Category Archives: Public Events

The C3 Centre at our Research Conference’23

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C3 Centre members will be presenting on various sessions at the upcoming Research, Innovation and Enterprise Conference on 24th and 24th of May 2023, this week.

It is still time to sign up for free at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/staffordshire-university-research-innovation-and-enterprise-conference-23-tickets-522644542897

Key events include a session on getting to know the C3 Centre, with a panel including:

  • Carola Boehm, Panel Chair, Co-Director
  • Music and Sound (Marc Estibeiro) (www)
  • Philosophy, Film and The Environmental Humanities (www)(Patrick O’Connor)
  • Ceramic Cultures, Practices and Debates (Neil Brownsword) (www)
  • Practice as Research (Agata Lulkowska)
  • Art and Design Research Group (Ian Brown)

And in a keynote slot, we also have members exploring the tensions between research, teaching, internationalization and regional impact.

Co-chairs:

  • Carola Boehm, C3 Co-Director & Professor of Creative Communities and Creative Industries
  • Jackie Reynolds, C3 Co-Director & Research Impact Manager

And Panel Members:

  • Michael Knowles, PhD Researcher & Film Producer
  • Giulia Lapucci, PhD Researcher & Cultural Researcher, University of Macerata
  • Jodie Gibson, Visiting Fellow & Arts & Culture Professional
  • Nick Gratton, Lead for Civic Engagement and Evaluation & Associate Professor of Community and Civic Engagement
  • Anna Francis, Associate Professor of Fine Art and Social Practice

We also have individual presentations from members, including

  • Dan Lewis: Designing Emotions: Strategies for Furniture Designers
  • Jackie Reynolds: Building Research Impact
  • Rebecca Nunes: Eco-alliances: imaging the other-than-human to create advocacy for the environment
  • Giulia Lapucci: Collaboration at the Centre: building a Constellation to share and disseminate knowledge
  • David White: The design, development and pilot study of a marine ecological simulation for education or environmental changes on marine life

Registration is free at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/staffordshire-university-research-innovation-and-enterprise-conference-23-tickets-522644542897

 

New Factory Events! In-person and Online!

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Factory is delivering a number of events coming up. Do feel free to share this info on with others you think might be interested.

FACTORY is an ERDF funded project, delivered in collaboration with the Chamber, BCB, and Staffordshire University. It supports innovation-led-practices for the SME Creative Industries in Stoke-on-Trent. Our partner organisation BCB has also a webpage dedicated to FACTORY available here

Factory Seminar – A Beginners Guide to Funding and Grant Applications  (In-person)  

  • Delivered by: Clare Wood 
  • Date: 26th October, 2022 
  • Time: 6-7.30pm 
  • Location: Room L410, Flaxman Building, Staffordshire University, College Road, ST4 2DE 
  • More info and to Book Now 

 

Factory Lunch Hour – Keeping it Simple: Admin and Organisation 

  • Delivered by: Natalie Armitage and Rhiannon Ewing-James 
  • Date: 1st November, 2022 
  • Time: 1-2pm 
  • Location: Online 
  • More info and to Book Now 

 

Artist Development Surgeries 

  • The BCB Artist Development Surgeries are an opportunity to talk about a project or idea that has a connection to Stoke-on-Trent, its people, place or industries. This opportunity is for people feel they would benefit from speaking about it with a member of the BCB Artistic Programme/Exhibitions team.  
  • Date: 7th November, 2022 
  • Time: 10am, 11am, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm. 
  • Location: Online 
  • More info and to Book Now 

 

Factory Seminar – To Pitch or Not to Pitch: Responding to Procurement Tenders and how this could be an opportunity (Online) 

 

Factory Seminar – The guide to knowing your audience 

 

Factory Lunch Hour – Knowing your worth: Pricing your work and time 

 

Factory Lunch Hour – Streamline Your Client Management 

Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series

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Following the and popular first round of the Art/Practice-based research seminar series (and a Special Issue on Recontextualising Practice-based Research which followed), the seminar series, hosted by C3 Centre Agata Lulkowska, returns with a new title and some truly exquisite guests. As always, free and open to all (all sessions run online via MS Teams), this initiative aims at widening support and understanding around practice research in a friendly and inclusive manner, with some top experts sharing their experience and advice.

  • For more info and to be added to the mailing list please contact Agata Lulkowska (Agata.Lulkowska@staffs.ac.uk)
  • The programme is available from here
  • The Youtube Channel of our past recorded seminars is here (below a taster from the first seminar)

Neil Brownsword, Prof of Ceramics, in Conversation at the London Craft Week 2022

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As part of the London Craft Week 2022, the Korea Association of Art and Design returns for London Craft Week 2022 with a panel of experts in the area of ceramics, glass and crafts.

The virtual event will take place 9 May 2022, at 11:00 AM . Professor Brownsword will give a talk on:

Thinking through the Past for the Future: Neil Brownsword, Artist, Researcher, Professor, Department of Ceramics, Staffordshire University, UK 

Registration is at:

https://www.londoncraftweek.com/events/conversations-in-contemporary-korean-craft/

Abstract is provided below.

https://www.londoncraftweek.com/events/conversations-in-contemporary-korean-craft/

Thinking through the Past for the Future.   

Neil Brownsword 

 Throughout history, ceramics have played an important role in the phenomenon of cultural transfer. For centuries China, Korea and Japan have influenced each other’s aesthetics, practices and technologies. Subsequent trade with the West, and the imitation and assimilation of East Asian goods and styles in the late 17th and 18th centuries greatly influenced the development of new ceramic traditions in Europe that were to gain historical prominence.  

 Since 2015 artist Neil Brownsword has explored this historic cycle of knowledge exchange, via performances staged in South Korea and the UK which have addressed the cultural hierarchies and value systems aligned to their ceramic traditions.In his work Factory (2017) staged at Icheon World Ceramic Centre, Brownsword re-choreographed the indigenous ceramic practices of two ex-factory personnel from Stoke-on-Trent and four Korean artisans to question established hierarchies of cultural production and reassign value to people and practices displaced by global economics.  

By reactivating obsolescence via non-commercialised production, Brownsword revealed a shared language of haptic intelligences developed through ethical modes of exchange between East and West.  

 Performing FACTORY in Korea enabled the actors of marginalised immaterial heritage to renegotiate their value in a context where similar embodiments of knowledge are culturally protected. Its tour to the British Ceramics Biennial 2017, furthered UK/Korea cultural exchange, strengthening Stoke-on-Trent’s regeneration ambition as a global centre for ceramics. This presentation examines the context and development of Brownsword’s collaborations and his exploration of heritage as a ‘living process’ that can be constantly reimagined for the future. 

 Neil Brownsword is an artist, researcher and educator who holds a professorial position in ceramics at Staffordshire University. Brownsword began his career in ceramics as an apprentice at the Wedgwood factory in the mid- 1980’s. His practice examines the legacy of globalisation in relation to Stoke-on-Trent’s ceramic manufacturing sector, and the impact this has had upon people, place and traditional skills. Using film and performative installation Brownsword deconstructs complex craft knowledge within industrial production to pose questions surrounding the value of inter-generational skill. His work is represented in public/private collections internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Korea Ceramic Foundation, Yingee Ceramic Museum Taiwan and Fu Le International Ceramic Art Museum China. In 2009 he was awarded the ‘One Off Award’ at the inaugural British Ceramic Biennial, and the Grand Prize at the Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, South Korea in 2015, and Whitegold International Ceramic Prize in 2019. 

New Book: Inside the Rehearsal Room by C3’s Rob Marsden

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Associate Professor and C3 Centre member Rob Marsden’s text ‘Inside the Rehearsal Room‘  is now out, published by Bloomsbury/ Methuen Drama.

Book launch at Wednesday 2nd March at 6.30 at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. RSVP to r.j.marsden@staffs.ac.uk email

Inside the Rehearsal Room is both an instructional and conceptual examination of the rehearsal process.

Drawing on professional practice and underpinned by theory, this book moves through each stage of rehearsals, considering the inter-connectivity between the actor, director, designers and the backstage team, and how the cumulative effect of the weeks in rehearsal influences the final production. The text also includes: – Auto-ethnographic and fully ethno-graphic case study approaches to different rehearsal rooms – Interviews with directors, actors, designers and actor trainers – A consideration of the ethics of the rehearsal room and material selected for production – Practical exercises on how to creatively read a text from an acting and directing perspective.

Informed by over 20 years of directing experience in the UK and Europe, Robert Marsden’s book offers a practical guide that ultimately demystifies the rehearsal process and challenges how the rehearsal room should be run in the 21st Century.

Interviews include with Rufus Norris, Kate Wasserberg, Kirstie Davis, Ivo van Hove, Roy Alexander Weise, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Steven Boden, RC-Annie, Katrina Lindsay, Paule Constable, Stephen Mear and many more…

Upcoming Event: How Culture 3.0 is your city?

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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 

Upcoming Profs in the Pav with Ian Brown

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Celebrity and the Attention Economy: how popular culture can commodify an audience’s attention

 

Event

 

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/

Upcoming Industrial Crafts Research Symposium

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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.