NEWS
The full creative landscape
10 July 2008
by Zoë Corbyn
The AHRC wants to know which cultural elements, past and present, should inform policy-making. Zoe Corbyn reports
"There are serious political questions around who decides what our national heritage is," says Evelyn Welch, professor of Renaissance studies and academic dean for arts at Queen Mary, University of London.
"Who decides what gets preserved? How do we read the past when there is no written text? And what happens in today's digital culture when performances, sounds, images and objects circulate so swiftly around the globe? Does the British Library preserve every blog? These are absolutely key questions."
And these are the questions that Professor Welch is seeking to help answer as the director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's £5.5 million strategic research programme Beyond Text: Performances, Sounds, Images, Objects.
The programme is intended to help inform policy related to our cultural and creative past and future - and to foster public understanding of the many forms of creativity beyond simply words on a page.
Extract taken from www.timeshighereducation.co.uk
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