Puhlkari by Kira Bhumber. Photographer: Andrew Howell. Used with permission

Ground Works is a platform for exemplary arts-inclusive research projects and reflection on the processes that drive interdisciplinary collaboration.

Latest Collection

Creating Knowledge in Common

Editors: Shannon Criss, Kevin Hamilton, and Mary Pat McGuire

Universities and communities are partnering together to more fully support needs across society. Art and design practices engaged within these partnerships substantively deepen the impact of this collective work through expression, visualization, representation, and exhibition, converging multiple viewpoints into broader re-imaginings and tangible new creations with both rational and emotional force. This special collection shares stories of such partnerships and their extraordinary outcomes in areas including community health, community arts, placekeeping, climate adaptation design, food production and distribution, abolition, student learning and engagement and more.

November 2024 · 10.48807/2024.2.0002 · CC-BY-NC-ND

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Call for Proposals

General Call for Submissions

Rolling Submissions

Cripping Creativity & Play: Artist-Led Explorations of Disabled Art-Making

Submit by April 30, 2026

Special Issue: Cripping Creativity & Play: Artist-Led Explorations of Disabled Art-Making

Guest editor: Dr. Elizabeth McLain

Ground Works launches its Reco(r)ding CripTech online archive...

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Announcements

Ground Works Pilots CRediT-FAIR Framework for Non-Authorial Contributions
December 2, 2024

Ground Works staff has adapted the NISO (National Information Standards Organization) Contributor Roles Taxonomy, known as CRediT.

CRediT has gained traction in sc...

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Featured Articles

Choreografish: an arts-based, virtual reality, anxiety intervention for autism

Eric Handman, Roger Altizer, Cheryl Wright, and Greg Bayles

Choreografish is a participatory research project leveraging virtual reality, arts engagement, and design to collaborate with young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The research team was motivated by a combination of observations: that some people with ASD experience social anxiety and attendant difficulties accessing social art forms such as dance and choreography, and that some have a predilection for developing patterns as a way of exerting control and making meaning. University of Utah faculty in engineering, dance, and social science collaborated with young adults with ASD on a virtual reality (VR) prototype to explore if synchronizing motion patterns to music may actually play well to the advantages of some on the autism spectrum and lower the barrier to a creative arts experience. Might choreographing in virtual reality help some people with ASD to self-manage anxiety?

November 2020 · 10.48807/2020.0044

Centering Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence in Movement-Based Interventions

Yasemin Özümerzifon, Allison Ross, Emily Tellier, Gina Gibney, and Carol Ewing Garber

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent public health issue characterized by a pattern of abusive behavior by an intimate partner in a dating or family relationship, wherein one partner exerts power and control over the victim or survivor. Survivors who have experienced repeated trauma in their relationships utilize several resources and services from mental health support to legal counseling as they work to rebuild their lives. IPV is a complex social issue requiring a collaborative and interdisciplinary response. While the importance of addressing the effects of trauma on the body is recognized, there is a dearth of research exploring the impact of movement on survivors of IPV. Created as a collaboration between dancers, survivors, and social workers, Gibney's interdisciplinary Move to Move Beyond® program (MTMB) has been offered to thousands of IPV survivors since 1999. Recent findings from a randomized controlled trial suggest positive outcomes for female survivors of intimate partner violence who participated in the virtual Move to Move Beyond program during the COVID-19 pandemic. From its inception, the research was designed and conducted using an interdisciplinary approach through a partnership between the New York City-based dance and social justice organization, Gibney; Sanctuary for Families, a non-profit organization dedicated to aiding victims of domestic violence and their children; and Teachers College, Columbia University. Using the MTMB program as a case study, this paper highlights how an interdisciplinary approach to a dance and movement-based intervention is vital in centering the communities the program is designed for. Furthermore, it examines potential benefits of dance and movement for survivors of IPV through the lenses of participants and facilitators. More broadly, it demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary structures between academic and community partners to leverage resources and elevate the impact of the work within the community and beyond.

August 2024 · 10.48807/2024.0.0121 · CC-BY-NC

Engagement, Education and Implementation: Supporting Community-Driven Adaptations to Rising Waters in Princeville, North Carolina

Andy Fox and Carla Delcambre

This article describes a collaboration between a STEM-focused land grant university in Raleigh, North Carolina and the Town of Princeville, North Carolina. Princeville experienced severe flood damage in 2016 due to Hurricane Matthew. As an important community hub, Princeville Elementary School, a Title 1 school, was heavily impacted by the floodwaters. After renovations, the school was set to re-open in January 2020 but had to pivot to online learning in March 2020 due to the pandemic. The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Coastal Dynamics Design Lab, who had been working with the Town of Princeville on disaster recovery planning, conducted a survey with the school that revealed that the teachers at Princeville Elementary School needed outdoor learning opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers wanted to challenge traditional indoor learning settings and promote access to fresh air and tactile outdoor learning opportunities for their students. The Design + Build Studio at NCSU, in the department of landscape architecture and environmental planning, was invited to collaborate but the studio was not originally structured to operate as an off-campus model. The pandemic provided an opportunity for graduate students to continue the Design + Build program during the pandemic; yet the challenge was to adapt the traditional, hands-on studio to online instruction. Students faced design constraints but adapted to fabricating modular structures off-site and installing site furnishings for the outdoor learning environment during the summer of 2021 and 2022. The collaboration between the university and the Town of Princeville demonstrates the potential for such partnerships to make a positive impact in the community, even in the face of pandemic-era conditions and shifted modalities of shared creativity.

November 2024 · 10.48807/2024.0.0153 · CC-BY-NC-ND

Featured Commentaries

I am glad that I engaged this experiment in transdisciplinary review and feel that the conversational review format served to increase my agency as a maker at the intersection of art, science, and medicine.

July 2021 · 10.48807/2022.1.0006

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Reviewer commentary on Choreografish: an arts-based, virtual reality, anxiety intervention for autism

Reviewing “Choreografish” for Ground Works

Sydney Skybetter, Lise Worthen-Chaudhari, Eric Handman, and Veronica Stanich

When Ground Works Advisor Cheryl Ball suggested that peer review doesn’t need to be a solitary, purely evaluative process, we got excited about the possibility of a conversation among reviewers. This commentary is a conversation about that conversation.

July 2021 · 10.48807/2202.1.0004

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