I write, curate, perform, and make ...
Dr Jenna C. Ashton is an artist, curator, and producer, and Lecturer in Heritage Studies at the Institute for Cultural Practices, University of Manchester. Jenna's interdisciplinary research contributes to community practices for social and environmental change, and to evolving arts-based and mixed-methods research within heritage studies. Jenna's work is often site-specific, highlighting experiences and knowledge(s) of place. Her research outputs are practice-based as well as journal or book focused, with a concern for how research dissemination articulates and embodies an ethics of practice, especially where co-creation has informed the research methods. She has over 18 years’ experience in creative community collaboration and co-production.
Jenna is the Research Lead for Creative and Civic Futures with the University's research platform, Creative Manchester.
In 2017, Jenna was awarded an internationally competitive visiting Global Cultural Fellowship with the “Institute for International Cultural Relations”, Edinburgh University, working with thirty global curators, artists and policy makers exploring cultural exchange for addressing issues of human and environmental rights. She holds advisory and trustee roles in the UK and internationally.
Jenna is currently leading the project, "Community Climate Resilience through Folk Pageantry", AHRC, UK Climate Resilience Programme (2020-2023), and is a Co-I on “Creative Adaptive Solutions for Treescapes of Rivers (CASTOR)”, funded by NERC Future of UK Treescapes programme (2021-2024). Previously, she was a Co-I on project: “Green Infrastructure and the Health and Wellbeing Influences on an Ageing Population (GHIA)”, NERC, Valuing Nature Fund: ref NE/N013530/1 (2016-2020). She is part of the "Cottonopolis Collective", AHRC, ref AH/W009056/1.
Jenna is the founder and Creative Director of the arts and heritage organisation Digital Women’s Archive North (2015 -), and in 2019-2020 in collaboration with women artists, she co-founded the Centre for International Women Artists, a collective artist studio and gallery experiment in Manchester, UK. Jenna is also 1/4 of artist collective InsideOutsideHouse (2018 -).
Jenna teaches across critical heritage studies theory and practice, heritage policy and management, landscapes and environmental humanities, intangible cultural heritage, heritage and conflict, art curation, museums studies and practice, arts and the city, and contemporary arts.
https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/jenna.ashton.html
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