Standing on the cusp of the second year of REALITIES, I find myself reflecting on processes throughout the last 11 months of the project. When it comes to researching evidence-based alternatives in living, imaginative, traumatised, integrated, and embodied systems (REALITIES), Process with a capital P becomes integral to collaborative research, working, and action, which—to me—is a standout quality of the project and one of the many reasons I excitedly jumped at the chance to be involved in it.
Academia can often—whether purposefully or unintentionally—put up literal and figurative walls that create barriers instead of opportunities for large, cross-institution/cross-partner projects. Access to university resources such as libraries are suddenly inaccessible as soon as you aren’t an employee or a student; conferences require unaffordable fees that most cannot manage without university monetary support—even if it’s to present one’s own work. It is not surprising then, that many feel their participation within research systems (which is often intrinsically tied to academia) is discouraged, rather than encouraged.
Despite many of the aforementioned hurdles, REALITIES—both as a way of thinking and researching, and as a holistic project—actively fights against these challenges, and strives to create an environment where collaboration is not only welcome, but actively facilitated. Both the core and wider consortium are made up of a wide array of members from local council representatives, third sector organisations, artists, community researchers, Scottish national dance, theatre, and singing bodies, and academics from a diverse discipline range of disciplines. Within the project, everyone’s expertise is necessary and invaluable; lived experience is seen as an asset rather than being undervalued, as are community-based knowledge and epistemologies. Diverse perspectives and experiences are turned into insights, which in turn lead to critical evidence and actionable data, turning collaborative buzzwords into realities (pun unintended).
But even with these intentions, REALITIES is not immune from the institutional challenges it hopes to overcome. We have run into collaborative walls, exacerbated by aforementioned barriers. Something as simple as choosing which data analysis software that could be accessed by the whole project team turned into a month-long debacle, being passed along from one IT unit to another, new issues emerging with seemingly every company and institution having an opinion on the ‘dangers’ of handling data cross-collaboratively. REALITIES consortium members without university-specific email addresses had ongoing trouble with platforms such as Teams and Sharepoint, which had to be accessed through the university interface, leading to clunky video meetings, restricted permissions, and unresolved IT barriers. Frustrating and inefficient, Technology and IT—which should in theory facilitate collaboration—often reinforced it instead. I kept thinking to myself: surely, we are not the first project with such a wide net of collaborators, so why aren’t there solutions readily in place for streamlining collaborative efforts? It begs the question: is the system designed to ensure collaboration remains an ideal rather than a practice?
Dismantling systemic barriers is also about the barriers within our projects systems, not only the systems the project is seeking to transform. Reimagining research as a collaborative and accessible practice makes the work of REALITIES both urgent and—moving into Year 2—timely.