The excerpts from John Scanlan’s West Cumbria: On the Edge and other texts found on this website are part of a project which has been funded since 2017 by Westlakes Research Limited (formerly known as the Samuel Lindow Foundation) and undertaken with In Certain Places, a curatorial partnership in the University of Central Lancashire, where Scanlan has worked as a researcher since 2017 (see more information here).
The texts found under the ‘book chapters’ heading on this site come from the 2019 publication, West Cumbria: On the Edge. Other supplementary texts can be found under the heading ‘research notes’ (this section of the site is currently being updated).
These texts form one part of the work of a project that has developed through two interrelated and reinforcing elements:
Research – resulting in publications for academic and other audiences (and other kind of outputs)
Practice – involving partnership working and collaborative actions aimed at engendering culture-led place-based initiatives.
Beginning with an investigation into the unique place characteristics of West Cumbria, the project aimed to develop an ‘image’ of place that might be held up against the overpowering image of a Cumbria that is usually equated with the Lake District. There can be fewer more powerful place-images that have gone on to shape the public imagination of the larger region they belong to than the Lake District. Since its discovery in the 1750s – celebrated most famously in Wordsworth’s 1810 Guide to the Lakes – it has been the subject of more than two centuries of literary and visual representations and, of course, the effect that these and the landscape itself have had on countless millions of visitors.
In that sense it is easy to understand how the less celebrated coastal part of the county of Cumbria has been overshadowed by such a neighbour, obscuring the cultural distinctiveness of the west coast, and arguably negatively impacting on the idea that it is an interesting and culturally unique place in its own right. And while the first project publication, West Cumbria: On the Edge (2019), aimed to tackle this question of how to develop an ‘image’ of West Cumbria (and as such it functioned as an academic or intellectual exercise), it had an additional motivation in seeking to also position the book as something that would provide a platform from which more practical work with local partners could begin to take shape. The aim of this is to stimulate interest and investment in the arts and culture across the region.
To that end, a significant part of the work of the project falls under the description of ‘Practice’ and involves collaborating with a range of partners, including artists and arts organisations, local councils, community organisations and others on funding initiatives and arts and cultural projects.
While the broader intellectual context for this work is in keeping with the multi-disciplinary strategies of ‘place’ research, the project draws on two broad influences: firstly, my own academic background, expertise and the interests I have developed over more than two decades, which have been concerned with developing cultural, historical and phenomenological explorations of contingency and uncertainty as key features of western cultures and societies. The second broad influence is derived from the methods of public art practice developed by In Certain Places in order to bring art, culture and urban development together to stimulate interventions in place that can not only help to renew and reinvigorate places, but stimulate a deeper understanding of how we shape and are, in turn, shaped by the places we live in (see, for example of ICP’s work, the Preston Harris Flights project).
The writings found on this website elaborate the contingent nature of place through an exploration of the various temporal, geographical, experiential and other ‘edges’ that can be found in West Cumbria and which may allow us to see it as a place radically different in character to its more celebrated neighbour.
John Scanlan, July 2021 (updated)
Contact me at:
Dr John Scanlan
In Certain Places
School of Art and Media
University of Central Lancashire
West Lakes Science and Technology Park
Cumbria CA24 3JY
Email: JScanlan1 AT uclan.ac.uk
orcid.org/0000-0003-2951-7823
This website is part of a research project which has been funded since 2017 by Westlakes Research Limited, an educational charity based in West Cumbria, and undertaken by John Scanlan with In Certain Places, a curatorial partnership in the University of Central Lancashire.