New Civic Imaginaries proposes a shared civil space of ideas that “belong” to society rather than to the individual or the institution. The presentations, chaired by Becky Nunes, collected here represent the fields of research that faculty of the School of DTA at Staffordshire University are currently engaged with.
In this session:
Carola Boehm: My #Culture30Walks – How Culture 3.0 is your city?
Summary:
Even before the pandemic the UK, along with many other countries, has seen a shift in how we want to value the way we engage in cultural activities, culminating in the Arts Council England’s 10-year strategy of “Let’s Create”, firmly focussing on supporting access of communities and individuals to cultural production.
For Carola Boehm, a self-described musician-tech-academic, Luigi Sacco’s concept of Culture 3.0 is a key one, characterised by ‘everyday creativity’, co-creation, open platforms, ubiquitously available production tools and individuals constantly shifting and renegotiating their roles between producing and consuming content. This ‘doing away’ with gatekeeping systems supports access, diversity and is evidenced to simply make all our lives healthier, happier, more creative and more resilient.
In testing that notion, she took some walks and documented them in a few twitter threads. These culture30 walks aimed at making visible how places that have attended specifically to cultural policy have almost unknowingly enhanced the everyday creativity that one encounters on a simple 30 minute walk to work. One by one, a #culture30walk told her a story of how culture30 a city really was.
On February 9th, 7pm (UK time) she will explore this with thewalking artist community as part of the Walk – Listen – Cafe (https://walklistencreate.org/category/walk-listen-cafe/?post_type=walkingevent), discussing how this Culture 3.0 concept interfaces with those of the walking artist community.
The curated twitter thread from 2019 can be still seen at #Culture30walk
Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series
(led by Agata Lulkowska at Staffordshire University)
Catch up on past events in this series, a place for inspiring discussions about art/practice-based research and methods. More details of the whole series: https://www.agatalulkowska.com/seminar-series
Although Practice-as-Research has been welcomed in the academic communities, it often finds itself in positions needing to justify its effectiveness. The resistance to new methodologies is common when looking at the evolution of interdisciplinary research enquiry, and practice-as-research is often inter- or even trans-disciplinary in its nature and thus encounters the age-old divide between those methodologies supporting theoretical enquiries and those supporting practically oriented lines of enquiry. And as our knowledge domains grew, this left additional tensions in the choice or acceptance of research methodologies. My presentation will foreground this in the context of ever-growing knowledge domains that are in need of new methodological developments.
Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series
(led by Agata Lulkowska at Staffordshire University)
Catch up on past events in this series, a place for inspiring discussions about art/practice-based research and methods. More details of the whole series: https://www.agatalulkowska.com/seminar-series
This session explores the wide range of creative methods which could be applied to practice-based research. It reflects on the processes to choose the most relevant methodology, practical application of some, processes, and the implications.
Professor Ian Brown will base his presentation on a series of artworks produced as part of artists’ group Common Culture (Ian Brown, David Campbell, Mark Durden). The work uses appropriation and the ready-made to engage audiences in a critical assessment of a celebrity culture which functions by commodifying its audience’s attention, leading to questions on its cultural and social value.
OMG I love common culture !!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️ and ME, The Total Show were made in response to an American internet celebrity who capitalized on the intimate relationship he had built with his online followers by trademarking the name ‘Common Culture’ to brand, promote and sell a range of products. The Die Raum gallery was turned into a Common Culture shopfront, with logo, weblink and an accumulation of graphic stickers based on the online posts of the celebrity’s fan base. The Rampa gallery collates appropriated and translated material into an enclosed interior space for consumption. The two exhibitions involve a parodic mimicry of the internet celebrity’s commodification of his audience, himself and his products. This explores how the aesthetics, interactions and transactional intimacy built by internet personalities are ruthlessly deployed to convert followers into consumers and attention capital.
OMG I love common culture!!!!♥♥♥♥ Die Raum, Berlin, Germany. 29th Feb — 19th April 2020
Gallery Website: http://www.dieraum.net/index.php?/exhibitions/2020-0045-common-culture/
ME, The Total Show Rampa, Porto, Portugal 30th April – 29th May 2021
Gallery Website: https://www.rampa.pt/event/me-the-total-show/
Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series
(led by Agata Lulkowska at Staffordshire University)
Catch up on past events in this series, a place for inspiring discussions about art/practice-based research and methods. More details of the whole series: https://www.agatalulkowska.com/seminar-series
This session will explore the questions of the process – how do you approach creative methods in art/practice-based research? What are the priorities and how to maintain the right balance between creative freedom and academic rigour.
A Practice-as-Research exploration by Corrin Jamal and Tim Anderson.
Henrion Gallery, Staffordshire University, 22nd to 28th November 2021.
Staffordshire University’s Professor Neil Brownsword is presenting at the upcoming virtual event:
The Industrial Crafts Research Network’s two-day inaugural symposium,
Exhibiting Skill: Understanding, Documenting, and Communicating Skilled Practices of Historical Industrial Environments.
Registration for this symposium can be found here.
Poster and Programme downloadable here.
https://www.creativemediaresearch.org/call-for-papers
DEADLINES:
Please send an abstract, up to 5 keywords, and a short biographical note to Agata Lulkowska at Agata.Lulkowska@staffs.ac.uk by 14 January 2022.
Abstracts should be between 300 to 500 words. Notification of acceptance will be sent by no later than 31 January 2022. If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by 4 April 2022.
For more detailed guidance please see our Author Guidelines page.
The articles must not exceed 7000-8000 words and can include images, clips, and links. Please, provide correct credits, permissions, and copyright information in order to be sure that the images, clips, and links are copyright free and can be published.
It is expected that the issue will be published in July 2022 TBC.
Despite having been around for over three decades, practice-based research continues to be a source of controversy and confusion. Questions persist about how to design the most relevant methodology, how to demonstrate ‘originality’, ‘significance’ and ‘rigour’ (as defined in the REF criteria), and how to disseminate the outputs. Positioned in between creative arts and traditional research, Art/Practice-based research often lacks clearly defined target audiences. Moreover, with the emergence of practice-based masters and doctoral programmes across (mostly UK and Australian) HE institutions, questions about how to design the most effective training and support still remain largely unanswered.
With this in mind, this special issue seeks to re-contextualise practice-based research in creative arts and humanities by returning to the basic questions addressing the trajectory of a typical practice-based research. Topics within the scope of this issue include but are not limited to:
What is practice-based research in creative arts?
How to tame your inner artist: what distinguishes Art/practice-based research from purely artistic practice?
How to navigate Interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary quagmires?
How to design an effective methodology?
How to balance theory, practice and reflective evaluation?
How to disseminate practice-based research?
How to evidence impact?
What are the ingredients of a successful training and support system for practice-based researchers?
The seminar series, led by Agata Lulkowska, also has its own webpages at https://www.agatalulkowska.com/seminar-series
This seminar series aims at establishing a dynamic hub, where inspiring discussions, reading groups and presentations concerned with art/practice-based research, based in creative methods could flourish.
Additionally, this series is paired up with a Special Issue for the International Journal of Creative Media Research focusing on the debate around the current stage of Practice-based Research. For more details about the CFP please check the link.
Please email Agata.Lulkowska@staffs.ac.uk to book your place.
Session 1: What is practice-based research? – link to the recording
27th October | 15:30-17:00
This session will introduce the series, the formula, guests, and topics. It also initiates the discussion on the practicalities and nature of practice-based research. The session will attempt to answer the question of the scopes for practice-based research, what makes it different from regular research and purely creative practice. It will look at definitions, exceptions, expectations and a variety of potential outputs.
Speaker: Dr Agata Lulkowska
Core reading: Linda Candy, Practice-Based Research: A Guide, 2006, Creativity & Cognition
Studios, University of Sydney.
Case study: The act of killing (+ REF case study)
Click here to join the meeting via MS Teams.
Session 2: Creative Process meets academic rigour
24th November | 15:30- 17:00
This session will explore the questions of the process – how do you approach creative methods in art/practice-based research? What are the priorities and how to maintain the right balance between creative freedom and academic rigour.
Guest speaker: Assoc. Prof Michael Branthwaite
Click here to join the meeting via MS Teams.
Session 3: Creative methods
15th December | 15:30-17:00
This session explores the wide range of creative methods which could be applied to practice- based research. It reflects on the processes to choose the most relevant methodology, practical application of some, processes, and the implications.
Guest speaker: Nicole Brown, UCL
Nicole Brown (2019): Identity boxes: using materials and metaphors to elicit experiences, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2019.1590894 Abhigyan Singh (2011) Visual artefacts as boundary objects in participatory
research paradigm, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 10:1, 35-50, DOI: 10.1386/jvap.10.1.35_1
Drawing on her understanding of and experience with Practice As Research as doing-thinking- being, Dr Nicole Brown presents on using objects and artefacts as creative methods for data collection and analysis. The presentation begins with an outline of methodological, practical and ethical reasons for the employment of object work and metaphorical representations before considering the research questions and foci best suited for these approaches. Nicole concludes with a consideration of the researcher’s role and responsibilities when engaging with participants, stakeholders and the wider scholarly community in Practice As Research.
Click here to join the meeting via MS Teams.
Session 4: Transdisciplinary/post disciplinary
19th January | 15:30-17:00
Methodological quagmires in the post-disciplinary era.
Guest speaker: Prof. Carola Boehm
Click here to join the meeting via MS Teams.
Session 5: Who is it for and how can we communicate it?
23rd February | 15:30-17:00
With the traditional publications still defining many academic careers, it becomes a challenging task for researchers working with practice-based methods. Luckily, the emergence of alternative platforms for dissemination makes this task more attainable and relevant to various non- conventional outputs. This session explores the possibilities and challenges of practice-based focused online journals and other platforms focusing on alternative forms of research based in creative methods.
Guest Speaker: Dr Charlie Tweed
Click here to join the meeting via MS Teams.
Session 6: Research Assessment and Impact
30th March | 15:30-17:00
This session will look at research assessment in different contexts including the REF, research councils and academic awards. It will consider the particular challenges and opportunities for practice research within these contexts and how impactful practice research can be.
Guest speaker: Prof. Joanna Callaghan
Click here to join the meeting via MS Teams.
Session 7: Moving image as research practice
27th April | 15:30-17:00 pm
This session looks into more details on film as a method for practice-based research.
Guest speakers: Paul Ottey and Assoc. Prof. Fiona Graham
Click here to join the meeting via MS Teams.
Session 8: Reflective Practice
25th May | 15:30-17:00
Guest Speaker: TBC
Click here to join the meeting via MS Teams.
Session 9: How do you prepare future practice-based researchers?
15th June | 15:30-17:00 pm
This session summarises all the series up to date, and reflects on the best way to train future practice-based researchers. It reflects on the qualities and skills needed for a successful researcher working with practical, creative methods and it hints at the possibility to develop a toolkit.
Speaker: Agata Lulkowska
