Clare Melhuish

The Association for Academic Outreach (http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/afao/) is a loose coalition of academics working in universities engaged with the world outside. The 92 members are from a wide range of intellectual, social and economic backgrounds, drawn from each and every subject area, discipline and type of institution. It therefore represents many of those most actively engaged in civic engagement at a personal level. We are conscious that the Commission is most likely anticipating submissions from institutions, but we believe that not every university will respond to the commission and those that will may not always be aware of the full breadth of activity in which their staff are engaged. This is because, in our collective experience, a significant proportion of outreach activity is either informal, developed independently of the university centre and/or an attendant feature of individual or group research projects. We invited members of the association to describe some of the activities in which they are engaged and the following represents a summary of some of the examples we received. We are conscious that this does not answer the questions you raise but feel that these are more appropriately answered at an institutional level. It is also worth noting that civic engagement often rests upon the initiative, energy and commitment of individuals, acting individually or collectively, rather than top level direction. Most initiatives are bottom up rather than top down, reflecting a desire amongst many academics to engage with publics beyond the university as an end in itself, rather than for more instrumental corporate purposes. This is noteworthy, since civic engagement, unlike other activities, such as teaching, research and management, offers few tangible career or financial benefits to those engaged in it. The fact that it is undertaken so extensively despite this is testament to the ways in which colleagues view the university as an institution embedded in communities and to the desire of many academic colleagues to 'give back' to the public they serve. Moreover, when colleagues do 'give back', they do so in ways informed by their subject and disciplinary background, not only using skills attendant to their roles, but engaging with issues and ideas that are absolutely not subject-neutral. Civic engagement for a mathematician is wholly different to that of a sociologist. Recognising this is essential as, in our experience, a lot of top down initiatives rest upon activities and goods that are seen as subject-neutral and non-academic, devaluing the actual goods that individual academics can contribute in the process. As such, in order to appreciate fully the nature of the civic university at present, it is essential that the experience of academics individually and collectively through associations such as ours be recognised and accounted. In what follows, we have grouped and summarised the submissions thematically. We refer to institutions for the sake of simplicity, but we emphasise that the activities and programmes noted are devised, designed and delivered by individual academics, acting individually or collectively, rather than by institutions as whole.

This paper explores how Computer Generated Images have enabled the visualisation and negotiation of a new urban imaginary, in the production of a large-scale urban development project in Doha, Qatar. CGIs were central not only to the marketing but also the design of Msheireb Downtown. Our study of their production and circulation across a transnational architectural and construction team reveals how their digital characteristics allowed for the development of a negotiated, hybrid urban imaginary, within the context of a re-imaging and re-positioning of cities in a shifting global order. We suggest that CGIs enabled the co-production of a postcolonial urban aesthetic, disrupting the historical orientalist gaze on the Gulf region, in three ways. Firstly, they circulate through a global network of actors negotiating diverse forms of knowledge from different contexts; secondly, they are composed from a mix of inter-referenced cultural sources and indicators visualising hybrid identities; and thirdly, they evoke a particular urban atmosphere which is both place-and culture-specific, and cosmopolitan. The study emphasises the importance of research into the technical and

This issue aims to open up a comparative discussion about the role of heritage in urban renewal in Doha — a city in the throes of rapid
and substantial transformation as it re-positions itself in a global network of cosmopolitan urban centres. As such, it presents a rich opportunity for examining the ways in which discourses around
physical and cultural heritage are shaping approaches to urban planning, environmental and social sustainability, and architectural
preservation and renewal around the world. Our contributors represent different voices and interests within this debate, across
the fields of professional, academic and artistic practice in Doha and London, as well as everyday lived experience of Doha. They explore
the meanings and manifestations of Qatari heritage and identity at the local, urban and international scale; the roles played by different
actors and stakeholders in their formation; and the tools — technical, aesthetic and conceptual — which bring them into being.

This paper explores how the hybrid making of Computer Generated Images on the Msheireb urban redevelopment project in Doha may be understood as a distributed and networked craft practice within the discipline of architecture and design, which is effecting the material transformation of the urban landscape and everyday urban life in Doha. We suggest that the evocation of ‘atmosphere’ through the
digitalised production of these images mobilises ideas and aspirations for the construction of a ‘new kind of place’ and urban lifestyle, both as an imaginary and a reality, in the Islamic and Arab context,
and that, as crafted images, CGIs should be seen as objects with social agency which are central to the
construction of the project as a technological and social reality during its production phases as well as to its translation into the social reality of built form and urban life.