“Leicester is one of the most diverse cities on the planet – the UK’s first plural city, made up of people from so many different backgrounds that there is no clear ethnic majority present. At a time when, globally, people seem to struggle to view the world from different others’ perspectives and politics are heavily shaped by personalization, we are keen to learn with Leicester’s citizens how they relate to different others.
The Leicester Citizen Sketchbook project will get Leicester’s citizens to share their
insights into how they view the city and other citizens that make it up, how they want it to evolve, the role that technology, the high street and other public realms play in how they relate to others in it, and to guide our cutting-edge research about empathy and the civic virtue of imagination. In the city’s largest citizen science project to date, we will distribute 2500 sketchbooks to gather the voices of people who are often excluded from mainstream research and create a repository of how they see life in Leicester in 2025 which will form the basis of an exhibition and further citizen science exercises.”
