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Plant

Embedded Research Network
To plant: to bring theoretical, live and creative reflexive practices to studies of groups, organisations and institutions.

To be planted: research that grows within living organisations, through people, ideas and their meetings.

To be a plant: researching in the liminal space between inside and outside, covert or overt; navigating and storytelling against/towards academic/practice positions.


Plant is a network to support embedded research within art, architectural and civic organisations. We investigate the creative spaces, objects, and practices surrounding, and produced through, embedded research projects.

This site is a collection of embedded research PROJECTS and associated RESOURCES.

Plant has been established to make the diversity of collaborative hosted relations within embedded research projects visible and explore connections between peer practices. The network aims to critically reflect on the different embedded research positions which have been adopted in relation to non-academic host organisations. With this in mind, a LEXICON of embedded research has started to emerge, allowing projects to be categorised by relationships, methods, collaborators, co-productions, and spaces.


Our working definition of embedded research︎︎︎

2024 
Plant started as a series of open online meetings (2021 – 2022). For these, we picked a short reading/ resource/ provocation related embedded research as a prompt for discussion. More recently, our activities have been sporadic, and in response to specific invitations and opportunities – such as a recent article for Sluice magazine.

Please get in touch if you have ideas or would like to do a project/event with Plant.

PROJECTS
Does YSP Make You Happy? Investigating Situated Narratives of Wellbeing at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Claire Booth-Kurpnieks
2020
University of Huddersfield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Link to thesis︎︎︎

This thesis investigates the situated experiences of wellbeing at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park through the collection and collation of intersecting wellbeing narratives with visitors. It places these experiences within their biographical, temporal, and social contexts in order to illuminate their specificity and contingency; and to explore the environmental and aesthetic conditions under which such experiences can occur and be made meaningful.
Acid-Soaked Molluscs: A Xenophoric Approach to Practicing Sculpture and Print
Julia McKinlay
2021
Leeds Beckett University and Yorkshire Sculpture International (YSI)

Link to bodies of work︎︎︎

This PhD by practice thesis examines three bodies of work produced while being embedded in the team delivering YSI 2019: Feeling the Underside, an artist’s book; Mollusc Series, a series of etchings; and Coiled in a Single Plane, Skimmed and Separated, an installation.
The Personal Library of Barbara Hepworth: A Case Study in the Curation and Interpretation of Artists’ Libraries
Clare Nadal
2020
University of Huddersfield and The Hepworth Wakefield

Link to thesis︎︎︎

Artists’ libraries are generally an understudied area of the legacy of an artist and have an uncertain status as to both value and use. Taking the case study of the personal library of the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, formerly housed at The Hepworth Wakefield, this thesis combines archival research with a curatorial intervention to demonstrate the value of such traditionally overlooked areas of knowledge in the study of both Hepworth’s work, and that of artists more widely.

Site © Copyright 2023 Plant Embedded Research Network. Site design by Jonathan Orlek. PWZigzagfont by Peax Webdesign. Resources licenced under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) unless otherwise stated. Initiated by Claire Booth, Julia McKinlay, Clare Nadal, Jonathan Orlek and Katherine Quinn.