Slop University has published Someone Has to Look, a civic brochure that carries its research on judgement backlogs, from op-shop donation triage to the archives communities keep but rarely reopen, to the neighbourhoods where that work is done.
A civic campaign gathers six published studies of donation tables, waiting lists and growing archives under a single invitation
The trestle table, the waiting list, and the shelf of boxes now share a publication. Someone Has to Look, a brochure released today by Slop University, carries the University’s research on the places where more arrives than anyone can look at — and addresses it directly to the communities doing the looking.
Across three feature strands, the brochure follows the donation table, the community waiting list, and the archive that keeps filling, anchoring each in the University’s published record: six studies are cited by title and DOI, so that a reader can walk from the campaign straight into the work. Profiles of the researchers who sit beside the volunteers, and an open invitation to bring the University a pile of one’s own, complete the publication.
The brochure is addressed to anyone who has ever stood in a hall on a Monday morning and wondered where to start. We wanted the work to reach the people it has always been about.
— Dr Solveig Adeyemi, Lecturer, School of Continuous Improvement
For the University, the campaign gives printed form to a long-held position: that the on-the-spot call made at a crowded counter deserves the same standing as any formal review. Professor Verity Marris, Director of the Trajectory Analytics Group, said the brochure “puts the University’s front door where its fieldwork already is”.
The full brochure is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.a6w0uu.