Author: Michael Howcroft

In November 2025, the Storyhouse Theatre in Chester held their annual Futures Festival: two weeks of events, shows, films and activities dedicated to sustainability. The Civic Imaginaries team, in collaboration with the Storyhouse, Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, hosted two exploratory events designed to help shape our research.

With artist Tim Foxon, we delved into the Cheshire Archives , exploring moments from the past when Chester has reimagined its futures. On Saturday 8th November Tim led a free art session with participants designing their own Visit Chester 2075 poster, in response to some of the stories and artefacts that interested us. On Monday 10th November, we facilitated an interactive focus group for local planners, councillors, creatives, small business owners and educators interested in the creative future of Chester. Together, we reflected on Chester’s creative histories, the current landscape, and prospective futures, offering participants an opportunity to discuss Chester’s creative trajectory.

We are looking for a creative practitioner to work with us to creatively reflect our research experiences, data and findings in Frome and to produce a work that will provoke conversations, thinking and action.

Across our case-study neighbourhoods we are experimenting with different artistic forms to:

• Advocate for the value of imaginative practice in addressing civic challenges
• Develop creative ways of evoking, representing or embodying the civic imaginary
• Communicate a broad spectrum of thoughts, ideas, and alternative worlds, that can provoke audiences’ understandings of the civic imagination’s multiple affects, resonances and contradictions

The outcome from this and similar commissions in our other case-study neighbourhoods will complement our more traditional academic outputs (journal articles, policy papers and reports). They will showcase the unique potential of arts-research collaborations and enable collective thinking and imagining to challenge, test or solve real world issues.

What / Who we are looking for

The key task is to interpret, translate and synthesise our research into an artistic / creative work that has relevance for Frome’s communities and represents the civic imaginaries of the town.

We understand ‘artist’ in the widest sense to include all media and forms of practice. You might be a visual artist working with textiles or digital media, a musician, sound artist, poet, playwright (or anything else). Your practice might be socially engaged and participatory – or you might work on your own in a studio, workshop or greenhouse. If our project and this brief speak to you, we are open to all suggestions. We only have one exception which is that we are already working with film on the project. So, on this occasion, we are unlikely to fund an idea where film is a primary method or outcome.

Frome

Frome has a national reputation for its uniquely independent political culture. Over the past twenty years, it has contributed significantly to the development of new models of local governance and community engagement. We hope to learn about the kinds of imagining and agency that Frome has nurtured and if it is possible to transfer these to other places and contexts. Between November 2025 and March 2026, Michael and Ellen (the project researchers), will live and work in Frome and have co-designed the research foci and activities with partners from Green and Healthy Frome, Edventure’s Future Shed and Frome Town Council Communities Team. You can read more about how we are approaching the research in Frome here.

Factors to consider

1.The final work should be for the widest possible audience. However, as the research progresses, the artist/s may identify the need to engage a specific group (by age, gender, profession, whatever it may be) and we are open to this. The only stipulation is that target audience/s are Frome residents.

2.Our funder requirements mean that all outputs adhere to Open Access principals, including Creative Commons copyright licences. Our previous artist/research collaborations have involved CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensing, though we are open to discussing alternatives.

3.If appropriate, the making process will be documented on our project website, and depending on the form of the final piece, we will work with our project partners to ensure the finished work can be publicly displayed or installed and be accessible to local communities.

4.The outcomes and documentation of this collaboration may also be used by the research team and partners for local and national policy influencing (e.g. policy briefs, calls for evidence), academic and industry conferences and publications, resources for other place-based arts/research collaborations.

Timeline

Sunday 2nd November – midnight (00:00): Deadline for responses to this call. Expressions of Interest will be reviewed by the research team who will contact shortlisted candidates to discuss proposals. We will write to all applicants to let them know whether they have been being shortlisted or not.

Week beginning 10^th or 17^th November 2025: Meetings with shortlisted candidates

Mid December 2025: We expect the contract to be in place by the second week of December, at which point we will invite the artist/s to attend a half-day briefing meetings where we will share our research materials with you.

December 2025 – February 2026: We will meet with the artist/s at least twice to update on our research findings and co-develop the final brief for the creative work.

March 2026: We anticipate the making period to start nearer the end of our fieldwork (Feb/March 2026). Depending on your practice, availability and the scale of the work it could be earlier or later.

Mid-July 2026: Deadline for completion of the work when it will be presented at a research dissemination event in Frome alongside the outputs of our other research activities.

We anticipate hosting an exhibition in Glasgow in 2028 where we will bring together the creative outcomes from all our case study collaborations. Should we request the selected artist/s to contribute after July 2026, we will negotiate additional fees in good faith.

Fees

The maximum award is £11,000 (including VAT) to include:

*Labour, including making/designing and research*

*Materials, equipment and studio costs*

*Attending briefing meetings and the research dissemination event in July 2026*

Depending on the responses to this call, we will consider funding two projects circa £5,500 (inc. VAT) each, depending on scale, materials and timelines etc. We will discuss this with shortlisted proposals, and the agreed commission/s will be at the maximum available.

How to respond

Please follow this link to an Expression of Interest form, where you will be asked:

-Your name and contact details

-Any websites that document relevant works/practice

-To briefly describe how you understand your practice as ‘place-based’, or how this funding could enable you to develop a place-based approach

-To briefly describe your connection with Frome. It’s important to us to work with someone who has a good understanding of the town

To briefly describe any previous research-based collaborations. Who were they with – what did you do – what were the outcomes? If you haven’t worked on a research collaboration before, please describe how you would approach one. What challenges and opportunities might there be for you and your practice?

-To briefly describe how you might respond to this brief and what direction might you take it

-To briefly describe your availability between November 2025 and July 2026. We can be flexible with dates for meetings and activities

-To briefly describe what you might need from us to help you make your best work – such as accessibility needs or considerations relating to communications and work patterns

We are happy to meet informally before the deadline to discuss the research project and to answer any questions you might have about this collaboration. To be as fair as possible at this stage, we will not comment on early ideas. Please email Michael Howcroft at michael.howcroft@glasgow.ac.uk

Between November 2025 and March 2026, the Civic Imaginary Partnerships team will be living and working in Frome. In this blog, the first of our Place-Study profiles, we outline some of the features that have shaped Frome’s contemporary civic identities and why the town is of interest to us.

Located in Somerset in the southwest of England, the rural market town of Frome (pronounced ‘Froom’ to rhyme with ‘broom’), sits thirteen miles to the south of Bath. Popular with walkers, the Mendip Hills roll on its western side and the river Frome wends its way through the town, bisecting it on a diagonal path from northwest to southeast. The settlement was established in the 7th century, growing up around a monastery founded by Saint Adhelm, and by the Middle Ages it was a busy market town with an annual Fair. Its primary product was wool, and by 1801, Frome was one of the largest towns in Somerset, bigger than either Taunton or Yeovil.

The population waned through the nineteenth century as major industrialists drew the working classes away from rural townships and villages into the cities. A partial recovery was sustained by print and metal work industries in the town, some of which survived into the 21st century. Felix Dennis, one of the men who founded – and was prosecuted for publishing – Oz Magazine (“the most controversial magazine of the 1960s”) invested in Butler and Tanner, a printing company founded in Frome in the early 19th century; and John Webb Singer, born in Frome in 1819, established a metalworks factory in the town which specialised in statuary in the late 19th and early 20th century, casting the Figure of Justice at the Old Bailey and Boudica and Her Daughters on the Thames Embankment.

The decline in demand for wool production, coupled with increasing globalisation during the latter half of the 20th century brought significant economic challenges. Butler and Tanner finally closed in 2008, making almost 300 employees redundant; Singers still exists in an industrial estate on the edge of Frome, though in a much-reduced capacity. Thanks in part, to the emergence of a flourishing small-crafting industry and independent traders – including multiple market days, its picturesque locale and an influx of urban migrants since the 1990s, Frome has been in a process of revitalisation and is now regularly voted the best place to live in Somerset, which is widely reported in the local and national press.

Independence, Connection and Proximity

We are interested in learning about Frome for many reasons. Most relevant for us, it has a growing national reputation for its unique political culture, which has already attracted a number of studies including The Politics of Transition by Amy Burnett. Over the past twenty years, it has contributed significantly to the development of new models of local governance and community engagement, predominantly the elimination of Party Politics at local elections via a coalition of independents, the Independents for Frome (IfF) who have controlled the town council since 2011. Self-proclaimed as being free from ideological and Party constraints, the IfF group set out to transform the way local governance was practised, focusing on cooperation and collaboration between colleagues and with the community. After the pandemic, Peter Macfadyen and his fellow independents set up Flatpack 2021, a mentoring network to encourage others to move away from traditional frameworks of combative governance and towards respectful collectivism, where meeting the needs of the population takes precedence over (Party) political preferences.

This independent ‘mindset’ can also be seen in Frome’s local economy with various markets and independent shops, the third sector and cultural networks that support and promote independence of different kinds. At The Station, a collaboration between chefs, organic and regenerative growers, and entrepreneurs have transformed a former train station warehouse into a dining hub, creative space and community sauna. There are pioneering initiatives working on local challenges relating to the environment, sustainable living and poverty, such as Edventure Frome, Fair Frome, The Good Heart and multiple Community Interest Companies (CICs) and independent charities.

There may be some unintended consequences to this mindset. The success of IfF may have contributed to a decreased turnout at more recent local elections due to a lack of opposition candidates standing and reduced political ‘choice’. Independent makers, growers and traders have higher overheads, and so their products often cost more, presenting issues of exclusivity and accessibility. However ‘thriving’ or ‘vibrant’ they may appear on the surface, CICs often rely on volunteering to survive and are vulnerable to the short-term, competitive funding landscape. Similarly, as a recent Frome Town Council Report highlighted, there are neighbourhoods of multiple deprivation, and significant concerns about the cost of living, lack of social and affordable housing, and opportunities for young people. How can a strong and equitable political and cultural economy be maintained or is there a limit to Frome’s current model of independence within the wider political economy of the United Kingdom?

Established academic research shows that where places have residents with high social, cultural and financial capital there are a greater number of stronger independent networks and activities, as well as the capacities and skillsets that sustain them. This is particularly evident in Frome. However, many existing studies on these topics, such as volunteering or community cohesion overlook the social, cultural and material relations that sustain networks and community connectedness where and when they occur. As such, we want to learn more about Frome’s proximities – by which we mean the perceived or actual closeness between people. This is not solely about physical distance – though Frome’s population density is also a factor – proximity impacts interactions and relationships between people and things, and is a key pillar of social, institutional and ideological connections.

Next steps

In consultation with our partners and collaborators in the town, we have devised a programme of research activities that will focus on Frome’s independent mindset(s) and its cultures of connection and proximity. In addition to ‘traditional’ methods such as interviews and surveys, we will soon be recruiting participants for a series of civic imaginary workshops, an oral history project, and a community-led film project with Dr. John Sealey from Fabian’s Film. We will also soon advertise a call to the local creative sector for an exciting artistic collaboration. Through all of these, we hope to learn about the kinds of imagining and agency that Frome’s independence, connection and proximity have nurtured, and how they function as guiding principles across Frome’s civic infrastructure.