Ground Works is a platform for exemplary arts-inclusive research projects and reflection on the processes that drive interdisciplinary collaboration.
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Editors: Shannon Criss, Kevin Hamilton, and Mary Pat McGuire
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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...
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Decolonizing Representations to Evoke the Complexity of Black Lives in Florida
Art should be integral to research, education, and expressing lived experiences. Podcasts, animations, spoken word, video games, and multimodal, born-digital books can be modalities of learning and teaching that decolonize representations, especially when they are founded on deep collaboration. Coming out of IRIE Center (Innovative Research and Intercultural Education), a group of scholars, artists, entrepreneurs, K-12 schools, and community leaders, collectively called The Collaboratory, facilitates research that is timely, evocative, and critical to understanding a fuller history of the Americas. The Collaboratory’s goals are to push the boundaries of grant-funded research, public humanities, and arts-integrated education.
This article highlights two overlapping projects from the past six years. The first is a Decolonizing Representations workshop series that began in 2019 and used Evocative Ethnography including communal experiences of art, critical art making, and deep collaboration to achieve four goals: 1) excavate hidden stories, 2) learn about techniques and concepts like Evocative Ethnography and Afrofuturism, 3) critically create art together and therein bond across cultural differences, and 4) craft evocative products such that content becomes accessible to a larger, public audience. Expanding on these four goals, IRIE Center partnered with WUFT at the University of Florida (UF) College of Journalism on the second project: creating a podcast series Decolonizing Representations: Evoking the Hidden Histories of Black Lives in Florida through a Lens of Afrofuturism. The last episode of the series integrated African American Studies high school students in the process of archival research and podcast creation. These kinds of deep collaborations bring together university scholars, artists, entrepreneurs, librarians, public school systems, K-12 students, museums, and local community organizations and leaders. This work is continuing to develop into animations, a documentary television series, and video games.Centering Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence in Movement-Based Interventions
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent public health issue characterized by a pattern of abusive behavior by an intimate partner in a dating or family relationship, wherein one partner exerts power and control over the victim or survivor. Survivors who have experienced repeated trauma in their relationships utilize several resources and services from mental health support to legal counseling as they work to rebuild their lives. IPV is a complex social issue requiring a collaborative and interdisciplinary response. While the importance of addressing the effects of trauma on the body is recognized, there is a dearth of research exploring the impact of movement on survivors of IPV. Created as a collaboration between dancers, survivors, and social workers, Gibney's interdisciplinary Move to Move Beyond® program (MTMB) has been offered to thousands of IPV survivors since 1999. Recent findings from a randomized controlled trial suggest positive outcomes for female survivors of intimate partner violence who participated in the virtual Move to Move Beyond program during the COVID-19 pandemic. From its inception, the research was designed and conducted using an interdisciplinary approach through a partnership between the New York City-based dance and social justice organization, Gibney; Sanctuary for Families, a non-profit organization dedicated to aiding victims of domestic violence and their children; and Teachers College, Columbia University. Using the MTMB program as a case study, this paper highlights how an interdisciplinary approach to a dance and movement-based intervention is vital in centering the communities the program is designed for. Furthermore, it examines potential benefits of dance and movement for survivors of IPV through the lenses of participants and facilitators. More broadly, it demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary structures between academic and community partners to leverage resources and elevate the impact of the work within the community and beyond.
Forms of Freedom: The Art and Design of Black and Indigenous Creative Collectives
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Reviewer commentary on Forms of Freedom: The Art and Design of Black and Indigenous Creative Collectives
Incubating "Forms of Freedom..." for Ground Works
For readers who have never encountered
iterative play and creation as research methods, “Forms of Freedom…” is a
wonderful entry point, demonstrating how these methods can both
constitute a way of knowing and contribute to new knowledge.
Ground Works is a project of a2ru
Author commentary on Machines That Dream
A Reflection on 'Machines that Dream'
Benjamin David Robert Bogart
November 2020 · 10.48807/2022.1.0001
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