Society & Culture
167
Keywords
Creativity, imagination, film, music and media, reading
and writing, architecture and design
Expertise
University of Liverpool researchers are particularly
well-connected to key cultural institutions in the City, the
region and beyond. We work in partnership with these
institutions to engage the public in cultural, creative and
imaginative work.
We study the important contributions that humanities and
arts make to our understanding of the world. What role
do creativity and imagination play in shaping our society?
These issues are crucially important to our sense of
how to live well and how we imagine and understand
ambitions such as improving justice, equality and
sustainability. Through animation, critical reflection,
imagination and creative exploration we make visible
the worlds of the past and help envisage – and indeed
produce – our future.
Our experts focus on both established and new ways of
creating, consuming and enjoying imaginative work – in
literature, film, architecture and design, music and other
media. We are discovering the many ways in which the
creative industries play an ever increasing role in local,
regional, national and global economies as they link new
digital technologies with changing forms of expression,
culture and interaction, raising significant questions about
how people live now and might live in the future.
The City of Liverpool, which has the greatest density
of museums and galleries of any British city outside
London, is a remarkable place in which to examine the
development of modern style, modern culture and
modern living. Liverpool provides a rich cultural land-
scape in which our researchers explore local and global
cultural expressions and visions of the future. Their find-
ings enable the University to play an important role as a
thought leader in local and national debates, balancing
ideas and providing insights that caution against rushed
judgements and narrow decisions.
We have specific expertise in film (and film music), media,
architectural history, design and the built environment,
acoustics, digital information and visualisation systems,
aesthetics, ethics, popular music, new music
technologies, science fiction, literature and writing.
These are combined in collaborative, innovative and
interdisciplinary research which often leads to compelling
expressions and thought-provoking exhibitions and
seminars hosted by our partner institutions around the city.
Our researchers also run accredited courses for major
national institutions, such as the UK Institute of Acoustics
(
Architecture). We also work with these partners to
provide training and develop skills for their members.
Our expertise on show
•
Community-based films on Liverpool’s music
heritage and radical Liverpudlian women
•
Exhibitions about science fiction at the British
Library and Liverpool Music Heritage Centre
•
Reconstruction of the Liverpool overhead railway,
in association with National Museums Liverpool
• ‘
The City in Film’, a project which catalogued and
mapped around 2000 films and clips of Liverpool
from 1897 to 1984. The project organised a
series of public screenings, exhibitions, lectures
and events as part of Liverpool’s 800th birthday
and Capital of Culture celebrations
• 3
D visualisations of Liverpool at the World EXPO
in Shanghai.
Relevant centres and groups
•
Institute of Cultural Capital
•
Centre for Architecture and the Visual Arts
•
Institute of Popular Music
•
Eighteenth-Century Worlds Research Centre
•
Culture and Creativity Network.
1.
Imagination and creativity
APPLICATION AREAS
•
Arts and leisure
•
Built environment
•
Creative industries
•
Society and community
•
Sustainability
