Just over a year ago, I stood in Tullie House Museum on the opening night of Backing the Blues exhibition, surrounded by former Carlisle United players, managers, lifelong fans, colleagues, students, and footballing families. I remember feeling a mix of excitement and nervous energy, wondering how people would react and hoping the months of hard work would feel worth it.
It did.
Backing the Blues began as a collaboration between Carlisle United Football Club, Tullie House Museum, and Cumberland Council. I came to it through a late invitation to the very first meeting, attending out of personal interest as both an artist and a club supporter of 30+ years. From that moment, I saw an opportunity for the University of Cumbria to contribute meaningfully alongside CUFC and Tullie House as an active partner, ensuring our involvement added value to what was already a strong collaboration.
From then on, we were fully committed. I led on the university’s involvement, integrating it into my teaching, research, and knowledge exchange work. We offered a space for the ‘Carlisle United Collective’, a dedicated group of volunteer football fans working alongside myself and the curatorial team, to meet, prepare, and shape each stage of the exhibition. This collaborative preparation was as much about learning from each other’s ways of working as it was about contributing skills and resources.
My aim was to ensure our involvement went beyond simply lending our name to the partnership. I wanted to connect academic practice with community heritage in a way that was creative, inclusive, and immersive. What felt new was the way the university positioned itself as an active facilitator. Students from different years and courses worked alongside me and the Collective, shaping the project together. This approach fed into module design and flexible delivery, where students collaborated with community partners on real problems in real time. It was not always safe or tidy work, but it was authentic, and it gave students the chance to learn in the same space as volunteers and curators while helping the project take shape.
One of the most powerful outcomes was Reel Memories: newly digitised 8mm Carlisle United footage, layered with ambient soundscapes and oral testimonies from players and supporters. Seeing it presented in Tullie for the first time, with viewers smiling, even tearing up, I felt a quiet pride. It was about more than football; it was about memory, belonging, and the threads that tie a community together. It also connected directly to my wider research into areas of immersive storytelling and threads of user experience in non-digital environments.
Watching our students take part throughout the course of this project was one of the real highlights. They filmed, edited, designed, and produced alongside partners, gaining professional skills in documentary production, sound design, and event delivery. More importantly, they experienced first-hand how creative work can make a genuine difference in people’s lives.
Over the past year, the shared work begun here has sparked wider innovation. Building on the foundations established with CUFC, Tullie, and the Collective, other University of Cumbria arts-based courses are now developing their own creative responses and projects. This ripple effect shows how a single well-placed collaboration can open new pathways across disciplines, inspiring both teaching and research.
I am involved in ongoing work on the development of a proposed Carlisle United museum, which I believe could become a flagship co-operative and co-authored space for heritage, learning, creativity, and potentially digital innovation in Cumbria, and remain a living project for all, including our students, researchers, and the wider community.
At the heart of all this has been the Carlisle United Collective, the wonderful fan-based group of volunteer archivists and now curators who have given so much time, care, and expertise. Their passion and knowledge have shaped every stage of the project, ensuring it is rooted in lived experience and authentic fan heritage. My own role has always been to support them, to help bring their ideas into focus, and to act as a trusted facilitator so that their work could take shape. The success of Backing the Blues lies in their dedication, but for me it has been much more. Working with the Collective has been a true privilege. Through their growing confidence and generosity, I have found friendship, warmth, and a shared sense of belonging at the heart of this project.
Looking ahead, there is the potential, subject to partner priorities, to build on this foundation in significant ways. At the centre of this, I am developing an academic paper based on Backing the Blues, exploring how heritage, creative practice, and community partnership intersect to generate impact. The paper also considers how student learning, cross-partner collaboration, and developing approaches to archiving can shape new ways of working between universities, cultural institutions, and communities, while noting that areas such as immersive media may provide valuable directions for future expansion. In practice, this could mean developments in exhibition design, co-created oral history archives, and interdisciplinary student placements, ensuring the work remains innovative, relevant, and closely connected to the community, the club’s strategic priorities, and the recognition that fans and heritage are key vehicles for carrying this forward.
In retrospect, I am proud of how a chance invitation became a meaningful, long-term collaboration. I am grateful to have worked with the Carlisle United Collective, whose dedication and work long pre-dated this HLF bid and whose commitment has been central throughout. I am also grateful to have worked alongside new colleagues from across the partner institutions, each bringing expertise and energy that strengthened the project. The university provided a home for part of the work and still does, and our students had the chance to be part of something deeply rooted in place. Most of all, I am excited, because this feels like the beginning of something much bigger for the club, the community, and my own research and teaching journey.
Want to find out more about the project?
In what is an important anniversary year for Carlisle United – 50 years since achieving promotion to the First Division for the 1974-75 season – the club has received a £95,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for a project that will see them work with Tullie, Carlisle United Community Sports Trust, University of Cumbria and Cumberland Council to celebrate and preserve the club’s legacy.
Carlisle United and University of Cumbria have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will help them work together on areas of common interest to support the community and the development of vital higher-level skills for the region.
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