Politics of Small Places

The research will be based on the thinking of the polymathic botanist-planner Patrick Geddes, who argued that engagement with our urban and rural environments was the basis for strong communities, lasting local identities, and thoughtful political action. Geddes is regarded as one of the key British urbanists and thinkers on the relation of people to places. The aim of Politics of Small Places is to investigate the application of Geddes' thought to contemporary rural environments within an increasingly globalised world. It aims to do this through the development of a program of practice‐based research projects with Deveron Projects, that explores rural communities, and their architectures, landscapes, economies, resources, and aspirations. We are looking for enthusiastic candidates from a range of disciplines (anthropology, art, sociology, architecture, etc) that can bring a passion to making the workings of Huntly, our rural market town, visible. Candidates should be interested in the visual representation of information and the exhibition format as a means of research, exploration, and debate.

We expect that the research thesis will involve a close reading of Geddes' texts and the texts of relevant social, environmental, and political thinkers in order to situate Geddesian activism within a wider study of individual and collective, social and spatial formations, rural economies, and local resource networks. One of the longer term objectives of this doctoral project will be to frame an extended Research Council-funded post-doctoral project that demonstrates the continuing relevance of Geddes' thought for community activism, and that puts it into practice through community arts projects.

This is a fantastic opportunity for someone interested in working with a thriving community arts organisation.