Arts and humanities education in the UK is under threat. UK Research Innovation’s strategy for 2022 to 2027 mentions the ‘humanities’ twice. In comparison, the word ‘science’ appears 57 times; the clear ambition is for the UK to be a ‘science superpower’. Music, dance, drama and performing arts, art and design, media studies and archaeology are not ‘strategic priorities’ for the UK Government, opening the door to 50% cuts in funding. Since 1961/62 the proportion of UK students studying humanities subjects has dropped from 28% to 8% and there are now 40,000 fewer humanities students at UK universities compared to ten years ago. In other words, science is more popular, more valued, and more financially secure than the arts and humanities.

This hostile landscape makes no sense to me. It seems absurd to raise a barrier between science and the humanities given that high-quality research depends upon understanding the implicit epistemes that underpin, for example, medical research. Surely a society which does not try to think about, explore, and understand the complexity of its own lived experience is weaker and poorer than one that does? How can governments and universities place such little value on such valuable fields of study? In October 2021, when I was still a relatively new PhD student trying to find sense in this nonsense, I saw two lines in a newsletter asking for those interested in fighting for the discipline of arts and humanities to get in touch. I sent a quick email in response and will always be grateful that I did.

Over the past year and a bit, I have been lucky enough to work with an amazing group of smart, enthusiastic, creative, friendly, committed, determined, interesting, resourceful, and inspiring people. I have never met most of the AAH collective in person but, together we have applied for funding, built a website, and put on a programme of 5 workshops and 4 talks reaching around 150 people. Although we are from different disciplines and backgrounds, we are bound together by two things. Firstly, the knowledge that governments and universities are eroding opportunities for arts and humanities education, and that, secondly, and despite all, that education matters.

What we wanted to do in our series of talks and workshops was to share that mattering with as many people as possible. Our series of talks began with Dr Rachael Kiddey sharing her work with The Made in Migration Collective. Using ideas and methods from the fields of archaeological and cultural heritage, Rachael creates digital and live exhibitions that explore how objects and places matter to those who are forcibly displaced. In doing so, The Made in Migration Collective works to expose the impact of nationalist policies and ideologies on people’s lives. Although not originally intended, Rachael’s talk brought to the fore a theme that ran throughout the series: the ways in which politics and ideology distorts our relationships to space and place. The second talk was a semi-structured conversation between Dr Kate Wright and PhD researcher Maxwell Ayamba. Kate shared her work with the Armidale Aboriginal Community Garden and discussed the importance of counter-colonial interventions in the Australian context while Maxwell discussed the ways in which Britain excludes people, and particularly people of colour, from their own countryside spaces. Both speakers talked about the importance of environmental activism in addressing historical inequalities and changing perceptions. In our third talk, attention turned to the city and Dr Leslie Kern and urban planner Natalya Palit talked about the possibilities and potential for designing a gender-sensitive city. Finally, in our fourth talk, the space that came under scrutiny was that of the toilet. Dr Jen Slater shared research from ‘Around the Toilet’, an AHRC-funded project centred on the experiences of queer, trans and disabled people and ‘exploring toilets as spaces of exclusion and belonging’. You can find recordings of some of these talks and more details about the speakers on our website. As all our speakers made clear, those spaces we take for granted are not neutral ground, space is always in the process of being made and unmade. Becoming aware of that making is critical in confronting and addressing issues of equity and access.

A few months on and starting to think about what we do next, I find myself reflecting on the pointlessness of what we achieved. I don’t mean that it had no value, or didn’t matter, or that we shouldn’t have done it. What I mean is that working in the field of arts and humanities feels like immersing myself in a kind of messy middle in which there are no fixed points. And I wonder if embracing the pointlessness of the humanities is, perhaps, a way out of the melancholy academic mindset I find myself in right now. Our speakers did not give me answers, but they did give me new ways of asking questions and that is what I think arts and humanities education is all about – learning to see from the middle, given the middle is where life happens, caught in a complex, entangled web of emotions, politics, culture, and society. There are no easy answers but, as much as we wish there were, nor should there be. The world our speakers described was one in which our everyday choices intersect with large-scale structural, political, and historical forces and the role of the arts and humanities is to help us navigate that intersection. By understanding the history that Maxwell and Kate spoke about, for example, I understood the countryside space in which I live from a new angle. I can’t yet see exactly what difference that will make to my own choices and behaviour, but I know I am different now to what I was, I know their work has nudged me in a new direction.