This article introduces an experiment in collaborative historical practice. It describes how six historians visited the East Devon village of Branscombe, with the aim of creatively engaging with the present and past of the village. This was a collaborative and collective act of what we term here ‘creative dislocation’. By dislocating from our usual routines, subjects, places, methods, and styles, and adopting creative methods and constraints, we aimed to shed light on the role of creativity in the historical research process. Our experiment resulted in six pieces of writing – three of which are presented here. However, a key argument of this article is that creativity lies in process as much as in the finished product. Creative work happened at each stage of the research process, in ways that were not always immediately visible in the final written pieces. The creativity in historical research and writing does not necessarily lie in opposition to archival explorations and fact-driven narratives, but can also lie within them. Creativity informs the questions we ask, our ways of working with the archive and our approach to writing.

中文翻译：

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创造性错位：合作历史研究的实验

本文介绍了协作历史实践中的一项实验。它描述了六位历史学家如何访问东德文郡布兰斯科姆村，目的是创造性地参与该村的现在和过去。这是我们在这里所说的“创造性脱位”的合作和集体行为。通过与通常的惯例，主题，地点，方法和风格脱节，并采用创造性的方法和约束，我们旨在阐明创造性在历史研究过程中的作用。我们的实验产生了六篇作品，其中三篇在这里展示。但是，本文的一个主要论点是，创造力与成品一样重要。创新工作发生在研究过程的每个阶段，以最终书面作品中并不总是立即可见的方式。历史研究和写作中的创造力不一定与档案探索和事实驱动的叙述背道而驰，但也可以存在于其中。创造力会告知我们所提出的问题，与档案馆合作的方式以及撰写方法。