By Nicola Spurling and Elizabeth Shove
Between 2014-2016 I explored how professional practices shaped everyday consumption of mobility and energy through inscribing the world with envisioned ways of living and doing. I worked with the New Towns Archive (in Hertford) and Stevenage Museum and used archive research and oral history interviews to look at the relationship between shifting house design and parking standards, and escalating everyday energy use since the 1950s.
I wrote about this work in peer reviewed publications ‘(Un)making space for the car’ and ‘Matters of time’. I also produced picture books as part of a public engagement initiative ‘If the Walls Could Talk’ which was sponsored by the ESRC festival of social science. I used the picture books at a workshop with Stevenage residents on the relationship between climate change and everyday energy consumption, and the books were circulated to local primary schools to use in classroom activities on sustainability. I also spoke about this work at University of the Third Age, ECEEE, ESA and the Energy Technologies Institute.
Nicola Spurling 