Keele Management School Publications KMS News | Issue 3 | Page 4

03

Keele Management School News l Summer2015

Launching

‘The Community Animation and
Social Innovation Centre’ (CASIC)
In our last issue, Mihaela Kelemen,
KMS Professor in Management Studies,
introduced a new and unique research
methodology called Cultural Animation
and announced the development of a
new research centre, The Community
Animation and Social Innovation
Centre (CASIC).
The CASIC launch event on 16th March
attracted participants from both
academia and the local community
who all gained first-hand experience
of cultural animation methodologies
of knowledge co-production and
community engagement. Some groups
wrote and performed cinquains
(a poem similar to a haiku) on the

theme of community and research,
whilst other groups created an
installation using ordinary everyday
objects to explore ways “to improve the
social conditions of individuals and their
communities through the application of
knowledge that is co-created.”
Participants were also encouraged
to contribute haikus expressing their
own personal aspirations regarding
CASIC to the ‘Tree of Life’ and others
were invited to take part in the ‘Button
Exercise’. The ‘Button Exercise’ used
buttons to represent the University
and its community. The buttons had
to be sorted as finely as possible,
categorised and labelled in order

to create a map of the relationships
that currently exist and then to be
redrawn into an ideal version of the
relationships and a CASIC charter.
T