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While it challenges academic research with new political and policy problems, the restructuring of citizen/state relationships coincides with growing pressure for academic research to ‘make a difference’. Drawing on four Connected Communities projects, this chapter argues that conceptualising research use as practices of translation seems fruitful. The humanities discipline of translation studies draws attention to the multiple and potentially conflicting functions of translations and the skilled, purposeful practices of translators. Their actions are shaped by institutional and communicative factors, in both academic and government spheres, which often mitigate against mutually satisfactory translation. The chapter suggests that a solution may lie in coproducing knowledge through collaboration around translation, principally through dialogue and meaning creation across the academic/policy border. Rather than dissolving differences of culture and language this demands mutual respect and the sense of a shared endeavour.

Iraq was one of the first Arab countries to introduce television in 1954, but compared to other Arab countries, Iraq came late to film. Their first production was in 1945; however, it was a coproduction with Egyptian direction, but after the Second World War, many private Iraqi entrepreneurs engaged in coproduction. Some of Iraqi feature films produced suffered from poor technical quality, and they had problems finding actresses because social norms prevented women from appearing on stage or in a film. After the monarchy ended on July 14, 1958, a film and theater organization was founded under the jurisdiction of the minister of culture. However, the film industry in Iraq did not change for several years. With perseverance, in 1968, an Iraqi film was awarded for the first time with the Silver Tanit award at the Carthage Film Festival.

This part examines recent developments in the media industry that underlie the rise of transatlantic television drama, exploring its history in the context of the impact of digital technologies on industry relationships, branding, coproduction, distribution, and industry consolidation. Significant programs and players include Masterpiece, Orphan Black, and Happy Valley; BBC and its global arm BBC Worldwide, American broadcast and cable channels such as PBS, AMC, and HBO; and the digital platforms Netflix, Amazon, Sky Atlantic, and Hulu.

This chapter explores the process of a community-based researcher and two academics working together on one of the sub-projects of the wider Imagine project described in Chapter 1. This sub-project was a collaboration between the research officer at Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation, and two academics at the University of Brighton. Many research collaborations are based on the notion that the research expertise is situated within the university, with community partners providing practical expertise. This chapter is about inverting this dynamic, with the community partner becoming the lead researcher. We reflect on our own experience of working together in the broader context of the findings of our research study and on how Community-University partnership working can contribute to community development especially, through the subsequent actions of the community partners.

To what extent is it possible to adhere to the principles of co-produced research with communities when the community involved resides in a prison? This chapter explores this question in the context of a science fiction research project which took place in a UK category D men’s prison in 2014-2015. The researcher worked with participants to form a science fiction film discussion group in which films were used to frame conversations about hope and alternative futures in global, community and individual contexts. The impetus for the project was underpinned by two ideas: the exploration of imaginative and speculative representations of utopia; and a methodological aspiration towards the application of arts-based methods to research with a community. There were significant methodological tensions involved in attempting to implement a co-produced methodology in a prison setting. In practice, co-production was jettisoned in favour of a more traditional methodology at the planning, permissions and implementation stages. This chapter charts the course of the decision not to pursue co-production in this context and it explores the reasons why that decision was made. Specific methodological challenges involved in working in a prison are explored and it is argued that sometimes co-production is not appropriate in some settings. It is also suggested that, despite these challenges, there is an argument for the implementation of co-production in prison contexts if the understanding of co-produced methodologies can stretch across projects.

This chapter discusses how a research project focussing on historic regeneration in the Hillfields area of Coventry, UK, led to a co-produced photographic exhibition which challenged dominant narratives of ‘territorial stigmatisation’ (Wacquant, 2007) by attracting positive media and policy attention. The chapter examines the difficult but rewarding process of co-producing this exhibition as a new body of knowledge and a way of seeing historic Hillfields’ life from the situated perspectives of the community partners in the project. This process is assessed as an exploration of how to illustrate historic and competing community narratives. By elevating local knowledge in the public sphere, community partners benefited from positive outcomes. The chapter concludes that this sensitive and emergent approach may challenge both local perceptions of academia and methodological issues when working in and with communities.

What role does “Black history” play in community development? This chapter discusses how Black and Asian minority ethnic (BAME) communities have been excluded from contributing to national and local histories, depriving them of resources that would enable them to develop different futures in the context of a British historical narrative dominated by whiteness. It focuses on the intersection of history and community development and how community-based organisations have worked in collaboration with the University of Huddersfield (in West Yorkshire in the north of England). The chapter suggests that there are advantages in the co-production of historical knowledge, one of which is that a collaborative approach enables greater inclusion and diversity of views, especially as there is a lack of ethnic diversity amongst academic staff at British universities.

Evaluation is often anathema the co-produced research and community groups. For the latter, onerous evaluation requirements from funders can be the bane of their lives. In terms of co-produced research, that evaluation often positions an expert in authority to judge whether an activity has been a “success” is the opposite to the trusting relationship much co-produced research is trying to develop. This chapter suggests that evaluation, when done well, can and should be a more central practice in co-produced research. Importantly, it is suggested that by asking the difficult question of “what positive outcomes are we producing?” the evaluation of co-produced research can make it more ethical, and develop a learning approach among partners.

This chapter looks at the legacy of three projects which connected research and policy communities, through the development of ‘policy briefs’ for the UK Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG). These were short and accessible reviews of research relevant to policy on localism. Starting from an understanding of policy-making as meaning-making, and of translation as situated and purposeful action, ethnographic and action research were used to explore how academics and government analysts translate research into ideas useful for policy makers. It concludes that the legacy of researching for policy can be understood both in terms of ‘things left behind’ and their direct impact on policy, and also more broadly in terms of participants’ purposes being met, and influences on academic and civil service norms and subsequent practice. Co-production is central to leaving such a legacy, in particular to break down mutual misunderstanding across the policy/academia border. In contrast interdisciplinarity seems less important, though broadening the disciplinary base of research used by government is certainly valuable. Underpinning everything else, the development of relationships of trust through collaboration and mutual learning is paramount.

In this chapter how cultural mapping can act as a means to understand the legacy of collaborative heritage research is explored.The difficulties inherent in capturing this story, including resolving the tensions between organising structures and the practices of chance and serendipity that shape the experiences of people in their heritage work. This gets to the heart of what happens to knowledge and our understanding of practices when we try to capture, share and translate specificities from our research collaboratively. The authors suggest how the visual and discursive aspects of cultural mapping can offer a means to accommodate such tensions. Using data from community groups and focusing on the collaborative role of a community partner in designing and evaluating this research, the mapping toolkit as a legacy output is introduced. Some of the actual stories from the heritage groups are traced and show how they draw attention to legacies of conducting community based heritage projects. The underpinning research involved in producing this legacy output highlights the attention that needs to be paid to multiple voices, narratives and types of impact that are important in people’s lives.

The concluding chapter provides a detailed analysis of The Grandmaster, examining the film from the vantage point of the preceding chapters’ major emphases: music and visual style, story and narration, and genre. The chapter also considers the “uses” Wong’s films have engendered. It reflects upon Wong’s influence on local and “world” cinema, his aesthetic traits appropriated by directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Sofia Coppola, Xavier Dolan, Stephen Chow, and Wong Jing. Also discussed is the appropriation by critics pursuing particular theoretical and/or social agendas. Finally, the chapter reviews Wong’s place in cinema today, as a Hong Kong director increasingly being absorbed into the Mainland Chinese industry, and yet for whom the international festival and art-cinema market remains of prime importance.

South Korea’s audio postproduction sector has transformed itself over the past two decades, developing into an innovative, efficient, and globally competitive industry. The country’s leading sound studio, Live Tone, collaborated on celebrated director Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2013)—the most expensive Korean film to date, and a South Korean Global Film that preserves the integrity of its Korean soundscape despite being filmed in English. Based on semistructured practitioner interviews with Live Tone’s chief sound supervisor, Ralph Tae Young Choi, this chapter considers how the already complex task of designing voices for commercial cinema soundtracks is magnified in the case of large-scale international projects such as coproductions. Snowpiercer’s complicated schedule involved shooting on a soundstage in Prague and postproduction work in Los Angeles and Seoul. Yet despite the associated challenges, Live Tone’s partnership with Bong demonstrates how solutions to complex dilemmas of mediated vocal performance can take unique or otherwise distinct forms.

This chapter introduces the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, showing how it fills a gap between theoretical work on the nature and origin of collective social imaginations and empirical work on the politics of science and technology. Emphasizing the role of both practices and performance in constituting imaginaries, the chapter distinguishes sociotechnical imaginaries from other related analytic concepts, such as frames, and addresses problems such as the relationship between individual and collective imaginations, the relative significance of state and non-state actors, the durability of imaginaries, and the potential for resistance to dominant imaginaries.

The introduction introduces the topic and central argument of the book: that at the heart of the human embryo research debates was the question of how the public should reason together about a domain of science and technology that touches upon the most fundamental dimensions of human life. It introduces the methodological approach and coproductionist theoretical framework of the study. It introduces the idea of the “constitutional position of science” in American democracy, and illustrates the unacknowledged but constitutional position of scientific authority in John Rawls' idea of public reason.

This chapter traces the evolution of mainland China’s film industry, including production, distribution, and exhibition. The author argues that the formation of China’s film industry was a government-sponsored, top-down process combining both market forces and heavy governmental intervention. The Chinese government purposefully employed the strategies of theater chains, state-owned studios, and private investment in an attempt to revitalize the domestic film industry under the rubric of the party-state. As a result, a strong market-oriented film industry has been formed, and box office revenue has become the sole measure of a film’s success. Transnational and transregional coproductions have become major contributors to domestic film revenue and the backbone of the domestic film industry.

This chapter reports on ‘Troubled Families’ in Greater Manchester, a sub-regional implementation of a controversial national programme in England intended to offer joined-up services targeted at families representing the highest costs to the public purse. Its underpinning principles include early intervention with children and sustained employment for parents. Troubled Families is innovative in the funding mechanism known as Payment by Results (PbR), under which local authorities are paid partly through submitting data to demonstrate that they have met outcomes. The evidence shows that, to some extent, the programme supported a shift towards service integration in Greater Manchester as intended. A particular success factor was co-produced family plans, taking the families’ perspectives into account. Payment-by-results was welcomed by some senior managers but did not prove very supportive of the desired new and positive relationship between public services, communities, individuals and enterprises.

Chapter 10 explores what it means to use a ‘capability’ approach to designing an age-friendly city, including its potential for offering new ways of producing and occupying physical and social environments that respond directly to the lived experiences of older people. Drawing on a interdisciplinary community engaged research/urban design project in Manchester, UK, the chapter examines the applicability of AFCC design guidance within a specific urban neighbourhood, and explores how the process of discovering and sharing information about the lived experience of older residents translates into the development and implementation of age-friendly activities focused around urban design.