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Home Team and Process Origins Water Amnesty CLASH The Future Resources Videos |
 “Some air and train spotting between sessions”. Since July 2008 the Free Radicals group have met on 5 occasions in Belfast, Sheffield and London. Many other sessions to tease out ideas, and plan how to get the best out of joint sessions have also been led and developed by Helen Storey Foundation, who as the external cultural partner have been able to move projects forward for collective benefit. Each university has hosted an intense Away Day in its own city, usually attended by up to 30 people with many external speakers and experts. These sessions have been carefully facilitated, and have been very happy occasions, providing hard working academics with an opportunity to step outside the rigours of their day to day lives, and think in broader terms about common world problems. These sessions were at the start, crucial in building trust and establishing areas of mutual concern and interest and it was at the first session in Sheffield that the seeds of working on a water project were sown. It was the perceived terrible disparity in global water distribution that seemed to unify the group early on and gave the biggest sense of common motivation from the start. Thus the Water Amnesty concept evolved after many meetings, and over a 10-month period. Each university has made the project its own tailoring it to fit its own staff and student population. Water Amnesty Clash is the culmination of 16 months of work to share Free Radicals highlighting where lessons were learnt. These will be shared with like-minded professionals and academics with the hope of others beginning to embed some of these lessons in to the life of their own organisation. Clash Running alongside the water theme, other projects have emerged as a result of relationships that have flourished during the last 18 months. The most notable of these is Catalytic Clothing, a project that has been developed since February 2008 and that pre-dates the Free Radical sessions but nonetheless has grown as a result of the dialogue and opportunity that these sessions offered. Three of the participating universities are actively involved in this project, which is led by Helen Storey (as artist and designer) and Tony Ryan (as scientist). Catalytic Clothing seeks to use the surfaces of clothing to purify air and is currently seeking and applying for funding to develop both long-term scientific work and more short-term art elucidations for broad public access and understanding. For further info please contact info@helenstoreyfoundation.org Please see the Resources section for preliminary evaluation of the Free Radicals process by Dr. Laura Grant and personal accounts of the experience so far. Full evaluation will be added in November 2009. Contact info@wearefreeradicals.co.uk
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“The Free Radicals – what
a group! Influential, diverse, a group that can make things happen”
University of Westminster University of Ulster London College of Fashion Other non-academic Participants |
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