Dr Cara Courage
Independent researcher / TAte
Dr Cara Courage is a placemaking, and arts, activism and museums academic and practitioner, and Head of Tate Exchange, Tate’s platform dedicated to socially engaged art. Cara speaks internationally on topics covering the C21st museum, the civic and activist museum, socially engaged art in community and museum settings and arts and urban design, placemaking and planning and has published widely on these topics. Cara is author of Arts in Place: The Arts, the Urban and Social Practice (Routledge, 2017), and the co-editor of Creative Placemaking and Beyond (Routledge, 2018), and editor of The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking (Routledge, 2020).
Cara has been listening to The Archers for around 20 years and grew up with the programme ‘always on’ at her grandmothers farm on Exmoor. She talks about the pleasure and plain of her Archers fandom in a talk My BDSM relationship with The Archers (listen to it here.)
Dr Nicola Headlam
Chief economist/head of public sector
Dr Nicola Headlam works as a Chief Economist and Head of Public Sector for data/tech company Red Flag Alert in Manchester, where she applies her skills and experience to solving data problems. She passionately believes that the right data and evidence base in the hands of economic development policy makers, can transform the sub-national economy of the UK. She also directs a Living Lab for Innovation looking at pandemic economic recovery, and how to ensure that this reaches the places beyond ‘the usual.’ These social and spatial concerns bleed into her engagement with The Archers and she also works as the self-appointed network analyst for Ambridge, with forensic attention paid to the interactions within the clans of the village and the ways in which intergenerational capital is protected and transferred over time. She is often found trying to ensure that the Academic Archers Facebook group remains curious, generous and joyful in tone and is working on a new project looking at the 5-day micro-seasons which can be observed in the natural world.
All time on Academic Archers is given on a voluntary basis and support from others is given in-kind, and gratefully received.