘this all tied in quite nicely with the [Being Human Festival’s] theme of renewal’; furthermore,

‘the collaboration has probably led to a few good productive long-term relationships and so it’s sparked a combination of […] ideas and networking that’s going to have a long-term impact’.

The Hunterian Museum’s student-curated Peatlands exhibition (invited to participate in the Dear Green Bothy only after its conception) had direct thematic and disciplinary connections to the online exhibition Bright Edge Deep (another project included in The Dear Green Bothy), in that they both concerned the cultural, spiritual, natural, historical and economic roles of Scotland’s peatlands, especially in relation to the future. While these projects were made aware of one another via mutual involvement in The Dear Green Bothy, this connection could have been made more explicit if given more lead-in time, according to the Hunterian organisers.

Shaping of the Network

The interview data provided new insight into the multidisciplinary and collaborative nature of the pro gramme. This is visually represented in the form of a ‘mindmap’ or concept map (Elhoseiny and Elgam mal, 2016), which charts the range and interconnectedness of collaborators, as well as the involvement of individuals across multiple projects under The Dear Green Bothy umbrella.

The map was drawn in Miro and can be found here (a snapshot is included below). It shows the network of events, organisers and partners, as represented by the interview data gathered for this evalua tion. The map includes:

Events part of The Dear Green Bothy programme

Lead organisers of events from the University of Glasgow Lead organisers of events from outside the University of Glasgow Collaborators on events from the University of Glasgow Collaborators on events from outside the university of Glasgow Partnering organisations

The map demonstrates the various links The Dear Green Bothy programme established or joined within the university and beyond. For example, it clearly demonstrates the significance of the partnership with Being Human Festival, supporting five of the events in the map. It also shows the multiple internal and external partners on Bright Edge Deep one of the most significant and successful projects of the programme. Similarly, Feel Field stands out as a project having formed a diverse network of participants from outside the University of Glasgow and outside academia, creating links with various cultural organ isations in Scotland. It is also interesting to observe some organisers from the University, who had been involved in multiple events, such as Tim Peacock, Nicki Whitehouse, Minty Donald, Clare Willsdon, Dee Heddon and others. While visualising various connections and the shape of The Dear Green Bothy network, the map also makes visible the projects, which did not have as clear links with the rest of the programme Green Poetry for Change, Imagining the Future of Travel and RCC at the COP. Although not seemingly explicitly linked to other projects, we excluded the Soundwalks organised by Kevin Leomo from this group, because of his involvement as Project Assistant on The Dear Green Bothy, mak ing him central in the delivery of the programme more broadly.

fig 3. Snapshot of a map demonstrating the entangled network of partnerships and collaborations within the Dear Green Bothy programme. To explore the map in its entirety, please follow the link

Building Collaboration

Collaborative research and practices were built into The Dear Green Bothy format from the start. Most of the interview participants substantiated this collaborative nature of the programme by citing their connections with other researchers, universities, festivals, practitioners and organisations, as demonstrat ed by the vast network of collaborators shown in the Mindmap [fig. 3].

In many cases, The Dear Green Bothy enabled new collaborations via thematic connections and established opportunities for longer-term partnerships. For example, the organiser of Feel Field cited The Bothy Project as a valuable collaborator and considered the potential benefits of this collaboration if it were approached as a longer-term project.

Other interview participants directly pointed to examples of the programme seeding collaboration opportunities; one clearly identified this aspect (along with communications and experimentation) as one of the three most important strands to the Games and Gaming Lab programme, which facilitated the Games Sustainability Hackathon in conjunction with The Dear Green Bothy, New York University, and the Tinderbox Collective:

I see that really our work revolves around three strands one is events that we organize in order to provide engagement with folk or to seed research collaborations and, obviously, a lot of those have had to be virtual up until recently, but we’ve run everything from workshops on game creation to symposia around space in gaming or history and archaeology of gaming which back in 2019 each of those had over 100 delegates in its launch. Tim Peacock

Another participant expresses the sheer enjoyment of working with a mix of creative practitioners, for organisers and audiences alike. Here, they describe the Collective Care event at The Hunterian, which spotlighted the fluid performances of dancers and musicians, an exciting change in tone for the exhibition space:

I would definitely say the collaborations with different creative people made it really enjoyable that we had […] composed music […] and the dance was something that was new, as far as I’m aware in the museum. I’ve been here 10 years I’m not aware of anything like that having happened before, and that was just slightly different […]; we weren’t treating just one small part of the museum as a stage, but the performance that the dancer did went right around the main hall of the museum, and for me that kind of brought the whole thing to life, people were watching from upstairs on the balcony, which again was a new way of looking at the activities that we were putting on, so I think the range of performance and activity[…] Ruth Fletcher

Following this event, the Hunterian Museum staff intends to ‘do a lot more collaborations with the mu sic department and [embrace] the whole idea of having new materials and opportunities for early career musicians or creatives of other outlets’ (Fletcher).

This collaborative format of knowledge growing has proven mutually beneficial to collaborators; this is evident in, for example, the Peatlands exhibition, for which we interviewed both the student cu rator and Hunterian staff involved; both parties pointed to the collaboration itself as a valuable learning experience. Likewise, Dee Heddon characterised The Walking Library for a Wild City itself as a collab orative space saying ‘I always really love the encounters that people have with books and place and the attention folk give to other folk sharing things. It’s a very gentle convivial space of collaboration’.

James Aldridge and Minty Donald became collaborators on the Queer River, Wet Land project af ter being introduced by Mark Banks. They discovered and developed similarities between their respective practices and delivered a project inviting other collaborators from the University of Glasgow Rachel Clive, Ingrid Shearer and Cecilia Tortajada (Donald, 2021). Through performative walks and various research exchanged, Queer River explored the relationship between water and land in a local context considering ecological and social narratives.

Beyond partnerships with other traditional research institutions, it is important to emphasise the potential of collaboration with other non-academic partners. As projects such as Feel Field demonstrat ed, collaboration with various cultural partners could generate a multi-faceted project spanning research and creative practice. It is important to recognise cultural activity beyond the academy for its research vitality and knowledge production and to regard it as a valuable collaborator in efforts to showcase re search happening within the university. That is to say, to engage with what Sean Vaughan (2020) calls pa ra-academic praxis referring to non-academic cultural institutions’ work in organisational and collective production of knowledge. Rather than positioning such research in an opposition to academic research, such definitions aim to blur the boundaries and better articulate the multiple and interrailed contexts in which research takes place, particularly in the arts and humanities. In that sense, efforts such as The Dear Green Bothy could create a valuable space within the University for engagement with other non-academ ic institutions and practitioners in an effort to articulate the interdependent context in which university research exists.

Inter, Trans and Multi-disciplinarity

Our interview data validates the intended function of The Dear Green Bothy programme to serve as a medium for interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary modes of working and researching.

For some events, this took the form of knowledge exchange between experts in different fields, as this interviewee suggests:

I think the interdisciplinary nature of the conversation shows you can make bridges between these completely unrelated disciplines […] All three of us would get quite a lot out of every other bit of that conversation, you know whether it was talking to the other two people or sharing the ideas as a trio, so I felt the sort of interdisciplinary benefit worked really well.

This event, So Help Me, Cabbage, facilitated a dynamic roundtable discussion between a contemporary artist, classicist and agriculturalist.

For the student-led exhibition Peatlands, the project was chosen by the Hunterian Museum staff for its multidisciplinary format:

[…] one of the things that appealed to us as the people [...] assessing the proposals was that it was a multidisciplinary proposal that the students have put together. We’re […] trying to do more of that and use more of our collection kind of holistically rather than just arts or just natural science […]

In this case, Museum Studies PGT students with a range of backgrounds joined with Hunterian staff to reconfigure university object collections into a string of multidisciplinary stories about human interac tions with Scottish peatlands, with a focus on climate change.

Along with Queer River, Wet Land, discussed in the previous section on collaboration, Minty Donald delivered another collaborative and multidisciplinary project Erratic Drift. It’s important to note the language we use here in terms of the collaborative nature of these projects. We chose to refer to these as multidisciplinary since they involve practitioners from different academic fields. It’s not always appropriate to refer to such projects as interdisciplinary since interdisciplinarity would require some sort of exchange of methods. Working in a truly interdisciplinary way is a huge challenge, which Donald herself expressed when reflecting on Erratic Drift saying:

I’m really drawn into working interdisciplinary but I also know it’s really difficult. Something like the walk with Paul Bishop was great because […] he can tell us things and explain things […] in ways that we don’t really understand. But he’s sort of doing that […] Geology 101 really. It’s like maybe a first year lecture geology. And we’re not operating anything like the same level really and similarly, if I talk about the art practice […] I was explaining to them about where the idea of the drift came from...and he’s like that “Oh, I really don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

These sort of collaborative projects, especially those part of a public programme, reveal some of the big challenges of interdisciplinary work. On these challenges, Donald compared disciplinary expertise to different languages and the limitations of not being fluent. It’s difficult to work from your position of expertise but also in a meaningful way with other people who have different approaches. Projects such as Erratic Drift, Queer River, So Help Me Cabbage offer different ways of approaching this challenge of co-creation from various disciplinary perspectives.

In recent years, interdisciplinarity has been a growing concern for scholars in the sciences and hu manities. Interdisciplinarity has also been framed as an attempt to solve academic irrelevance and within the humanities inter- and transdisciplinary efforts seem to be responding to the changing landscape of contemporary society (Frodeman et al., 2017). Frodeman suggests this is achieved in several ways among which by the adoption of expanded approaches which challenge disciplines as isolated domains; by erasing boundaries between humanities and social sciences; and by the development of transdisciplinary and entrepreneurial approaches to the humanities in which humanists work with partners outside of the academy in real time. Some of the projects hosted by The Dear Green Bothy comfortably sit in these categories and exemplify the motivation of humanities research to transcend disciplinary boundaries and engage various communities. Additionally, the presence of artistic practices in some of these is perhaps what makes these exchanges accessible to a wider audience while illustrating but also illuminating knowl edge exchanges between disciplines and resulting in generative projects.

Research experimentation

We have already addressed the perception of research from an audience perspective, but this theme emerges again in the interview data from the perspectives of organisers. Interestingly, what is classified as research in the interviews exists both within the academic realm as part of individual projects, internal collaborations, and festivals, as well as beyond the university in the work of individual practitioners and external groups. Feel Field is an excellent example of a project that, in tandem with the Being Human Festival, built on research within the university and beyond, working with the academic lead of the Royal Conservatoire and associate artists of the UNESCO RILA team in the College of Social Sciences, as well as the independent research resource, the Bothy Project.

For many participants, The Dear Green Bothy was a supportive arena or lens for experimentally pushing existing research and collaborative frameworks into new directions. For example, one interviewee explained that:

in some ways I think it’s the idea that […] art could be a way of extrapolating some of the stuff I’ve been doing in my [Classics] research, which strikes me as the most interesting thing in terms of taking it forward. Matthew Fox

For Clare Willsdon, involvement in events and programmes allowed her to key in on aspects of her research. For example, doing online talks for Doors Open Days Festival with botanist David Mitchell about the history of Glasgow parks was the foundation of what later developed into the Greening Glasgow event for The Dear Green Bothy programme. Willsdon’s research concerns Impressionist garden paint ings and more broadly 19th century garden imagery so the links between art and horticulture was present in her work already but approached through public events with David Mitchell and thinking about parks as a movement to defeat industrial pollution opened up the research to ecological perspectives and relat ed it to efforts to mitigate climate change. Willsdon led another The Dear Green Bothy project, Bright Edge Deep, with Nicki Whitehouse and Gareth Beale. Bright Edge Deep is an interdisciplinary online ex hibition bringing together art and archaeology. The organisers commented in interviews and subsequent communications about the challenges of continued support for projects within a broader programme. One team member explained:

I personally did not feel the Dear Green Bothy really fully capitalised on our hard work and might have done more to help advertise the project but also use it to catalyse other efforts. For example, the Being Human Festival last year used some aspects of the Dear Green Bothy but didn’t make use of BED. It seems to me that all efforts around capitalising upon the BED really came from us.

This highlights the challenge in providing ongoing resource and access to the bigger network once programming begins and indeed, ends. Involvement in The Dear Green Bothy did result in several further initiatives and events for the Bright Edge Deep team, and they described the importance of the funding from the programme to enable the exhibition to be created and the projects that have launched from that work.

As a platform for projects organised by researchers from the University and engaging with the ecological emergency, The Dear Green Bothy was a vehicle to showcase the work of creative practitioner researchers such as Minty Donald and Dee Heddon. Both work collaboratively and use walking as a method in their practices. For Heddon, the walking library is a creative project with multiple iterations which has been ongoing since 2012. It is usually a collaboration with another scholar, Dr Misha Myers, currently based at the Deakin University in Melbourne. The project’s intention is to think through the relationship between reading, environment landscape and walking.

Minty Donald’s research is also practice-based and in the last nine years has been concerned with the relationship between humans and waterways, such as rivers and canals. Walking is central to Donald’s practice, and she often works collaboratively, most commonly with Nick Millar; on the occasion of The Dear Green Bothy, she worked with James Aldridge on Queer River, Wet Land and with multiple collab orators for Erratic Drift Rachel Clive, Ingrid Shearer, Lizzy Smith (Donald, 2021).

The programme also showcased projects by undergraduate and postgraduate research students at the University. Kevin Leomo and Hannah Thomas are current doctoral students in the College of Arts,

both working on practice research projects. Leomo works in composition and considers alternative and experimental listening practices; Thomas is a painter working on a collaborative project with the UNESCO Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts (RILA) evaluating the human and social impact of art for migratory and marginalised people.

It became evident that the University is a home to many researchers who engage in practice as part of their work. These practices are particularly relevant when looking to address social concerns through research, practice and audience engagement. As the focus group data shows, through the programme audiences were interested and felt they learned more about research happening at the University. This indicates the need for a research hub which The Dear Green Bothy could serve as a prototype for engag ing communities and audiences with research happening at the University in an accessible way could be a vehicle for generating impact and value for stakeholders beyond the academy.

External and Public Engagement

Engagement is an emergent theme across the Dear Green Bothy programme, covering topics of en gagement with people, communities, environments, and collections. The interview data points to social engagement as one of the driving motivations behind this public programme at the outset; Tim Peacock stated that this served a ‘dual role of being engagement with different communities and the public, but also that it would generate […] research conversations and potential project engagement’. Furthermore, some instances also indicate that the programme itself facilitated deeper reflections on what this engagement consists of.

For example, the Dear Green Bothy offered the university’s programme managers and other events facilitators a chance to reconsider audience engagement aims. For example, Casi Dylan reflected on the social engagement goals of arts programming in relation to their non-academic audiences:

...I’m particularly interested ultimately in broadening who engages with university events and that in order to do that, I think we’ve really, really need to think about what we’re programming, how we’re marketing, how we’re reaching out to them.

Through the project Feel Field (as defined by the wider aims of The Dear Green Bothy programme), both organisers and participants were encouraged to reconsider their access to engagement with natural environments:

[the artists] were interested in where this sort of sense of belonging fits into their […] discourse about engagement with the natural world […] who engages with nature and […] particularly who engages with nature as a creative act and then hopefully, encouraging people who are engaged with their installation and with their walk to […] feel that discomfort a little bit and feel that sense of dislocation Casi Dylan

Another project, Green Poetry for Change engaged with multilingual poets from ‘from Romania, from Poland, from Mexico, France, and Scotland’, immersed in a natural and local community setting at the Hidden Gardens. The organiser of this event, Maria Marchidanu, expressed an interest in developing this engagement further by involving schools or community-based organizations, saying the following:

I would maybe go more directly and place the event somewhere that they could just see it and access it. Although the Hidden Gardens is a public place, I think maybe going to schools or parks or just kind of repeating the event in more locations to see more community participation.

Through the Walking Library of a Wild City, participants also had the opportunity to engage both with Glasgow and with its invisible ecosystems. Participants were encouraged to respond to the read ings and the walk with drawings resulting in various depictions of usually unnoticed or marginalised objects alongside city landmarks. The walk resulted in drawings of an abandoned pair of boots, a pigeon, maps, sketches of the route, elderberry tree, a pinecone, and the Clyde. Dee Heddon noted that what was different about this particular walk was the participation of international students and shared an exchange between another colleague about the value of the walk as an experience of immersing oneself in the city, particularly if not entirely familiar with it. In a similar engagement fashion, Imagining the Future of Travel involved a mail art aspect, which emerged from a previous project (Landscapes of Mutability) and encouraged participants to send postcards with their landscape experiences during the lockdown and talk about how they connected with landscape.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the project Local Women of the World in which, on suggestion from Mark Banks, the university took part through the assignment of student mentors to the women partici pating. This expanded the pool of skills available to women in the project and made it more sustainable since its scope was beyond the means of a single organiser, which was Zarina Ahmad. The participation of student mentors made the link with the university stronger, and the university more actively involved with audiences and communities. In that sense, Local Women of the World was not only an engagement project but also a mentorship programme, extending the engagement in both directions and offering longer-term structural support to the marginalised and diverse stakeholders involved in the programme.

Key Challenges

We identified three key challenges from the overall evaluation:

Challenge 1: Finding ways to work with the city, and in synergy with other events.

Challenge 2: Identifying ways to acknowledge different working practices and vocabularies.

Challenge 3: Providing more supported volunteer or contribution opportunities for events.

The challenges highlight several sub-level needs:

Providing technical, partnership and community support for artists and researchers.

Finding ways to work with the city, in synergy with other events, and in recognition of wider cultural and economic processes and structures.

Providing more supported volunteer or contributor opportunities for events; this would help develop skills and engage the next generation of researchers, participants and activists.

Creating longer lead-in so that events can be fully embedded into ongoing and future research and activity.

Identify ways to acknowledge different working practices and vocabularies for working.

Making links between events and cross-fertilising, e.g. attending one another’s workshops and gatherings.

Being more ambitious with engaging undergraduate students/the wider student community with research happening in the university.

The Twitter soft-launch for the challenges and the accompanying discussion was also positive and stressed the importance of:

Acknowledging reciprocal relationships between university arts programming and the wider urban context.

Building solid partnerships with external researchers, funders, community groups & organisations outwith the academy (both within & beyond Glasgow) over a significant period of time.

Facilitating experimentation with a range of outdoor, installation and hybrid events.

Other Challenges

Developing Tools for Impact

Frustrations were manifest in the narrow expression of impact as it fits into the current research land scape. In particular, the toolkit for capturing and then re-presenting the impact and value of creative practice in the arts and humanities is extremely limited.

Practical / Logistical Challenges

Practical challenges were identified, relating to the nature of multiple cross-site events. Some of these were unavoidable, issues such as transport and other city disruptions, or Covid-19 restrictions, while others were technical with room for improvement in providing appropriate space and on-site support.

Several interviewees had encountered challenges relating to the technical delivery of their events. For example, both Carolyn Kelly and Hannah Thomas (Tears of Gold) shared difficulties in setting up the streaming for the opening event. This was due to the lack of appropriate equipment at the Universi ty Chapel, including the lack of a microphone adaptor and difficulties with the streaming connection, which was lost at some point. The university had provided technical support, but the designated techni cian had to leave halfway through the event leaving the organisers without technical support.

Similarly, the artist Hannah Thomas shared it was her mother who helped with the physical install for the exhibition in the chapel. Although the individual event budgets are limited, perhaps a designated technician specifically for The Dear Green Bothy events could have alleviated some of these stresses.

A few participants felt technical support from the College of Arts was lacking. There were technical difficulties with the Greening Glasgow event where the organiser had to spend a substantial amount of time contacting IT support and trying to resolve a Zoom problem. Matthew Fox pointed to the difficulty of trying the new hybrid format (a screening and round table discussion on Zoom) for the first time, particularly for a non-specialist audience. Fox says that funding willing, ‘the obvious thing to do would be to get somebody to help me with that. If expense had been no object, we could have done a professional job.’

Input of The Dear Green Bothy Team

Disappointment at the lack of representation by The Dear Green Bothy in attendance of some events was expressed by several organisers. Dee Heddon on the occasion of The Walking Library for a Wild City, which was also supported by the Glasgow Science Festival, said:

the Science Festival director came […]. And then they also tagged it on the climate challenge week. And they had asked if they can put my event in their calendar […] and so three of their staff came, so it was a little odd maybe that the Dear Green Bothy didn’t have presence there.

One organiser highlighted the lack of clear lines of responsibility in terms of financial transactions and hotel bookings, for example. They reiterated this was not anybody specific’s fault but rather unclear com munication and expressed hope that it will be easier next time.

Similarly, another organiser shared they were not aware of the extent of responsibilities associated with participating in The Dear Green Bothy, referring to being asked to write a blog after the event and participating in the evaluation process.

Assistance with Event Delivery

The Walking Library for a Wild City walk event could have significantly benefited from a designated volunteer since the organiser had to take care of a group of people moving through the city with the walk challenged by weather conditions and other events around the city. The organiser said they normally have a volunteer to help manage the walks (The Walking Library is a multi-sited event recurring in various iterations) and assist with participants’ safety. There was a ‘young person […] volunteered to be a volunteer to help me but […] it wasn’t really like a plan […] orchestrated voluntary job’ (Dee Heddon).

Casi Dylan also noted a need for additional staffing or volunteers, sharing that ‘seemingly basic things, like secure in front of house support for the installation becomes very difficult when there’s no one physically in the […] building from day to day to make that work.’ Dylan grapples with coming up with realistic solutions for this problem, saying:

As much as the will was there to make this work, I think, ultimately, it was a question of capacity around enabling us to actually keep in touch with each other about what was going on, and when we needed what in place, so I think a longer lead in and in an ideal world more staffing.

Support in Promotion and Marketing

The limited human resources of The Dear Green Bothy team were particularly evident through the marketing of the programme and shared cross-promotions. For example, the RCC at the COP – An Environmental Humanities Exhibition was a particularly high-profile, independently organised event, which could have received stronger promotion or support from The Dear Green Bothy. The Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society is a leading institution for research and education in the environmental humanities. Dominic Hinde, who organised the RCC at the COP, is a former fellow and as such part of the network of the centre. Hinde expressed disappointment at the failure to capitalise on the potential for collaborative involvement with The Dear Green Bothy saying ‘at no point did anyone ask us is there anything you need, is there any way we can help you do this’ continuing:

Why, I think, is a shame, is that we had some really exciting speakers and some really good events and if there had been more coordination, I think, we could have actually done a lot of good for the university as well, in terms of profile.

Furthermore, Hinde reflected on the communication between The Dear Green Bothy and the rest of the university, stressing that when he contacted the university press office to enquire about support, they were unaware of the activity and Hinde had to explain the programme. Another contributor simply stated that ‘more time to promote and plan and a greater number of events would have helped there to be stronger impact’ (Ruth Fletcher).

These observations about limited time were echoed by several other organisers sharing that time constraints were one of the main challenges of delivering a project. Willsdon thought the application submission time of April May is particularly busy and a delivery timeline by July was insufficient for comfortable and thorough project preparation. For example, they needed quite some time to acquire im age permissions from Glasgow Life and the Glasgow Archives, which was further delayed by COVID-19 and staff shortages.

Tim Peacock expressed similar difficulties with time pressure:

I think probably one of the biggest challenges was keeping all of those plates in the air, because there were so many and because more were added as we got near the time. […] I think the biggest, the biggest challenge was time and, given the number of events involved and the […] number of different participants just coordinating between me.

Focusing on Thematic Challenges

Events programming coming directly from research activities, as seen in The Dear Green Bothy project, can act as a vehicle to create expressions of value and impact from research activities. This is possible through staging of activities via events that have been flagged as linked to a theme. In the case of The Dear Green Bothy project, researchers, organisations, creative practitioners, and others were presented with the challenge of designing engagement activities that aimed to support learning around the envi ronmental emergency. Additionally, the emphasis on climate as a unifying topic improved the quality of events for some audience members, as demonstrated by the focus group participants (see: focus group findings), many of whom were enthusiastic about the added benefit of feeling a part of the ecological debate (Focus Group B, 2022).

Recommendations

The Dear Green Bothy programme created opportunities to articulate the value of arts and humanities research beyond the local context of the University of Glasgow and indeed beyond the immediate situa tion of the city of Glasgow. The research projects and associated event enabled the University of Glasgow to engage with real world challenges such as the environment emergency. We recommend the following conceptual recommendations for future events that are planning to support researchers/publics/practi tioners:

Build further connections: by solidifying thematic and practical connections between the Universi ty, research and art projects, and with local communities and publics. Work with partner organisations within Glasgow at the call for ideas stage. Involve diverse representatives in the selection process. Provide more participation opportunities.

Make clear statements about aims and impact intentions: For example, elucidating the relationship between the programme and community engagement aims and articulation of where research activities are impacting on local or wider level.

Initiate an audience building strategy: Using participant feedback and other reception studies to gain actionable insight into developing audiences.

Create active opportunities for change: Encouraging attendees to express motivation for participa tion and/or attitude change from the outset (e.g., on social media).

Map experiences: Capturing and sharing attendees’ journeys across the programme. Make links between events using Eventbrite data.

Other, practical recommendations

Focus on depth rather than breadth of support and engagement: focus on fewer events with addi tional resource, as described below.

Secondments from arts and humanities: create a role for an R&T or LTS staff to support the lead organiser role as a mediator between events.

Clarify core network of events with partnering events badged as such: additional parallel or comple mentary events should be more clearly identified.

Establish a network for practice and research to lead on opportunities to create impact and develop impact recognition: support this with shared events and planning ahead for new collaborations in anticipation of calls or opportunities.

Enable meaningful engagement between projects: conduct a mapping exercise from the outset to identify and create links between projects. Build in time for reflection at the end of the programme.

Early-stage cross-fertilisation: identify representatives within each project and match with similar projects, to encourage collaboration early in the process.

Strengthen and build long-term communities: provide an online space or platform to foster relation ships between event organisers and attendees as a semi-permanent sharing space for research.

ECR/PGRs ambassadors: identify ways to offer paid internships for ECRs and PGRs to support communication about the programme between event organisers and to provide on the ground support during events.

Summary of Press Coverage

The Dear Green Bothy received coverage in several online publications. The Dear Green Bothy Academic Lead, Mark Banks, had articles published in The Scotsman and The Herald Scotland. The programme was also featured in Art UK , Country and Town House, and The Fleming Collection.

Individual events were featuring in The Big Issue’s ‘Alternative Guide to COP’ as well as The List’s ‘Best Cultural Events in Scotland for COP’

Bibliography

Belfiore, E., 2014. ‘Impact,’ ‘value’ and ‘bad economics’: Making sense of the problem of value in the arts and humanities. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 14(1), 95-110.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022214531503

Elhoseiny, M., Elgammal, A. 2016. Text to multi-level MindMaps. Multimedia Tools and Applications 75, 4217–4244.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-2467-y

Frodeman, R., Thompson Klein, J., Dos Santos Pacheco, R. (2017). Interdisciplinarity and the Future of the Humanities. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. 2nd edition. [Online]. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Macnaughton, J., 2011. Medical humanities’ challenge to medicine. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Prac tice 17(5), 927–932.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2753.2011.01728.x

Marcone, G., 2022. Humanities and Social Sciences in Relation to Sustainable Development Goals and STEM Education. Sustainability, 14(6), 3279.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063279

Vaughan, S., 2020. Confidence in Practice: Positioning Institutional and Individual Creative Research as Para-academic. Institution as Praxis: New Curatorial Directions for Collaborative Research. Sternberg Press. 200–214. ISBN: 9783956795060.

The Dear Green Bothy Statistics

Dear Green Bothy website hits

online exhibition views (hosted outwith DGB website)

DGB Catchup & Reflection views on YouTube

Online views

University of Glasgow staff

University of Glasgow students

Independent artists

from external universities

Arts Organisations

(UofG)

HEIs involved

1,119

2,565

30x Institutions Represented

University of Glasgow University of Edinburgh University of Aberdeen

University of St. Andrews University of the Highlands and Islands University College Cork

University of Oxford City University of New York University of Minnesota

Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient University of Warwick Glasgow Caledonian University

Queen Margaret University Royal Agricultural University Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

University of West of Scotland University of Durham University of Manchester

Tel Aviv University Drew University University of Chester

Cardiff University University of Central Florida University of Kent

Umėa University Imperial College London

John Hopkins University of Medicine Edinburgh Napier University University of Leeds University of Gdansk

25x External Organisations

Historic Environment Scotland Africa in Motion Film Festival Bright Edge Deep – interdisci plinary collaboration

Fife Contemporary SGSAH Dunedin Consort

Red Note Ensemble Community Land Scotland (Calum MacLeod) Rachel Carson Centre for Envi ronment and Society

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Common Guild

Art of Change 21

Climate Sisters Tinderbox A&E Collective

Sequoia Duo National Library of Scotland Metzger Foundation

NYU Game Centre Bothy Project AHRC

Shared Studios Harrison Parrott

Science, Humanities and Arts Research Exchange (RCS)

Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies

13x Internal (UofG) Organisations/Institutes

Hunterian Museum

Games and Gaming Lab

Sound Thought Music in the University

The Walking Library for a Wild City EDI Lab

UofG Chaplaincy Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic Digital Departures Art Lab

Food Sovereignty Network Theology and Religious Studies Walking Public / Walking Arts Centre for Celtic and Gaelic Studies

14x Venues

UofG Memorial Chapel The Hidden Gardens Hunterian Museum

New Glasgow Society The Whiteinch Centre UofG Concert Hall

Wellington Church UofG Cloisters

UofG Quad

Broomhill Hyndland Parish Church RCS Climate Portal Andrew Stewart Cinema, Gil morehill Halls Centre for Celtic and Gaelic Studies

Kelvin Gallery

3x Partner Festivals

Glasgow Science Festival (2x events)

Glasgow Doors Open Days (2x events)

Being Human Festival (11x events)

Staff for first phase of the Dear Green Bothy

Mark Banks

Academic Lead

Casi Dylan

Project Manager

Kevin Leomo

Project Assistant

Nicole Smith

Evaluation Lead

Design by Romulus Studio

The Dear Green Bothy was supported by funding from the College of Arts, University of Glasgow