Imagination in the Community

The Festival of Social Science takes place across the country “to explore the world of social science, from how society has shaped our local areas to behaviour changes that help fight climate change.”

This is an excellent opportunity for public and community engagement with all research that has a societal impact, whether social science research or other disciplines. The festival is aimed at engaging public and youth audiences with research that influences our social, economic and political lives. This year the festival will also include a strand for events on the theme of ‘My local area‘ – showcasing research in and about place.

ImaginationLancaster is proud to have so many of our researchers involved, presenting and exhibiting their valuable work to our local communities and beyond.

The Repair Shop 2049: Building Repair Communities to Make Smart Tech Smarter

In collaboration with The Making Rooms, Imagination’s Dr Michael Stead and colleagues will holding a 4-hour creative and fun event for all ages highlighting how communities can come together to improve repair and reuse of smart tech at a local level.

Key activities –

i) Smart Device Repair Station – learn more about the new Right-to-Repair laws while watching practical device repair demos.

ii) Future Mundane Caravan: explore next gen smart tech while asking ‘what’s it going to take to fix this future?’

iii) Digital Making demos including 3D printing & laser cutting.

These activities will take place at the The Making Rooms, 1 Exchange Street, Blackburn, BB1 7JN.

Discover all the details and dates here.

Timescapes of Morecambe Bay Exhibition

Come along to learn more about the changes that coastal areas have been undertaking, and join us in speculating about possible futures. Kits for self-led walks will also be provided at the exhibition and you’ll be invited to add your own contributions to the display. Anyone is welcome to attend the exhibition. A launch will be held on 22 October and a workshop is running on the 28th. The workshop is free to attend (with museum admission) and can be booked here.

The exhibition is being held at Lancaster Maritime Museum, Lancaster, LA1 1RB

Discover all the details and dates here.

Dalton Square 2032: Beyond SMART City 

Would you like to see what the iconic Dalton Square in Lancaster would look like in 2032? This exhibition presents the future of Dalton Square as a SMART place, including sensor technology, the Internet of Things, wearable technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), etc. The six SMART products or services prototypes presented here for Lancaster in 2032 were designed by MA Design Management and BA Architecture students from Lancaster University. The prototypes of products, services, or systems do not exist in the present, but may in the near future.

This event is being held at Lancaster City Museum on the 26th and 27th October 2022.

Discover all the details and dates here.

Healthcare in Place

Waiting lists for hospital care, access to GP appointments and the declining number of nurses and doctors in our NHS are big causes for concern in the national media. But what does that mean for the future of healthcare in our locality? As the recent consultation into proposed new hospitals shows, people have strong views about where and how they access care.

This workshop will outline some of the reasons that services have come to be organised as they have across North Lancashire and South Cumbria, and consider how different patient groups might experience this. We will use examples from the local area to help people to think about the connections between the national picture of access to healthcare, and the local experience of healthcare. Using creative and participatory methods, we will then work with workshop participants to consider what the future of services might look like.

The workshops will take place at Lancaster Library on the 1st November 2002 and at Barrow Library on the 4th November 2022. Both workshops are 2 – 3.30pm.

Discover all the dates and details here.

Taking IoT for a Walk

Join Imagination Lancaster for a 90 minute walking workshop in which we tour the city of Lancaster and encounter and discuss the use of sensors and the internet of things, both real and imaginary.

As we walk through the city we will encounter public elements of a ‘smart city’, i.e. applications of sensors and the Internet of Things. Some of them will be real, some will be fictional. At each encounter we will stop for a discussion to consider the ethical and privacy implications of such technology, the language and information that might be expected to accompany it, and its trustworthiness and value.

There are two walking workshops planned on 29th October 2022

Discover dates and details here and here.