The Millbank Atlas: Catalysing community-based research in a spirit of civic responsibility

The Millbank Atlas is as an ongoing collaboration that convenes staff and student researchers from Chelsea College of Arts with residents of Millbank, the college’s local neighborhood. The Atlas unfolds as a collection of diverse 2D and 3D cartographic experiments that trace and retrace Millbank. This paper considers the Atlas as a case study for unleashing practice-based research in cultural production beyond academia, engaging the participatory paradigm that has marked life in the UK in recent decades. We explore this as a catalyst for the Atlas as a community of practice/practice of community and conclude by underscoring the project’s significance in relation to questions that propelled the 2017 conference of the Art of Research.The Millbank Atlas is as an ongoing collaboration that convenes staff and student researchers from Chelsea College of Arts with residents of Millbank, the college’s local neighborhood. The Atlas unfolds as a collection of diverse 2D and 3D cartographic experiments that trace and retrace Millbank. This paper considers the Atlas as a case study for unleashing practice-based research in cultural production beyond academia, engaging the participatory paradigm that has marked life in the UK in recent decades. We explore this as a catalyst for the Atlas as a community of practice/practice of community and conclude by underscoring the project’s significance in relation to questions that propelled the 2017 conference of the Art of Research.