Improvisation as method: Engaging ‘hearts and minds’ in the landscape through creative practice

This paper presents research focusing on the idea of using creative improvisation as part of a community action research project. The case study was part of a larger project and is situated in Shipley in the major Leeds-Bradford conurbation in Yorkshire, UK where researchers investigated whether open-ended, improvisatory creativity could be used to catalyse and revitalise a sense of connectivity between local residents and their landscape. The research process was based on a qualitative interpretative strategy and was subjective, interdisciplinary and emergent. The creative methods used included performance and story-telling. The guiding research question was: might local residents become more inclined towards proactive engagement and collaboration (within the community and with outside agencies) if their latent desire for landscape change could be focused through the stimulus of creative intervention? Two key conclusions were reached: 1. Local landscape affordances can provide both the catalyst and the ‘stage’ for collaborative creativity, which can in turn be an important ingredient of landscape planning; 2. Engaging a community in co-created activities, which focus attention on and through the landscape, can lead to desired change in the local landscape and a strengthening of the community’s collective identity. We suggest that comparable approaches could be used in a variety of locations with impact gauged as the growing confidence of the community and expressions of pride in, and adoption of responsibility for, their local landscape.