Business Transformations: Transforming Places Knowledge Platform

Invites participants to…

More-than-human placemaking

From place-making to kin-making

4th May 1-3pm

Business School 4.05B

This is an invitation to those who are exploring place from a relational and posthuman perspective to participate in a workshop. It is our aim to develop a welcoming and nurturing space to explore this topic and how we can develop synergies across the university.

Following from Haraway, we ask how can we shift our thinking of placemaking as a human-centred activity towards viewing it as kin-making? These debates become urgent under the present climate crisis and the ongoing recovery from the health and social inequalities of Covid-19. De-centring humans in theories of placemaking orientates us towards a more enlarged sense of ethics which feed into “better accounts of this world” (Haraway, 2015, p. 257). It is well appreciated, following Massey, that places are relational. They are messy, rhizomatic, assemblages where intra-actions between humans and nonhumans create affective encounters and to not pay attention to the agency of the non-human in the creation of places, Baldwin (2021) warns, is risky. As such, Salmela and Valtonen (2019) acknowledge that we “never dwell in the world alone” (p. 28).

Examples of focus might be (but not limited to…):

• Placemaking and multispecies relations
• Placemaking and the material world
• Placemaking and the natural world

We are inviting researchers from across the university to take part in this workshop to ascertain the potential of developing a cluster around this theme. After participants have presented a one slide introduction, we will use a series of provocations and group tasks to explore how more-than-human thinking with regards to placemaking responds to a need to be respectful and attentive to the nonhuman world.

If you would like to take part by presenting a one slide summary of who you are and your work (ideas, work in progress, completed work….all stages welcome!) please get in touch. We encourage participation from PGRs through to senior academics. Even if you cannot attend this date but would like to still take part in future conversations please do get in touch.

Contact: Louise Platt and Helen Wadham

l.platt@mmu.ac.uk
h.wadham@mmu.ac.uk