Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar hosted by Agata Lulkowska

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.

Call for Articles for a Special Issue Journal

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Special Issue of the Journal PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY IN HIGHER EDUCATION (Peter Lang)

on:

Coloniality and Whiteness in the Academy: Towards Decolonial Futures

Guest Editors:

  • Thushari Welikala, St George’s, University of London, UK
  • Carola Boehm, Staffordshire University, UK

This special issue aims to contribute to the knowledge and understanding about the complexities, paradoxes, tensions, and possibilities of designing decolonial futures in higher education. Focusing on a timely and under-theorised area in higher education, it invites contributors and readers to critically engage with their own pedagogic practices and habits as well as the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that shape their thinking to explore the possibilities of disrupting whiteness and coloniality in higher education.

The universalized fictions of modernity (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018) and the strategic disregard for co- existing frames of knowing that do not capture western rationality (Bhabha, 1994) enable the western university to maintain and perpetuate colonial power structures, body-politics and geo-politics of knowledge-making, continuously reframing systemic knowledge hegemonies (Quijano, 2000). This can further reproduce designs for recolonising people, their Being and Becoming (Welikala, 2021), while suppressing and eradicating the knowledges of the ‘other’ (Bhambra et al., 2018).

The recent surge in decolonising curriculum, pedagogy and research in higher education is reinforced by social movements and student activism. Focusing mainly on formal curriculum, pedagogy and research leaves the structural and systemic coloniality aside, encouraging the practice of embedding decolonisation predominantly within equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policies and practices.

Subsequently, the notion of decolonisation is often conceptualised as a neutral, apolitical signifier/metaphor that can be used for a wide range of agendas that center around social justice, within the neoliberal university (Tuck and Yang, 2012).

As co-editors we argue that homogenising a wide range of experiences of oppression under the term ‘decolonisation’ can mask decolonisation as philanthropic enterprise initiated by the ‘powerful’ global centres to offer voice to the ‘powerless’, marginalised non-white groups (Cesaire, 2000). This ‘refined’ and comfortable approach to decolonising higher education focuses on limited areas of activity: diversifying the established knowledge/disciplinary cannons by introducing non-white authors; demonstrating interest in the acceptance of ‘alternative’ epistemologies while focusing on existing epistemic hegemonies; and increasing minority representation in operationalising EDI work that is led by the majority (white) groups. Rather than effectively addressing coloniality, such activities intensify the centrality of existing knowledge cannons while re-confirming the self-endorsed power of whiteness and the colonial imaginary within the academy (Maldonado-Torres, 2007).

The proliferating scholarship on decolonising education in the North, has seldom considered the pioneering, politically-informed decolonial turn initiated by the scholars in the global South and its theoretical underpinnings. The more radical decolonial approaches pioneered by the scholars in the global South, some decades ago, were focused on challenging the implications of modernity/coloniality and dismantling the colonial power hierarchies by transforming epistemic values and improving democracy in education (Mignolo, 2011). The absence of theoretical rigour and the lack of knowledge of the historicity of colonisation and coloniality has led toward a predominantly tokenistic approach to decoloniality in the academy in the global North.

Within this context, this special issue will address the following lines of inquiry:

  1. What are the underlying political-historical and socio-cultural triggers that inform the dominant discourses and practices of current projects on decolonising higher education? To what extent do these discourses and practices address (or not) coloniality within the academy? How might ‘whiteness’ as a social-institutional imaginary inform the maintenance and promotion of coloniality?
  2. How do the theoretical underpinnings and conceptual frameworks that inform decolonizing the academy across geo-political contexts reflect and intersect (or not) with the theoretical frameworks pioneered by scholars in the global South? How can decolonial projects be distinguished from projects on internationalisation, inclusive education, diversity, and equality?
  3. What are the systemic/structural as well as context-specific barriers that can affect the initiation and operationalisation of decoloniality within the academy? How can such barriers be effectively addressed? What are the implications of effective decolonial approaches in terms of their values, structures, teaching, learning, and researching?

The idea for this special issue emerged during a series of Club Meet conversations within the Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education Society in October 2021. We seek contributions from those who engaged in those conversations and submissions from distinguished scholars and early career researchers who have a background in decolonising the academy. Contributions are encouraged to draw from inter-disciplinary and international perspectives on coloniality and decolonising. This inter- disciplinarity and the pluriculturality will stimulate rich and critical conversations on policy and practice aimed at decolonising the academy across geopolitical contexts.

Format for the Abstract Submission

  • Include a cover page with authors’ names, affiliations, email addresses.
  • An abstract of 500-1,000 words that includes the theoretical framework and/or methods and methodology (if appropriate), states the argument, and identifies the significance of the issue.
  • For proposal purposes it is not necessary but do note that final manuscripts must follow The Chicago Manual of Style, with no in-text parenthetical citations.

Format for the Final Submission of the Manuscripts 

  • Manuscripts should have a minimum of 6000 and maximum of 8000 words.
  • Each manuscript will need to include a 250-word abstract and 4 – 6 keywords.
  • Final manuscripts must follow The Chicago Manual of Style, with no in-text parenthetical citations.
  • PTHE defers to author preference in decisions about the naming and capitalization of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.
  • PTHE defers to author preference as to the variety of English to be used, except where, in the opinion of the editors, understanding is compromised.
  • Each manuscript should have a cover page with author’s names and affiliations as they will appear in the journal. They should also include an email for sending the DocuSign form for the Author’s Publication Agreement.

Submit proposals directly to the Guest Editor: twelikal@sgul.ac.uk . Please reference “coloniality special issue” in the subject line of your email. Completed manuscripts (see timeline below) will be submitted through the journal’s submission platform for review purposes.

Timeline

Call for Proposals
March 14, 2022

Proposals due
May 30, 2022

Decision from Guest Editor to pursue manuscript
June 30, 2022

Complete Manuscripts due for submission
November 1, 2022

Reviews returned and final editorial decision
February 1, 2023

Revised manuscripts due
May 1, 2023

Publication
November 2023

Catch-Up: Carola Boehm at the ISUC Plaza Series 3 (International Women’s Day Edition)

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Live Streamed from our APU partners in Malaysia, the International Women’s Day Edition of the ISUC Plaza Series presented three keynotes by women leaders, including C3 Centre’s Carola Boeh,.

Carola Boehm’s keynote, as part of the three keynotes presented, was titled:

Culture 3.0 saves the world: Sustainability & Diversity in an era of Co-creation

Abstract:
Even before the pandemic, along with many other countries, the UK was beginning to see a shift in how we valued our engagement in cultural activities, culminating in the 2021 Arts Council England’s 10-year strategy of “Let’s Create” (ACE, 2021). For communities and individuals, it firmly focussed resources to support active participation in arts and culture. This represented a move of investment towards civil society engaging actively in cultural production, rather than merely being passive cultural consumers. In Luigi Sacco’s words, this is a cultural struggle between what he calls Culture 1.0 versus Culture 3.0.

In Sacco’s conceptualisation, Culture 1.0 is characterised by patronage,  limited audiences,  gate keepers, value absorption and limited structural markets (Sacco, 2013). Thus, Culture 1.0 is seen to be highly elitist and exclusionary,  it has resulted in arts audiences and leadership of our European top cultural institutions to  be predominantly white and upper middle class (ACE, 2019). And this is a problem, according to Sacco. With Europe being ‘hung up on Culture 1.0’, it is holding Europe back in its innovation and productivity potential  (Sacco, 2011). The UK and the US has taken a slightly different path since the late 90s, influenced by its focus on the creative industries, with its emphasis on IP and copyright (BEIS, 2018; Flew, 2011; Cunningham, 2014). This is Culture 2.0, and I have written about how the UK and US are in turn hung up on Culture 2.0, supporting extractive and exploitative models that have inherent gatekeeping functions. This is in turn holding both the UK and the US back to allow its creative and cultural activities to benefit its societies in equitable, fair and diversity-supporting manner (Boehm, 2017, 2016).  However, Culture 3.0 is fast becoming the dominant type of cultural engagement to make arts and culture more inclusive and more impactful. It is 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 gatekeepers supports access, diversity and is evidenced to simply make all our lives healthier, happier, more creative and more resilient.

Whereas having predominantly Culture 1.0 types of cultural engagement will result in elitism and exclusivity. Culture 2.0 creates a highly neo-liberal, worker-exploitative model. But Culture 3.0 has the promise of providing the balance and Sacco suggests the new power centres of this type of cultural engagement are emerging in Asia, and is characterised by mass production, unlimited reproducibility, large audiences, and significant turnover and profits. So in this presentation, using the lenses of Culture 1.0 to 3.0,  I will explore solutions for  shaping our creative sectors and industries in our creative cities towards becoming more sustainable, more fair and more diverse. (Boehm, 2022)

References

  • ACE (2019). Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case. A data report. ACE 2018 – 2019. [Online]. Manchester.
  • ACE (2021). Let’s Create: Our strategy 2020-2030 | Arts Council England. [Online]. Manchester, UK..
  • BEIS (2018). UK Creative Industries Sector Deal.
  • Boehm, C. (2016). Academia in Culture 3.0: a Crime story of Death and Rebirth (but also of Curation, Innovation and Sector Mash-ups). REPERTÓRIO: Teatro & Dança. 19 (27). p.pp. 37–48.
  • Boehm, C. (2022). Arts and Academia. Emerald Publishing. To be published in 2022.
  • Boehm, C. (2017). The end of a Golden Era of British Music? Exploration of educational gaps in the current UK creative industry strategy. In: R. Hepworth-Sawyer, J. Hodgson, J. Paterson, & R. Toulson (eds.). Innovation In Music: performance, production, technology and business. Taylor & Francis/Routledge.
  • Cunningham, S. (2014). ‘Hidden Innovation: Industry, Policy and the Creative Sector.’ Lanham MD: Lexington Books.
  • Flew, T. (2011). The Creative Industries: Culture and Policy. 1st edition. SAGE Publications Ltd.
  • Sacco, P.L. (2011). Web Page. Culture 3.0: A new perspective for the EU 2014 -2020 structural funding programming.
  • Sacco, P.L. (2013). Culture 3.0: The impact of culture on social and economic development, & how to measure it. Prepared for Scientific support for growth and jobs:  Cultural and creative industries  Conference. p.p. 21.

Catch-Up: New Civic Imaginaries (#2) Andrew Stubbs and Becky Nunes

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In this session, we consider existing strategies for cultural production that masquerade as avantgarde, while potentially in fact perpetuating an ideological status-quo. The role of the auteur is implicated in these strategies and examined in both presentations. The question is asked: what sort of art is really  needed for our future societies?

In this session:
Wednesday 2 March 2022, Room T101

  • Dr. Andrew Stubbs: Talent Managers and their Indie-Auteur Clients: Understanding the Conematization of Television
  • Becky Nunes: 15 Minutes of Fame. Andy Warhol, Facebooks and the Work of Luke Willlis Thomspn

 

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…

Catch-Up: Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series #5 – Who is it for and how can we communicate it?

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Guest Speaker: Dr Charlie Tweed
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.

DICO International Digital Storytelling Online Workshop

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This is an opportunity for UG and PG learners of Staffordshire University’s Performing, Media, Digital Arts, Games, Visual Arts, Fine Arts and Design programmes and the Create Place leadership programme to take part in an

International Digital Storytelling Online Workshop (2 ECTS credits)

about

Sustainability in Arts and Culture

Sign in for the workshop at (EVENTBRITE LINK, or contact Carola.Boehm@staffs.ac.uk)

This workshop gives participants an opportunity to reflect on (environmental, cultural, economic, and social) sustainability and share your ideas with other arts and culture students from five universities: MOME (Hungary), Stafforshire University (UK), Technical University of Dublin (Irland), Turku University of Applied Sciences (Finland) and University of Macerata (Italy).

In the workshop, we will use creative methods such as Photo Diary, creative writing and Digital Storytelling. Each student creates their own digital story on sustainability, approaching the theme from a personal perspective: what does sustainability mean in/for my studies, creative/artistic practice, and my identity and career as an arts/culture professional.  A web-based video editor WeVideo will be used for editing the digital stories.

You do not need any advanced skills in photography, or prior experience in Digital Storytelling or videoediting to participate in the workshop. You will, however, need:

  • A camera phone or a digital camera
  • A laptop or desktop computer (a touch screen tablet is not sufficient)
  • Google Chrome as a browser
  • An external mouse for your computer
  • A headset (headphones with a microphone)
  • Stable Internet connection
  • A silent room for audio recording

The workshop consists of a preassignment and 3 online workshop sessions (in Zoom):

  • –23.3.2022 Pre-assignment: Introducing yourself in Teams, readings on sustainability in arts and culture, and a Photo Diary assignment.
  • Thu 24.3.2022 Online session 1 at 11–17 (Finland) / 10–16 (Italy & Hungary) / 9–15 (UK & Irland)
  • Fri 1.4.2022 Online session 2 at 11–17 (Finland) / 10–16 (Italy & Hungary) / 9–15 (UK & Irland)
  • Fri 8.4.2022 Online session 3 at 11–17 (Finland) / 10–16 (Italy & Hungary) / 9–15 (UK & Irland)

 

Sign in for the workshop at (LINK, or contact Carola.Boehm@staffs.ac.uk)

Participants will receive an email ahead of the workshop, with instructions for the preassignment and for joining the Teams platform used for sharing instructions and materials of the workshop.

The workshop is part of the DICO project (DICO, Digital Career Stories – Opening new career paths for arts and culture students).  

Catch-Up: New Civic Imaginaries (#1) Maria Sanchez and Anna Francis

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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:

  • Wednesday 2 February 2022. 3.30-5.00 p.m
  • Dr. Maria Martinez Sanchez: The Fun Palace: Architecture, Theatre and Cybernetics
  • Anna Francis: Towards a 100 year Plan
DTA_SEMINAR1Download

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 

Catch-Up: Art/Practice-Based Research Seminar Series #4 – Methodological quagmires in the post-disciplinary era

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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

  • Session 4: Methodological quagmires in the post-disciplinary era
  • 19th January | 15:30-17:00
  • Guest speaker: Prof. Carola Boehm 

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.