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We are looking for exceptional, courageous people from Northern Ireland who are prepared to put themselves on the line for the chance of winning BIG.

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Make, share and connect stories with things on the web

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International Research Centre for Interactive Storytelling (IRIS)

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Whether it's car use, flying, drying your clothes: share your thoughts about energy use here.

What are your concerns? How you see your energy use changing now, how do you imagine it may change in the future?

Add your own stories and pictures ...

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Whether it's car use, flying, drying your clothes: share your thoughts about energy use here. What are your concerns? How you see your energy use changing now, how do you imagine it may change in the future? Add your own stories and pictures ...

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Climate Change, rising fuel bills, renewable energy ...
we've all heard the headlines, but what's the effect onyou?

Have you made changes in your energy use? Do you walk to the shops? Turn down the thermostat? Buy seasonal, local food? Plan a 'staycation'?

Do you remember how you used energy in the past? Or imagine how you'll use energy in 10, 20, or 30 years' time?

Our research into how people think about energy use brings together individual energy stories in ways which we hope will inform the policy decisions which affect us all. So we'd like to know your energy story! Share your views, memories, hints and tips on energy saving.

Share your energy story right now, right here!

Use our 'Create' page, tweet us or post on Facebook ...

Check out the stories and pictures about energy and its uses we've pinned on the energy biographies History Pin channel.

Our research as it happens: insights, analyses, think pieces, memorandums and conference and symposia presentations. Our published conclusions and research findings will also feature here

Energy Biographies explores how people use energy in everyday life in order to understand how reductions in energy demand might be achieved.

Project introduction and Objectives
Project Design
Project Background

FLEXIS (Flexible Integrated Energy Systems) is a multi-partner, multi-million pound programme, which integrates social science and technical research to address issues concerning the energy system of the future. It is a project hosted by the Energy Systems Research Institute at Cardiff involving the Schools of Architecture, Engineering, Journalism and Social Sciences.

Find out more about FLEXIS

Energy Biopgraphies is a four-year research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. It is based at Cardiff University.

This website is now maintained with support fro the WEFO funded FLEXIS project.

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energy stories Climate Change, rising fuel bills, renewable energy ... we've all heard the headlines, but what's the effect on you? Have you made changes in your energy use? Do you walk to the shops? Turn down the thermostat? Buy seasonal, local food? Plan a 'staycation'?

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"According to quantum physics, you cannot 'just' observe something....to make an observation you must interact with the object you are observing."
(Hawkins, S. 2010, p.80).

Stories about rising sea levels, flooding and the drowning of coastal settlement are interpreted by the popular media to be disasters which place our coastal communities under stress. Our interactions with these events are therefore coloured both by this sense of dramatic doom and by the discipline through which we are engaged. Nowhere is the evidence for this more visually apparent than in the submerged forests and peats which border the coastline of West Wales. Often these forests are lost beneath our beaches, generally appearing only periodically after storms. These storms create a context of chaos with which the forests are then associated.

We propose that the regular rebirth of these submerged trees through the challenges of flooding and erosion offers opportunities to observe such events through a wide angle perspective that sees past the chaos. Utilizing a range of experts in diverse fields from within science, humanities and the arts we will combine to form a new understanding regarding the interplay of flooding facts and fictions through the layering of time. Our processes will be transparent as we interact with one another's expertise, presenting our culmative observations in an interdisciplinary format that will weave the various layers into one cohesive, video narrative.

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Layers in the landscape: Deep mapping in Cardigan Bay | Independent Social Research Foundation

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"According to quantum physics, you cannot 'just' observe something....to make an observation you must interact with the object you are observing." (Hawkins, S. 2010, p.80). Stories about rising sea levels, flooding and the drowning of coastal settlement are interpreted by the popular media to be disasters which place our coastal communities under stress.

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Comma's self-publishing platform for short stories in text and audio form.

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By Jackie Kay
Location: Chorlton Ees park

Take yesterday, for example. I came home after being away in the Big Smoke. Nobody calls London the Big Smoke anymore, but I was feeling my age. I was settling my son into his new council flat in East London. We spent a few days bustling about London getting him the things he needed: a desk, a chair, shelves, a duvet, a duvet cover, a kitchen bin, cutlery...We did it in record breaking time, but it was daunting; the traffic, how each neighbourhood in London doesn't necessarily have the shops you need, and you have to go large distances to get ordinary things. It was all a big, stressful hassle.

So I came back to Chorlton and breathed a sigh of relief. I don't feel like I live in Manchester; I feel like I live in Chorlton. I can spend happy, glorious days without going into the city at all. Chorlton allows you to be self-sufficient. So yesterday the first thing I did when I got home was walk my dog in Chorlton Ees. I walk to the end of my street, turn left and there it is! It is Manchester's first nature reserve, part of the Red Rose forest, stretching for thousands of acres, and it is right on my doorstep. If I was energetic enough I could follow the river Mersey all the way to Liverpool, or I could walk to Didsbury along the riverbank, passing the odd statuesque heron. But usually I walk through the woodlands and meadows in any number of different directions. I love how wild it is there, the way that the density of the woods remind me of childhood, or of how the imagination works. There's something secretive and knowing about the trees, and if you spend enough time in their distinguished company, you actually feel yourself getting better.

Walking a dog is more of a talking point than pushing a pram; people always stop and ask about the breed of my dog and tell me about theirs. 'We've been out since eight thirty,' an old woman tells me about herself and her dog. 'Been to the vet. She's got problems with her kidneys, is on medication, is costing me a fortune, but she's worth it,' she says and walks on, her proud bushy dog walking beside her. She looks like the only pennies she has to rub together, she's spending on her dog. (It moves me how she used the pronoun 'we' to describe herself and her dog, like they are an item, a team.)

Stats:

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By Jackie Kay Location: Chorlton Ees park Take yesterday, for example. I came home after being away in the Big Smoke. Nobody calls London the Big Smoke anymore, but I was feeling my age. I was settling my son into his new council flat in East London.

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Storymaking is a one day symposium to be held on Friday 11 th November 2016 at the Liverpool Screen School, Liverpool John Moores University, which has been organised in collaboration with the ICC's Knowledge Exchange Manager Sue Potts and supported by the MeCCSA Practice Network.

The focus of this symposium is making stories with rather than just for the audience.

In the contemporary cultural landscape, we can all self-publish our own novels, release our own films online and share our photography through numerous social media sites, gathering our own audience from across the globe. These new capabilities are altering the relationship between producers and consumers of cultural products and afford possibilities for new experiences that are collaborative.

Participatory culture is a new and developing area of media practice that would benefit from exploration and discussion of: technologies that afford participation, the ethics of collaboration with users, the creative potential of working with an audience, and methods to develop communities of users.

This symposium will allow a sharing of practice between those who already produce new media / digital content and work collaboratively with others, and practitioners who are interested in developing work with audiences and users.

The symposium will investigate approaches to participatory cultural practice and ask, "What happens when the audience joins in?" Themes to explore might include (but are not limited to):

Participation in narrative projects

Creative collaboration

Guardianship of people's stories

Providing a voice

Connecting people and places

Creating a social archive

Methods for creating a community of collaborators

Ethics and ownership

Audience versus participant

Presentations will be 20 minutes in duration. To submit a paper, please email presentation title, name, affiliation (or company) and an up to 250 word abstract to:

Sarah Haynes - s.haynes@ljmu.ac.uk and Ian Bradley - i.bradley@ljmu.ac.uk
Proposal submission deadline is 9th September. Add to Google Calendar

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Storymaking is a one day symposium to be held on Friday 11th November 2016 at the Liverpool Screen School, Liverpool John Moores University, which has been organised in collaboration with the ICC's Knowledge Exchange Manager Sue Potts and supported by the MeCCSA Practice Network.