Ground Works is a platform for exemplary arts-inclusive research projects and reflection on the processes that drive interdisciplinary collaboration.
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Creating Knowledge in Common
Editors: Shannon Criss, Kevin Hamilton, and Mary Pat McGuire
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Cripping Creativity & Play: Artist-Led Explorations of Disabled Art-Making
Submit by January 30, 2026
Special Issue: Cripping Creativity & Play: Artist-Led Explorations of Disabled Art-Making
Guest editor: Dr. Elizabeth McLain
Ground Works launches its Reco(r)ding CripTech online archive...
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Ground Works Pilots CRediT-FAIR Framework for Non-Authorial Contributions
December 2, 2024
Ground Works staff has adapted the NISO (National Information Standards Organization) Contributor Roles Taxonomy, known as CRediT.
CRediT has gained traction in sc...
MoreFeatured Articles
Participatory Planning and Design Research for the ARTery
The ARTery is a proposed cultural corridor spanning historic neighborhood squares and commercial areas in the heart of Black Boston. Running from Jazz Square in the South End through Nubian Square down Dudley Street and along Blue Hill Avenue to Grove Hall, the planned 3-mile route connects clusters of small businesses, numerous vacant lots, and underutilized public spaces with arts and culture initiatives across Boston’s City Council District 7. The initiative aims to hire local artists, activists, and entrepreneurs to reface and beautify small businesses, paint public murals, activate green, open spaces, and improve street safety in ways that express the cultural identities of local communities on city streets. This article presents a case of interdisciplinary research and creative inquiry collaboratively undertaken by community and university partners to develop the vision and concept plan for the ARTery and gain institutional funding and implementation support from the City of Boston. After providing the background and context, we present the participatory planning and design research for the ARTery, corresponding pedagogical approach and teaching methods, initial results, and concluding reflections. Notwithstanding the project’s early stage, it carries implications for aligning university-based teaching and research with municipal governance and repurposing academic and government machinery to advance arts-based and artist-inclusive spatial planning and investments in racialized, low-income neighborhoods.
Mapping the Relationship Between a University and Community Music School
In this article, the authors trace the origins of a unique partnership between a community music school in Toronto, Canada and a neighboring university. Co-authored by Dr. Richard Marsella, Executive Director of Community Music Schools of Toronto, and Dr. Amy Hillis, Assistant Professor of Music at York University, their commentary discusses the origins of an endowed, community-university partnership with the Helen Carswell Chair in Community-Engaged Research in the Arts at York University. This partnership supports and facilitates research projects that benefit community arts organizations and the Jane Finch community, an underserved neighborhood near York University and home to the "Community Music Schools of Toronto at Jane Finch." From advancement and knowledge mobilization, through to design and defining a shared mission, this article unpacks the process of building a partnership between a community music school and a university. Dr. Marsella and Dr. Hillis share their unique perspectives in a discussion of the partnership’s challenges, successes and continued evolution. They question how to build an ideal relationship between researchers and research partners that has sustainable alignment between research topics and research needs. How can creativity and artistry be used to support university researchers' objectives in alignment with a community music organization’s infrastructure? This article includes 1) analyses of case studies from the first five years of the partnership’s existence, including research projects that cultivated long-term relationships between researcher and community music school, and 2) recommendations for other academic and community institutions to develop similar partnerships.
Cultural Engagements in Nutrition, Arts and Sciences (CENAS)
Featured Commentaries
Invited commentary on Vibrant Ecologies of Research
Ecologies of Transdisciplinary Research
There is a need to bridge the arts with the sciences to fully address the social and environmental crises facing the planet. Transdisciplinarity can meet this need if certain barriers are overcome: namely, delimited thinking and dysfunctional institutional structures.
Reviewer commentary on Choreografish: an arts-based, virtual reality, anxiety intervention for autism
Last Word on Reviewing “Choreografish” for Ground Works
Veronica Stanich
July 2021 · 10.48807/2022.1.0008
View Commentary