THINK DEEP: Novel arts-based resources to reIMAGINE Artisanal Mining?

THINK DEEP: IMAGINE?’s unique value proposition lies in its innovative arts-based response to the pressing challenge of ‘thinking differently’ about Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM). In 2019 the World Bank envisioned a new future for ASM in which this challenging sector escapes its persistently negative stereotypes to realise its central place within global development in socially and environmentally just ways. Such a vision is neither without controversy nor easy to achieve as ASM is plagued by two challenges:i.Data gaps and invisibilities – how to research a sector that is usually secretive, increasingly criminalised and often subject to underhand corporate and government practices? ii.Too simple stories of mining, which perpetuate imaginations of miners as victims of poverty and as unskilled social deviants and environmental pariahs. Breakthrough research with artisanal miners in Cambodia conducted on the ERC project THINK DEEP evidenced the value of novel arts-based research methods for tackling the first challenge, generating a unique archive of materials combining world-leading art with cutting-edge research. THINK DEEP: IMAGINE?’s high risk-high gain proposition is that arts-based resources created from this archive can respond to the second challenge. Building on THINK DEEP's benefit-sharing discussions and in collaboration with Cambodian artists, curators, researchers, miners and ASM stakeholders, we will i) experiment with and ii) evaluate the impacts of ‘putting research on display’ (via an exhibition, image-led book and online resources). Developing proof-of-concept for arts-based resources, we aim to: i.Reshape imaginations of Cambodia’s largely invisible and often dismissed ASM sector to tackle what local NGOs predict as its currently 'bleak futures.' ii.Develop a toolkit to share best-practice in producing arts-based resources on ASM, thereby supporting the World Bank in realising its vision for ASM’s place within global development.