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.

LEXICON

Relationships

arms-length   
critical friend
in-house
observer
quasi-staff member

Methods

archival
creative writing
curatorial
ethnography
interdisciplinary
international
mapping
narrative inquiry
participant-observation participation
practice-based
public programming
xeno-

Collaborators

artists
other researchers scientists
staff members
students
technicians
visitors

Co-Productions

evaluation and development
exhibitions
interpretation
public programming
public engagement events
publications  
staff briefings
research events
research workshops

Spaces

academic realm
art residencies
artist-led
gallery
housing
library
mail
museum
public realm
sculpture park
site-specific
tele-communications
workshop

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.

Imperceptible Performance In Lieu of the Art Object, A Practice-Led, Environmental, Research Project

Victoria Sharples
2021
Leeds Beckett University
Link to thesis︎︎︎

Keywords: interdisciplinary, international, curatorial, xeno-, participation, mapping, archival, practice-based research with artists, scientists, technicians, and other researchers through exhibitions. Site-specific, mail, tele-communications.

This practice-led PhD meditates on post-humanist performativity and ecological philosophies relative to macroscopic and microscopic matter (infinitesimal and international scales), with a focus of economic cycles. The interdisciplinary research included working with participant artists and scientists and non-human performers to produce three works: Aggregates (UK), Watercolour (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, South Korea, Svalbard) & Ash (Nepal). Research areas include: new materialism, micro-performativity, (im)materiality, (im)perceptibly, the technoscentific & necro-ecologies/economies.