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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.
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.
Moving in and Out, or Staying in Bed: Using Multiple Ethnographic Positions and Methods to Study Artist-Led Housing as a Critical Spatial Practice
Jonathan Orlek
2021
University of Huddersfield and East Street Arts

Link to thesis︎︎︎


Link to Artist-Led Housing: Histories, Residencies, Spaces book ︎︎︎

This thesis is concerned with the provision of housing by artist-led organisations. It is also an embedded ethnographic study of a particular house called Artist House 45, a pilot project located in South Leeds. An understanding of artist-led housing as both collective artworks and interventions within the housing sector is developed. The research explores new strategies, rooted in and among the day-to-day processes of artist-led organisations, for communicating, translating and scaling artist-led housing.
Integrated Knowledges, Integrated Publics: Classificatory Practices, Boundary Crossings, and Public Space at The Hive, Worcester
Katherine Quinn
2020
University of Warwick and The Hive Worcester
Link to thesis︎︎︎
Thesis was a multi-layered ethnography (one year intensive with multiple catch-up visits over 4 years) of a joint-use academic and public library which used lived methods (including dwelling, doodling and ficto-critical description) to examine shifting conceptions and productions of space around hard and soft classifications (public/academic, belonging/non-belonging, private/public, valued/not-valued). The ethnography situated my experience as a “shy researcher” (albeit one with Shy Pride) and developed doodle practices that emphasised inhabiting (the library’s) rhythms rather than—necessarily—directly interacting with it.
Reading List: Embedded Ethnographic Methodologies and Studies

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.