Esther Lisk-Carew: There is a through line of telling narratives, telling stories,

getting data about the people coming into you, that has been part of my work.

Some people suit a portmanteau career really well.

Certainly those who have cultural and creative practice themselves.

It feels like a comedy answer, but when the Buffy reboot comes out, I

want Giles to no longer be a librarian, but to be an academic researcher.

Nothing makes a career look sexier and cool than having a hot person

on a hit TV show doing that job.

Hello there.

I'm Sarah McLusky and this is Research Adjacent.

Each episode I talk to amazing research adjacent professionals about what

they do and why it makes a difference.

Keep listening to find out why we think the research adjacent space

is where the real magic happens.

Hello there and welcome or welcome back to the Research Adjacent podcast.

Before I introduce today's guest, I just wanted to thank you for

choosing to share your day with me.

If you're on LinkedIn, maybe you could share a photo of

where you are listening from.

I know that we have listeners all over the world, so I would honestly be thrilled

to see what you can see right now.

If you do, make sure that you tag me, Sarah McLusky, and the

podcast page Research Adjacent.

So back to today's guest.

We are returning from a short summer break with a fantastic guest who has like

many cultural professionals, has pieced together a career doing what she loves.

Esther Lisk-Carew coordinates the AHEAD program at Manchester

Metropolitan University.

AHEAD stands for Arts and Humanities Engagement and Dialogue, and her

role includes projects like a crime and justice film festival and the

experimental arts series Bunker Talks.

Although it was this role at MMU that brought Esther into my world.

In prepping the show notes, I have discovered that she was

also been a contestant on the Weakest Link, Pointless and Mastermind.

Esther is also no stranger to podcasting, and through her Linktree

called Well Spoken Tokens, exploring diversity in the cultural sector.

On top of all of this, Esther also does freelance work, is a trustee of

Manchester's Portico Library and also the founder of the Black and Global

Majority Cultural Creative Network.

I am starting to wonder if Esther ever sleeps.

In our conversation, we talk about how engagement in the arts and humanities is

often baked into the research process, her career journey, which includes a leisurely

detour via the French legal system and why she would use her Research Adjacent magic

wand to rework Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Yes, really.

Listen on to hear about that and the rest of Esther's story.

Welcome along to the podcast.

Esther, it is fantastic to have you here.

I wonder if we could begin by hearing a little bit about

who you are and what you do.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Thank you very much for having me, Sarah.

So my name's Esther Lisk-Carew.

I am the engagement coordinator for a programme called Ahead at

Manchester Metropolitan University and ahead stands for Arts and

Humanities Engagement and Dialogue.

So it is the public engagement programme that helps our research academics in

arts and humanities tell their stories, talk about their research, and connect

with audiences, public, academics, people beyond the university here.

So it's a really broad remit but it's a really interesting role.

Yeah, I bet it is.

And I think it's fantastic to have you on as a guest because I think people

often think about public engagement as and also research as well as being

about science subjects, engineering, technology, things like that.

So tell us a bit about what sorts of things you're involved

with in Arts and Humanities.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Arts and humanities because it's such a

broad stretch of subjects, so it's the School of Architecture,

it's sociology, it's English, it's history, it's a school of theatre.

One of the things I sometimes struggle with is just doing it in a nutshell, but

some of the projects that we've worked on are people in linguistics talking about

social justice and how teachers how they might influence the ways in which academic

learning is changed by looking at the ways in which they're teaching, what they're

teaching, what's in the curriculum.

So linguistics is really interesting.

We've got the school of theatre.

We've recently had one of our academics in the School of theatre

who's had a production that's part of Manchester International Festival.

It's a show called Liberation.

So it's interesting because quite a lot of people think about research outputs

in terms of papers and conferences, and those are things that happen.

But also there is nothing greater than having something, which one of the

outputs of your research is a play that gets to engage hundreds of people a

night on the subject of your researching this particular part of history and the

impacts and legacies of this Congress that happened just after the war and so

few people in Manchester, it's the 80th -anniversary this year, know much about

that history, so it's really incredible that we have got people who are doing that

research around who were these people?

Why weren't their stories told at the time?

Who were the women involved in telling their stories?

Because quite often they get written out history.

It's just such a really broad range of research areas.

We've got people doing design for dementia, so collaborative working to

talk about how if you co-design a game that helps people who are suffering with

dementia access their memories, does it put off long-term adverse health outputs?

We've got our Robotics Living lab.

I could talk for hours about the Robotics Living Lab, which is an amazing

project, which is from this school of Fashion, which is around working with

people who are in industry, who have got small fashion businesses and how

can robotics help and support them as small businesses, so amazing amount of

research happening in the university.

That does sound like a huge range of stuff, but it's also

reminding me of the fact that sometimes I think the reason that people don't

necessarily think of public engagement as being something that happens in the

arts and humanities is because often it's something that's almost baked in

to the way that they operate, isn't it?

So like you say, you've got theatre studies of course they're gonna do plays.

And then of course they're gonna have an audience for those plays.

So it can be very much, I think, much more part of the process than in the sciences.

Is that something that you've noticed?

Esther Lisk-Carew: Absolutely.

The collaborative methodology coworking, co-producing.

Working with different audiences to develop practice?

I think a lot of those techniques and methodologies that people are

encouraged to try and start using in other industries and in other academic

areas do tend to already be used.

So sometimes you are not doing it as new.

You are talking about the ways in which you did it, or you are having

a conference or a symposium about the different ways that people have done it

differently or evolved that practice.

Rather than going, oh no, I need to think about how I engage with young people who

are affected by the scientific outcome and I dunno how to engage that in audience.

Whereas actually, if we're talking about youth voices and justice.

We're already working with young people 'cause they're part of those

case studies and that way of working.

And then the research outputs are probably more along the lines of how are we going

to do quantitative data attached to that.

So yeah, I think it's yeah, different lenses, different strands.

The starting points are different.

But I don't mentally think of it as distinct from a STEM subject, in

terms of the way they do the research.

It is the different types of research outputs I think are more common

with arts and humanities sometimes.

Yes, what I think in the next REF cycle, they're

calling non-traditional outputs.

Although you could argue that in some of these disciplines, these are actually

very traditional outputs, couldn't you?

Esther Lisk-Carew: Yeah.

I think it's non-traditional in the way REF looks at outputs.

It's not non-traditional in working practice.

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh, it sounds like a, an amazing range of things that are happening there.

So how did you find yourself in this role?

Tell us a bit about your story.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Oh, it's, I've had a really varied career,

which is, I've been very lucky.

I've worked mainly in arts festival and venue operations.

I've sometimes specialised in things like volunteer management and so

that's been in the cultural sector for about 20 odd years, a little bit over.

Where I would, I started out as the film administrator in independent cinema.

One of the things I really loved was that there was a really strong

festival programme throughout the year.

So it was a place called Corner House, which is now morphed into a

different organisation called HOME.

But there used to be film festivals all the time, so it was logistical, it

was getting speakers, getting people from around the world, getting films

from all around the world, bringing people together, telling stories.

There is a through line of telling narratives, telling stories, getting

data about the people coming into you, that has been part of my work.

And then working with volunteers in the heritage sector and in the art sector.

You do a lot of data collection when you work with volunteer teams

because you always, these are people who don't have to work with you.

Yeah.

So you are always looking at ways you can continually motivate them, make

sure you're not doing a load of staff recruitment, staff retention, volunteer

recruitment, volunteer retention, having discussions with producers about

how volunteers could be used in an interesting way to really engage them.

So again, similarly the to working in arts and humanities research.

You have these different ways of working with people that actually

go a lot deeper than I think a lot of people think when they think,

oh, you're a volunteer manager.

Oh, you're a venue manager.

You're doing, yes, a lot of the nuts and bolts things.

But a lot of it is actually responding to data, learning, doing better,

evaluating, and then trying to repeat that process again through

trial, process of elimination.

So there are parallels to working in an art sector.

But then this role came up at the university.

One of the things I've always found with arts and heritage is a lot of

roles are tied to things like Arts Council funding or HLF funding,

Heritage Lottery Fund funding.

So it's quite unstable in terms of career progression.

A lot of times I've done quite fixed term contracts, whether

that's a couple of years.

And so you deliver a project or deliver some activity and

you might not necessarily have the same job or it evolves.

So being within the university setting, being able to deliver things, but actually

having a little bit more robustness.

The period of REF is I think it's nine years.

And my role was a relatively new one.

They hadn't really looked at how engagement specifically fed into

impact case studies, but obviously if you are looking at impact, who is

coming along, what audiences you are reaching, how you are reaching them

is a really important part of that.

So I feel really lucky that the university had gone from doing

much more around its research and thinking about its research culture.

And I just got very lucky that there was this role that really matched my

skillset at a time when Manchester Metropolitan was really looking at how

does their research impact the world.

It sounds like it makes sense the way that you've

brought together all these different things that you've done before

into this role that you do now.

And as you say, I can see definite connections with having done events

management and then that being applicable to like the public engagement type stuff.

And also, as you say, around volunteer management and the fact,

I think there's definite parallels between managing volunteers and doing

things in public engagement because I think, again, it's like these

people, they don't have to be there.

Yeah.

They're choosing to be there and then how you actually interact

with them and how understand why.

Yeah.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Sorry, understanding motivation, but also

holding that motivation to come and reengage with you over and again.

Yeah.

I do think that is a consistent thing within different applications

of my work over the years.

Yeah.

Esther Lisk-Carew: But also I was really lucky because the organisation,

the cultural organisations I've worked in, I've worked in some of the larger

cultural organisations in Greater Manchester, are ones where when I was

doing those sort of entry level jobs and early career jobs, a lot of my

colleagues were people who were working in the cultural and creative industry.

Now coincidentally lecturers at the university that I currently work in.

It's really interesting because it's good to see them develop from

being artists to being people who are now teaching people and being

lecturers and then being researchers.

And so it is interesting to see how their careers have developed and also, I think

my role, it's not one that's consistently available in a lot of universities or,

there's not always consistently this role in the way that it's presented.

And it certainly isn't a role when I was at school thinking about

what do I want to do with my life?

What kind of career do I want to have?

What kind of life do I wanna have?

But it's really interesting role to have for someone who's interested in

arts and culture, but I'm not an artist.

I've never been an artistic practitioner, but I've always been interested in how

things tell stories and how things happen.

It's a really excellent job to combine my love and interest, I love learning.

I look, I'm a huge nerd.

So learning about all of the different academic disciplines and

different bits of research, me, I could go on a real deep dive on them.

Yeah.

And I find it much, I find it easier to do my job the more I know about the research.

So sometimes they'll be like, oh, I want to do this conference, this event.

Help me with that.

The more I know about the research, the more I'm like, actually this is

an audience that I think you might not have connected with before, but actually

they would also be someone you would want to bring into the university or

we go out from the university for them.

So I think having worked in cultural sector brings a really

different perspective to the academic audiences as well.

You said there that you, this isn't something you aspire

to do when you were at school.

I'm thinking that again, is pretty, these jobs, I don't even know if they

like, they, I'm pretty sure they didn't even exist when we were at school.

What did you aspire to do when you were at school?

Esther Lisk-Carew: I think you've seen my IMDB, which this is the big,

I often have to explain to people, particularly when I'm mentoring people

about how you can change careers.

So originally I wanted to be a French judge, so I went

very academic, grammar school.

And a lot of people at my school either went to Oxford or Cambridge

and went into medicine and law, and those were, the marks of success.

You got a really high profile kind of accountancy, those kinds of jobs.

And I loved to talk and I loved to read and I loved languages, and so me

thinking I'm not sciencey, I'm not gonna go into medicine or something like that.

I wanted to be a lawyer.

And then I specifically had a really great a level French teacher,

and I thought I love France.

I love law.

I'll be a French lawyer.

And there's only two places.

There were only two places in the UK at the time where you could

go on and do your legal studies with a full qualifying law degree.

Yeah.

So one of them was, was Kent.

Think it was Kent.

And then one of them was the University of Liverpool where I

ended up going and then but I'd always loved film, I'd loved theatre.

I love arts and culture.

I've loved reading all my life.

And then when it came to doing this degree, I found it incredibly interesting.

But I was also a bit of an idealist who wanted to change the world.

And the more you study law, from my perspective, I didn't feel like I'd be

changing the world by becoming a lawyer.

I'd probably just be enforcing other people's laws and

other people's decisions.

So I had to rethink what I actively wanted to do in my life.

And I realised I didn't want to be a lawyer, but I also

didn't know what I wanted to do.

I worked in the NHS for a while doing some project administration work as

a temp and then got a permanent job.

But again, it wasn't something that excited me about

getting up in the morning.

Then I saw this film administration job and it was two things, I was

passionate about arts and film, and I was a great administrator.

I was really good at looking at data and spreadsheets and pulling things

together and staying organised.

And then that then converted into a love, particularly of festivals,

but also heritage and the ways in which they can tell stories and

connect with audiences, which then developed into a career in an academic

setting helping people tell stories.

And it's funny how when we look back, sometimes we can connect

the dots, even though at the time it, it feels a little bit random and haphazard.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Yeah.

I mean it comes full circle.

Both with me having worked in a film team at a cinema and with me having

to originally wanted to be a lawyer.

One of the projects I worked on I helped support our crime and justice

film festival, which our sociology team put together every year.

So that combines everything I love, a film festival, amazing series of events.

And, looking at how does, how is the justice system depicted on films?

What specific laws are influenced by film?

I know I was, I desperately wanted to put a film festival on years ago about

just films that had changed the law and the idea that I'm now in an institution

that showing all of these different aspects of the law, which I do still find

incredibly interesting and fascinating.

It's great.

Yeah.

Oh, it does.

The enthusiasm is definitely coming over of how much you're

enjoying what you're doing now.

So you've mentioned quite a few different projects and things you've worked on.

I know it's hard sometimes to pick favorites, but are there any particular

ones that you're really proud of that you'd like to tell us about?

Esther Lisk-Carew: I really liked the recent collaboration we did, which

there's an existing public engagement programme from the school of theatre

and the performance research group here called Bunker Talks, which is

researchers just, formally, informally, sorry, sitting and talking about what

they do, why they do what they do.

And I love a talk, I love an event.

So it existing already, but being able to collaborate with them around this most

recent one, which was with Liberation, it connected the geography of the

building that the school of theatre is in because it's a part of history that

actually took place in that building.

That one was really special.

It's also a bit of black history, which is very important to me personally.

But also really love untold stories.

Yeah, I think the Bunker Talk series and also it's traditionally held in

space that's not physically accessible.

And being able to move that into another space so that more people

can see that there are these spaces in the building is really special.

Which is sad because then it reminds me of another event that we recently supported

called Mother Tongue Other Tongue, which was with Manchester Poetry Library which

again, is a public space that a lot of people think because it's attached

to the university they can't come to.

And it had loads of school children involved, and that was another one

because anyone who goes into the Poetry Library falls in love with it instantly.

And it was an amazing number of people getting to showcase their home languages

through poetry which is just beautiful.

You never, any event that involves young people, that involves

people learning really young to be passionate about art and culture,

that's always a big winner for me.

Yeah.

There's a lot of energy you get from doing stuff.

I used to do loads of events with young people and yeah it is a special kind of

energy and enthusiasm that they bring.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Yeah.

Especially when it's their voices starting it rather than being told what to do.

And have that imposed on them.

I think nurturing that self-awareness of what it is that you want to do, whether

it's misguided, whether it's amazingly idealistic, I think it's really important

to cultivate that sense at a young age.

Yeah, definitely.

And you said there a bit earlier on that another thing you've been involved with

is mentoring people around career change.

Tell us a bit more about that.

Esther Lisk-Carew: So one of the things I've always done as a sideline in my

career is, and particularly when you're working with volunteers, because, a

huge pool of volunteers in a city like Manchester are students who are looking

at career development and how you make money being an artist or being in the

creative and cultural sector because there aren't the traditional routes, it's

not as linear as the law, for example.

So I really enjoy that aspect of working with people to speak up for themselves,

develop their careers, understand how to talk about themselves because again, I

was really lucky at my secondary school we were taught how to do interviews

because it was expected that we'd go out and, be very impressive all the time.

And I don't, it's not as consistent now.

I think at secondary education, giving people those skill sets to talk about

their skills, set themselves apart.

I think a lot of education these days just seem to be towards conformity.

Creative sectors are all about being individual and showcasing

that thing that's special about yourself, whilst understanding

that you have a skill set to prove.

Yeah.

But talk about that.

So I really like working with young people in particular to help them develop skills.

Yeah.

Oh, that's really interesting.

I think you're right, is that a lot of.

What young people it is about passing exams.

It's about, fitting into this little box.

But yeah, the fact that in the arts it's actually, it's about how do you

stand out rather than how do you fit in.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Yeah.

And I think one of the things you are really focused on the subject specific

thing when you do your university degree but you're not focused on how do I

translate having worked on a hundred shows to going into an office whilst

I'm doing my office job or going into a retail setting to do a retail job, whilst

I'm also building up my career or how do I have the skill sets to work within a

theatre setting, that's not necessarily, I am doing a producer role straight away.

Mm-hmm.

Actually, I've got to learn how to work in the marketing team and convey messages

and be able to tell stories succinctly and interestingly, and reach audiences.

Yeah.

And as you say, there it is.

We don't often talk a lot about this, do we?

There's a lot of talk in higher education about, precarity of researchers and

things like that, but actually work in the arts and cultural sector can

be incredibly, precarious, can't it?

And short contracts, self-employed, temporary jobs, all that sort of

stuff, even though these sectors make massive contribution to the economy.

So yeah what's your experience been like of navigating those waters?

Esther Lisk-Carew: I think that's it.

I think one of the things I've learned from experience and that I try and imbue

is that to navigate precarity, one of the things is having a broad skillset and

being flexible, being good at managing your own time and your boundaries, because

it can fall into a space where you are trying to do so many things just to

pay the rent, that you will say yes to everything and not be able to go actually

this is the thing I want out this role.

It's probably not paying me that much, but it's giving me a certain

skillset or a certain network of people I've got access to.

So I think helping people to understand that there's a point at which you

can say no is really important.

And that whilst precarity is to be expected, you can ask for more in certain

spaces and if you know you're going into a precarious situation, that's great.

That's the level of energy that you can give to it that is appropriate

to the level of precarity.

If they want you for that firm amount of time or for longer, then they should

be building that in to support you.

And organisations that do that well are really great at retaining people.

And probably, although I've never yet to see the research and the data will

consistently deliver those greater kind of cultural outcomes for their work.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Like you say, perhaps nobody's actually connecting the dots and counting it.

But it makes sense that people who you treat people well and they stay

Esther Lisk-Carew: There are people who are doing that data.

I read reports from Creative UK who look at the cultural

sector and cultural working.

There's a lot more work now being done to look at the cultural economy around

freelancers and zero hours contracts and formalizing some of that practice.

I think because they're cultural organisations, they don't fall

more into practice research and not necessarily having a standard model

for everyone who does the same thing because they won't work in the same

way in different organisations.

But the more and more there is actual data to firm it up now, which is

great because that's really important.

Yes.

And as you say, that just helps people to forge, even if it's a

career made up of lots of bits and pieces, but at least a sense that

there is some kind of career there.

There's some kind of structure to it.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Yeah.

Yeah.

And some people suit a portmanteau career really well.

Yeah.

Certainly those who have cultural and creative practice themselves,

a lot of them, it is great for them to be able to do part-time, maybe in

a university part-time, doing their own practice, traveling the world.

Yeah.

Esther Lisk-Carew: So yeah, you can see now that there are careers where

people really thrive doing that work.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's great that it's options.

Something for everybody.

So I do like to ask all of my guests this question, which is, if you had

a magic wand, what would you change about the world that you work in?

Esther Lisk-Carew: Oh, wow.

Okay.

I thought about this.

I have two ones.

Two is okay, i'll let you have two.

Esther Lisk-Carew: I'm a black woman working in a sector that is

historically underrepresented with people of color and particularly

black people in positions of power.

So I go to a lot of meetings and a lot of the time I will be the only person there.

I used to do a thing called the Count where I go into a meeting and literally

just physically count how many other people in the room A spoke or B didn't

just look like a one homogenised look so always I like seeing more

people who look like me and more variety, just generally in the world.

So in the sector, the more and more I see that happier and happier I

get and it does, it has changed since I entered the world of work

and it is constantly changing, but I really like seeing places with

commitments to that, that stick to it.

And then I think from a visibility of the work and research that we do, genuinely,

it feels like a comedy answer, but when the Buffy reboot comes out, I want

Giles to no longer be a librarian, but to be an academic researcher because I

believe in lots of cultural art forms like TV and movies and theatre as ways

of telling stories about the world.

Nothing makes a career look sexier and cool than having a hot person

on a hit TV show doing that job.

I believe Giles, Rupert Giles on Buffy was the first non librarian

ever to be on the big academic journal, The Librarian, right?

So having someone on TV who really shows the great side.

As what Giles did on Buffy was academic research.

They were sitting down, they were making that, and then they had a practical

application in fighting monsters.

I genuinely think if Giles on the reboot or someone doing that watcher role was

an academic researcher, it would be an amazing thing for telling people what

about the joys and the powers of research.

Let's go even further.

Let's have an assistant who is like a public engagement person.

Let's not let the researchers all the glory.

Esther Lisk-Carew: That would be amazing.

I'll do some consultation on Buffy.

That would be amazing.

Yeah.

That, I think that is the best answer I've ever had to that question.

Thank you Esther.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Thank you.

Oh, I, we're coming towards the end of our time we shall leave our

listeners with that image in their heads.

If people want to find out more about you and the work that

you do where do you hang out?

Where's a good place to find you?

Esther Lisk-Carew: So I do a lot of the public engagement

through our website ahead@mmu.ac.

uk.

And we have a Linktree that I link both public engagement events, but

also articles about the research and about our researchers and what

they're doing out in the world, whether it them being on an amazing

podcast or other kind of videos and resources and things that they produce.

They're available through the AHEAD website.

But also we have a whole range of public engagement activities for Manchester Met.

So if you go onto the Manchester Metropolitan University website

and go to the event, there's a huge range of events that we do.

I think people don't know about how much public facing work

that we do as an organisation.

So heading to the events page on the Manchester Metropolitan

University website is amazing.

Fantastic.

I'll get links to those and put them in the show notes.

And and do you yourself, do you hang out on LinkedIn or any, anybody, anywhere.

If anybody wants to talk chat, Buffy.

Esther Lisk-Carew: Yes.

Oh yes.

You can find me on, you can find me on LinkedIn.

I also have a Linktree for my kind of freelance and other activities

I do, sometimes I host film events.

Yeah, as I say, we'll get some links to those

and put 'em in the show notes.

People can find them there.

Thank you so much for coming along, telling us about the work that you do

and given me in particular a good laugh.

I hope other people have had that too, so thank you.

Esther Lisk-Carew: If we can't spread joy with our work, what are we doing?

Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent.

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Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky,

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