Leeds Arts University Repository (CREST)
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Speculating with care: learning from an experimental educational program in the West Bank
No full textIn 2012, I was involved in the experimental study program, Campus in Camps, which is located in the West Bank and which brought together 15 third-generation refugees to study the contemporary condition of Palestinian refugee camps and to speculate about their potential futures. In this article, I draw on my experience at Campus in Camps in order to reflect on how design and speculation can be activated by designers and non-designers to speculate with care about the matters of their own lives. To explore the potential held by the design speculations
produced at Campus in Camps, I draw on the work of feminist philosopher Marìa Puig de la Bellacasa around “matters of care”. To think about the aspects of care and speculation activated throughout the different phases of the educational program, I mobilise Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphor that compares speculation to the flight of an airplane
Home (dis)comforts
No full textThe output is a solo exhibition called Home dis(Comforts), comprising a series of sculptures made from domestic objects. Research process: In the exhibition, overlooked and undervalued domestic objects have been transformed as sculpture, activated through careful manipulation of the materiality of femininity to disrupt purpose and intention. Research insights: In Home (dis)Comforts found domestic objects perform uncanny narratives of feminist discontent. Items of furniture alongside other feminized domestic objects perform a kind of unhomeliness that can be seen to trouble Freud’s reading of the uncanny as the return of the repressed, a contemporary feminism haunted by the unresolved past. Together these sculptural objects form an installation that addresses current concerns around the precarious concept of home, and of the persistent yet problematic alignment of femininity to domesticity. Home (dis)Comforts poses an alternate understanding of home as a place where women can create a site of resistance as well as comfort. Dissemination: The exhibition was shown at Dye House Gallery, Bradford, 16 April – 4 May 2018
On show
No full textThere is a long history of debates and conflicting opinions in relation to the display of the female body. For example, many world religions require female worshippers to show modesty by covering their hair and body. In the late twentieth century academics in fields such as gender and media studies responded to the campaigns of second wave feminism, developing and debating ideas about the power relationships at play in looking, being seen and the representation of the female body. Contemporary discussions on this topic also consider female visibility through nudity to be a form of empowerment, and way of taking back control over the female body and its representations. However, this idea continues to be fiercely debated. In 1975, Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, a feminist interpretation of the representation of actresses and actors in Hollywood cinema, was published and continues to be taught widely in art schools. It raises issues of gendered looking and coined the phrase the ‘male gaze’. This influential text seems to be experiencing a resurgence of interest amongst a younger generation of female artists, partly because the ideas resonate with recent changes in technology. Thanks to smart phones with cameras and social networking sites we can self-author our images in selfies, leading to questions about what is being posed, performed, or presented, and for whom? This curator’s choice selection brings together artworks that consider different aspects of looking and self-display. The artworks play with the power relations between the looker and the looked at, disrupting the idea of the passive female object and active male subject. The participating artists are: Naomi Blakeborough, Dr Alison J. Carr, Megan McLatchie, Odjanna Dracock, Sarah Eyre and Dr Dawn Woolley. Curated by Joanna Craddock and Dr Dawn Woolley
Intern
No full textIntern is a digital artefact that supports the next generation of creatives, who may be faced with the prospect of unpaid internships as an access route to industry. It aims to help build aspirational careers. Research Process: As Editor-in-chief and Creative Director of Intern, Dudson uses practice-based research through on-going consultation and conversations with a growing network of creative and academic professionals. The dissemination of his research also functions as a means of trialing ideas. Dudson uses the website readership, newsletter subscribers and social media audience (38k) to steer the focus of his research, exploring current issues that impact on creative careers. Research Insights: As digital media becomes an increasingly influential tool for brands and businesses globally, the creative industry is having to shift and reassess its offering in order to take advantage of new opportunities, satisfy demand and deliver an evolving range of services. This, inevitably has an impact on the skills that the creative industry demands of its new entrants, who are often expected to be proficient across design, animation, video and copywriting even at entry-level unpaid positions. Technology is contributing to the shift towards freelance work, with current projections estimating that by 2027, over 50% of the US workforce will be self-employed (Freelancing in America, 2017). Through the editorial work, it has been discovered that freelancers are experiencing a changing context with regard to workplaces, wages, mental health, personal branding strategy and legal considerations. Dissemination: The research insights from this project have been disseminated at: • Out There, Goldsmiths University, March 2018. • Roger Hatchuel Academy Programme, Cannes Lions, June 2018.• Internet Age Media Conference, Barcelona, March 2019
• Falmouth University, April 2019
The rustle of taffeta: the value of hapticity in research and reconstruction of an eighteenth-century sack-back dress
No full textAs a collector of historical fabrics, which I use to inspire my own textile designs, I am seduced both by the material, the look, the touch, and the hidden narrative and histories of these fabrics. The physical experience of making and re-making conjures these indelible histories from the fabric confines. Fragments of old cloth connect us to the past, while the haptic, corporeal exploration enables us to discover not only how things were made, but to appreciate their lived embodied histories. This chapter is material-focused research that communicates the “secrets” of cloth, which reveal its stories by using the sensations of touch and emotion
Spectral evidence
No full textSpectral Evidence is a moving image work about colour perception and colour language. Combining research into the evolution of the eye, the physics of light, linguistics and semiotics, the work takes colour as a case study to investigate the cultural and biological limitations on our encounter with the world. Displayed across two screens, the first is arranged sequentially based on the order of the colour spectrum as identified by Isaac Newton in 1665. The second follows the sequence of acquisition of colour terminology suggested by Berlin and Kay in their publication 'Basic Colour Terms' from 1969. Produced with support from Arts Council England
Forwards always – poetry to read aloud
No full textThe output is an illustrated book of nonsense poetry called ‘Forwards always – poetry to read aloud’. It is an edited collection of poems written between 2015 – 2017. The poetry takes an irreverent and nonsensical tone, used as a vehicle for storytelling, observation, satire and critical discourse. Research Process: The book has been designed to be read aloud, between parent and child, performer and audience. Its design promotes performance, it is activated through play, with footnotes and graphic language akin to that of a school text book instructing closer scrutiny, repeated readings, meaning making and play. The book also references 1980s’ poets and paperback Penguins. Research Insights: Play is crucial, we used type, footnotes and the non-sequitur positioning of image and word to promote the performative act of reading the book. The book itself plays with the concept - to read it is to decode it, to unlock it, to perform it and to imagine it. The book is prefaced with a citation from Stephen Natchmanovitch’s critical text, Free Play, Improvisation in Life and Art, 1990. Penguin Putnam, New York. Natchmanovitch suggests that Galumphing (childlike play) is a vital form of meaning making and is of huge evolutionary value. This idea is central to Hodson’s practice-based research and acted as the starting point for much of the books content, both visual and written. Dissemination: The book was disseminated through a reading at an exhibition, 'Forwards Always – Seasonal Observations Through Image and Word', at the Vernon Street Gallery, Leeds Arts University between 15 September and 27 October 2017. It was also shortlisted in the Book category at the Association of Illustrators World Illustration Awards 2018
All I want to do is make things: class, men and art and design higher education.
No full textWorking class men are under-represented in art and design higher education. This article explores the experiences of one such mature student who had fulfilled his dream to go to an art college later in life in order to study a degree in Interdisciplinary Art and Design. Using an approach based on narrative inquiry, the student’s learning journey over three years was captured through six verbal and transcribed accounts. Bernstein’s work on visible and invisible pedagogies as well as his comments on vocational education provided a lens through which to look at the student’s experiences. It argues that the strong framing and classification of his previous vocational education led the student to expect to be taught in a particular way. He found the fluid and integrated arts curriculum different to the kind of training a ‘master’ would transmit to an ‘apprentice’. He constructed himself as a doer rather than a thinker, which remained constant throughout his degree. The findings suggest that educators should discuss with students from all backgrounds the pedagogic approaches commonly used in art and design and how these may be different to previous ways of learning. Academic staff should also challenge the theory and practice dichotomy, so that students understand they are drawing on theory not only when they are writing but also when they are making. Finally, even though invisible pedagogies dominate art and design education, staff should reflect on the need for more visible, explicit modes of teaching when students are less confident in their abilities
A story within a story within a story within a story: British art school experience retrieved through archive, anecdote and life writing
No full text‘Personal interpretations of past time’ are what the historian Carolyn Steedman calls ‘the stories that people tell themselves in order to explain how they got to the place they currently inhabit' (1986). She has proved in her history texts that they ‘are often in deep and ambiguous conflict with the official interpretative devices of a culture’. This text offers an account fashioned from my own lived experience using anecdotes retrieved from archival materials, including my own mental archive, physical evidence located in the Special Collections at Goldsmiths Library, the sculpture archives at the Henry Moore Institute and the printed pedagogical literature of the sculptor Reg Butler
Ann O'Donnell modernist jeweller
No full textThe output is a curatorial project exhibiting the work of Ann O’Donnell (1933 – 2019), a jewellery artist-maker from the North of England. The project was a collaboration between Broadhead and Norton. Both contributors were equal originators of the work, taking joint responsibility for the project design, research findings and dissemination. Research Process: Interviews were undertaken with O’Donnell in her workshop and with her archive of jewellery-related materials. Additional interviews were undertaken with O’Donnell and her pieces of jewellery. A transcript was made from this material, which was the basis for constructing a film that captured O’Donnell’s significance to the jewellery-making world. This was developed into a rationale for selecting works for a jewellery exhibition. This showed O’Donnell’s working methods, research notebooks and jewellery illustrations. Work was arranged in themes that referred to O’Donnell’s interests rather than chronologically. Research Insights: O’Donnell was found to be an artist-maker of international significance through achieving international awards, establishing a retail and gallery for ‘the new jewellery’ and showcasing international artist-makers. Her own work came from her art school background and was about the materiality of gold, silver, stones, fossils and ancient artefacts. Both narrative and formalist concerns can be seen in her work. Her position as a woman artist-maker in the 1960s and 1970s often meant that she was positioned through women’s magazines within a domestic space, rather than a professional one. This exhibition revealed the breadth and depth of her creative outputs. It also drew attention to an artist-maker with an international profile who was not based in London. Dissemination: The curatorial project was exhibited at the Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University between 11 May and 27 July 2017. The show was also screened on Made in Leeds