K-SAA’s 2025 Arts & Public Engagement Award Interview
A conversation on Refuge from the Ravens, the award-winning public humanities project reimagining Lyrical Ballads through community collaboration.
This year, the Arts & Public Engagement Award recognizes a project rather than individual achievement, reflecting our belief that public-facing Romantic work is often collaborative, experimental, and collective.
Refuge from the Ravens is a twenty-first-century reimagining of Lyrical Ballads, remixing Wordsworth and Coleridge through poetry, film, and sound to engage directly with housing insecurity, recovery, and social inequality today. Developed through creative workshops with people affected by homelessness and marginalization, the project centers voice, dignity, and artistic making as forms of renewal.
The project reached more than twenty thousand visitors across the UK, including at the Houses of Parliament, and many more online, demonstrating how Romantic texts can still generate empathy and public conversation. We’re delighted to honor Refuge from the Ravens with the 2025 K-SAA Arts & Public Engagement Award!
Enjoy the conversation between Lissette Lopez Szwydky, Jeff Cowton, Philip Davenport, and Julia Grime.
Lissette Szwydky
Hello, everyone. Welcome to this conversation. My name is Lissette Lopez Szwydky. I’m Associate Professor of English at the University of Arkansas and a member of the board of the Keats–Shelley Association of America.
Today I’m delighted to speak with Jeff Cowton, Philip Davenport, and Julia Grime, recipients of the 2025 Keats–Shelley Association of America Arts and Public Engagement Award. We’ll be discussing the project for which they received the award—Refuge from the Ravens—along with the process of working with the public and what it means to engage in publicly oriented scholarship.
I’ll begin with brief introductions, then we’ll move into a presentation and conversation.
Jeff Cowton worked for the Wordsworth Trust for 43 years, most recently as Principal Curator and Head of Learning. He led the major reinterpretation of Dove Cottage and the Museum and developed transformative programs of engagement with universities and community groups. In 2010, he was awarded an MBE for services to museums. Earlier this year, Jeff moved into a consultancy role with the Trust and has begun a PhD on the eighteenth-century engraving workshop of Ralph Beilby and Thomas Bewick.
Joining him are two members of Spieglefish CIC, a British arts organization based in Cumbria that works with people affected by homelessness, substance recovery, isolation, inequality, and other challenges to make art collaboratively.
Philip Davenport is a poet and curator with more than twenty years of experience leading community-based projects. He has worked extensively with homeless communities in Northwest England, creating exhibitions shown at the Houses of Parliament, the South Bank, the National Maritime Museum, and Manchester Cathedral, among others. He co-founded Spieglefish CIC and co-directs Refuge from the Ravens. His 2024 collaborative project, The Last Wolf in England, explored social injustice in contemporary Britain through sound and poetics. He is also a lead editor of Synapse International.
Julia Grime is an arts producer, photographer, and curator with a background in ballet, theatre, and cinema. She has managed major UK arts organizations and led community-focused projects for over twenty years, including helping to establish a national refugee theatre network in Germany. She co-founded Spieglefish CIC in 2021 and co-directs Refuge from the Ravens. Her work combines devising and direction with creative practice, research, and photography, with a strong emphasis on social justice. She recently completed an MA in Environment, Culture, and Society, which inspired the concept for Bellwethers, Spieglefish’s current project.
Jeff, Philip, Julia—welcome. I’ll now turn things over to you.
Jeff Cowton
Thank you for that generous introduction. On behalf of all of us, I want to say how delighted we are to receive this award. It came as a complete surprise and was a wonderful message to open. We’re deeply grateful. And although we don’t know who nominated the project, we extend our sincere thanks to them as well.
We’re speaking to you from the reading room of the Jerwood Centre, about fifty yards from Wordsworth’s home at Dove Cottage. We’re surrounded by first editions of Wordsworth and Coleridge, along with many first editions of Keats and Shelley. Recently, we added a new book to the collection: a beautiful leather-bound twenty-first-century edition of Lyrical Ballads, written by the participants in this project. It’s a remarkable addition. There’s also a paperback edition available through the Wordsworth Trust for anyone who would like to read the poems.
Refuge from the Ravens is, in many ways, a twenty-first-century reimagining of Lyrical Ballads. It engages the themes of the original collection while extending audience engagement further than we had previously attempted here in Grasmere.
The idea originated with Julia. Through Spieglefish, we support people in finding their voices and rebuilding self-esteem through creative workshops and artistic collaboration. We then present their work publicly—often in high-profile venues—so their voices are heard and valued.
Discussion
One of the extraordinary aspects of working here is the proximity to history. Seeing a manuscript fifty yards from the house in which it was written is powerful. For many years, alongside our work with community groups, we’ve also worked with student groups—many from the United States.
Increasingly, we’ve introduced conversations about vocational thinking: what is the value of the arts? English and arts departments are under pressure, and we need compelling arguments for their significance. When students visit, we discuss not only interpretation but application—what they might do after university.
We’ve offered internships and placements in museum and outreach work. A particularly meaningful example involved students from Furman University, who submitted project proposals—including budgets—for engagement initiatives. The winning proposal received funding to implement the project.
One student developed a program using Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals with hospital patients living with serious cancer. She returned weekly to read and discuss the journals. Remarkably, the program continued well beyond her placement—it lasted for years. That is learning carried forward: students interpret Romantic literature here and then reinterpret it within their own communities.
Another important lesson has been recognizing different forms of expertise. While we may have scholarly training, lived experience offers another kind of authority. In many cases, the people best positioned to interpret Lyrical Ballads are those who have lived comparable lives—particularly itinerant lives or experiences shaped by trauma. When we discuss these poems with such individuals, we begin to see them anew. It requires humility and a willingness to listen.
On Collaboration and Public Engagement
I had long understood social issues intellectually, but engaging directly with lived experience was both humbling and transformative. It deepened my understanding of shame and vulnerability. In our workshops, we tried to create small, supportive communities—spaces where people felt safe enough to speak openly. Once conversation begins, participants often realize that their struggles are shared. What can feel like personal failure is frequently systemic.
Poetry, in this context, is not ornamental. It can be transformative. One participant, Danny, began writing poetry while experiencing street homelessness. That creative practice became part of his journey toward stable housing. Another participant, who had no photographs from childhood, began composing what he called “memory photographs” in poetic form. He stopped drinking in order to pursue that project. Such experiences demonstrate the profound personal stakes of creative work.
Wordsworth wrote that the poet binds together “by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society.” In some small way, it felt as though we were entering that territory.
Collaboration requires clarity of motive and careful attention to power dynamics. It is easy to imagine oneself as “doing good,” but authentic collaboration must be a genuine meeting of minds. It is essential to know your own expertise—and its limits. When participants experienced distress, that fell outside my training; colleagues with appropriate experience stepped in. Ethical frameworks and trusted partnerships are crucial.
Above all, allow yourself to be surprised. Avoid assumptions.
Closing Reflections
When thinking about public-facing work, consider how the lived experiences and interests of participants can genuinely enter into dialogue with the material. Be audience-centered.
And resist generalizations. I recall a man who arrived wearing a blue tracksuit, a whistle around his neck, carrying a supermarket bag. He asked to read Wordsworth’s Ode—no easy poem. He read it beautifully and knew it intimately. He even asked whether our edition differed from the one he was accustomed to. In truth, he knew it better than I did. Moments like that remind us not to presume expertise resides only in institutions.
Six months after one workshop, we heard that about fourteen people in Manchester were carrying copies of the original Lyrical Ballads in their pockets. That suggests we may have done something meaningful.
Lissette Szwydky
Thank you all for such a thoughtful and inspiring conversation. I’ve learned a great deal, and I’m certain others will as well. I look forward to seeing your future collaborations.
Jeff Cowton
I’m still working with the Wordsworth Trust for part of each year, and I’d be very happy to continue the conversation with anyone interested. If we can help in any way, we would be glad to do so. And thank you again for this award—it means a great deal to us.
