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These images, sound files and videos document the making and final design of five commissioned hives produced through a variety of processes, both with and without artistic or community collaboration on the final product. Over the course of the research, impact was embedded into the design by offering producers and communities the opportunity to commission and collaborate on the creation of new hives. In this way, knowledge exchange and dissemination were incorporated directly into the practice. In all five of the commissions undertaken, I extended the reach of the practical and conceptual findings by passing on the lessons learned over the project through the parameters given to commissioners and the briefs developed with collaborators.In some cases, a festival requested an artistic response to a specific site, which then became part of the evolving narrative of that place. Examples include the <i>Meta Hive</i> (2016) and the <i>Barcelona Hive</i> (2025).The <i>Meta Hive</i> was commissioned to celebrate the re-opening of the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, which had been closed between 2013 and 2015 while it was redeveloped and extended. Part of the redevelopment was intended to blur the boundaries between the gallery and the urban park in which it sits. The design and placement of the hive reflected this ambition. The installation was positioned in the park, just outside the gallery but visible from its windows, and featured the park itself and a newly created sculpture of a tree in stainless steel (<i>Ghost Tree</i>, Anya Gallaccio, 2015). In a nod to the ‘art about art’ meta-narrative, the hive also contained miniature beehives populated by a miniature audience within the park setting. The hive further featured a moving video ‘eye’ positioned opposite the viewer’s own eye, observing both the scene and the viewer.The <i>Barcelona Hive</i> was created for the Catalan city’s largest festival, La Mercè, as part of a cultural exchange between the cities of Manchester and Barcelona. The hive design reimagines a Catalan festival as a Mancunian bee’s day off, incorporating references to <i>correfoc</i> (fire-run), <i>castells</i> (human towers) and the <i>sardana</i> (Catalan folk dance), set within a composite landscape of Catalan architecture. Antoni Gaudí’s architectural practice drew inspiration from organic forms, including the structural logic of beehives (Ramírez, 2000: 36–68), providing an additional conceptual resonance for the work.The near decade between these two hives is evident in the increased sophistication of construction, with complex mechanical and electronic effects, circuit boards and power distribution systems in the <i>Barcelona Hive</i> compared to the more craft-based construction and basic iPod technology used in the <i>Meta Hive</i>. However, the key conceptual elements remain consistent. Each hive presents a miniature ‘world’ organised around a clear metaphorical framework, and each is situated within the broader conceptual structure of the apiary.In other cases, the hives were constructed in collaboration with local communities or artists, including the <i>Roman Baths Hive</i> (2019), the <i>RHS Bridgewater Hive</i> (2022) and the <i>Crawley Hive</i> (2024).To request accessible descriptions of the images or transcripts of the audio or video, please contact the Research Data Manager (rdm@edgehill.ac.uk).