CASIC (Community Animation and Social Innovation Centre) is an internationally recognised research centre co-founded in 2014 by Keele University in collaboration with New Vic Borderlines, the outreach department of the award winning New Vic Theatre.

The centre has developed a unique and highly effective methodology of community/business engagement and knowledge co-production entitled Cultural Animation - CA. At the heart of Cultural Animation is the creation of democratic research environments where traditional knowledge hierarchies are dissolved in order to facilitate creative dialogues and teamwork between academia and the community.

CA is a participatory art-based and embodied methodology that draws on the everyday experiences of ordinary people and their creative abilities to achieve individual and collective goals. The methodology helps to build trusting relationships between participants by inviting them to work together in a series of workshop activities which start with a picture of the present and proceed with imagining a shared desirable future.