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463 research outputs found
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Made to last: Product life extension through emotional durability
Full text linkWe are in an age of incontrovertible climate change, yet efforts to tackle this crisis have largely focussed on the adoption of renewable energy generation and energy efficiency. This research will instead focus on the vast amounts of embedded carbon emissions within the design of products by tackling the ever-growing problem of eWaste through circular design and emotionally durable design. Consumers are continuously replacing and scrapping electronics that is growing three times faster than any other type of waste in the EU, Greenpeace (2015). In an effort to challenge this paradigm of consumption Chapman (2005) proposed Emotionally Durable Design as a theory and design strategy to encourage people to keep products for longer. The research will be underpinned by Emotionally Durable Design and qualitative mixed methodologies to uncover the reasons why people form attachments with certain products. Forming an attachment with a product is created over time and the longer a product is owned the more likely feelings of sentimentality and nostalgia will form, Page (2014). It is this attachment that can form between a user and their product that can be meaningful enough for the user to delay or prevent product replacement. This attachment research will then inform the design and development of new sustainable products that are designed with the whole product life cycle in mind through the consideration of sustainable materials that improve with age and can work within circular business models for long term sustainability
Distance Artist: Building the Skills of Future Creatives. Developing Evidence‐Based Criteria for Global Virtual Team Tutoring and Management in Art and Design Education
No full textThis article reflects on six years of research activities in the field of long‐distance collaboration and more specifically on how creative virtual teams operate and respond to challenges set by emerging and developing technologies. Furthermore, it considers how to build, manage and shape a more inclusive virtual team, documenting the methodologies applied in each activity, the experiences of both tutors and students and the educational context in which the international study took place. The project set out with a methodology for observing, managing and developing the interaction dynamics between each creative team member involved in the design of activities and practice of delocalized teams. The project is positioned within the field of educational technology and identifies a set of operative recommendations aimed at educators so that remote creative collaborative work can result most effective. The article explores the potential of virtual teams supporting communication and design
Everyday graphic design
Full text linkThis paper explores a tension between the contemporary Graphic Designer David Carson and the 1960s artist Jacques Villeglé, an artist Carson has never heard of. We claim that Villeglé’s work celebrates the irregularities of what could be considered mundane ad hoc street performances. In contrast, Carson more or less detaches his work from that seamy reality of the banal by reducing the inherent complexity of the everyday into ideal assemblages of image-and-text. By highlighting this awkward difference between an ideal designerly intention and a grubbier everyday reality, we stimulate appetites for more realist-inspired discourses of graphic design
‘Their defining moments’: Identifying critical influences that prompted progression into post compulsory education in the arts
No full textThis chapter presents a study that focuses on prevalent inequalities of access into post compulsory education in England. It draws attention to how individuals, who may be experiencing multiple factors of disadvantage or under representation, might surmount barriers that limit their upward social mobility. While it is widely accepted that access to and successful participation in education can lead to progression into employment and improved economic and social status, it is argued that this assumption is overly simplistic. The home context of an individual, the health, welfare, financial security and the geographic location of their family home continue to be strong influencing factors in the prospects of individuals in the family. These factors play an influential role in decision making on educational pathways and whether to enter post compulsory education. The scale of the problem is highlighted by empirical surveys that highlight the challenge that Widening Participation (WP) practitioners face in targeting interventions. Evident by the under representation of particular groups of students, in terms of their gender, age, ethnicity, disability or socio economic status in post compulsory education, there exists an inequity of access in post compulsory education prevalent for many across the subject sectors. Influences, external to the education institution, that are occurring within the home and community context, have the potential to stifle attaining upward socio-mobility that can enable a secure, economically stable, life for a household. Progression into Further and Higher education, to achieve attainment through qualifications, has to surmount the pervading effect of these hurdles. The question is can education or WP achieve it alone, as an endeavour, in isolation to other support and welfare agencies, in society? In order to address the inequalities of access, WP practitioners are tasked to deliver interventions with individuals, schools, colleges and community groups, at all stages of education, to encourage progression in education. This is to enable individuals to participate beyond Level 3 National qualifications, which are seen as a solution. This is an interpretivist narrative enquiry which examines critical incidents, that respondents recall having assisted them in undertaking their journey into studying the Arts. The ‘student voices’ gathered through their personal stories provides valuable insights into their critical incidents, epiphany, influential agents, experiences, artefacts or places that informed their choices
Mature students matter: The impact of the research development fellowship in accessing art and design education
Full text linkIn the United Kingdom, number of mature students studying in higher education is diminishing. This is also the case within the subject of art and design . This article reports on a project ‘Mature Students Matter', a study that aims to widen participation in art and design education within a small specialist university. The approach was developed from a Research Development Fellowship, which provided a model for the project. A case study is used as a method of inquiry through which the project is described and evaluated using a form of narrative inquiry. The study found that the principles of Joint Practice Development (JPD) underpinning the design and development of the project enabled practitioners from different parts of the University to work together and to share similar aims, objectives and values in their research. Drawing some tentative conclusions, the project also found that the wider institutional context was important in the success of the project
The Thinking Skills Deficit. What Role does a Poetry Writing Group have in Developing Critical Thinking Skills for Adult Learners in a Further Education Art College?
No full textThis article investigates Brown’s (1998, p.2) assertion that students today exhibit an unwillingness/inability to engage in critical thinking (CT). He describes this as a ‘critical thinking deficit’. The question of whether CT can be taught or if we can only create the conditions in which CT can thrive and develop is explored through analysis of data from a pedagogical intervention of a Poetry Group; it aims to develop CT by employing Community of Inquiry (Lipman, 2003) as methodology. This intervention was offered to a group of Further Education (FE) students over a period of six months with the intention of preparing them for progression into Higher Education (HE). Findings from the study lend support to the claim that sharing stories and poems is helpful in developing social and cultural capital across the group and in supporting CT and academic development. Students in the study report that they found the Poetry Group particularly valuable in encouraging both critical engagement with their Arts subject, deeper levels of learning and supporting improvements in attainment
A feminist marvellous: Chloe Aridjis and the ‘female human animal’
Full text linkThe recent revival of interest in Leonora Carrington has prompted a number of new approaches to the legacies of her multifaceted oeuvre. A magpie for such debris herself, “Carrington” comes down to us imbued with meaning. Some of the most interesting quotations of Carrington in recent years can be found in the work of the Mexican, London-based novelist Chloe Aridjis (b.1971). Aridjis was a family friend of Carrington in Mexico City, and is known for having co-curated the landmark exhibition of Carrington’s work, Transgressing Discipline (2015), with Tate Liverpool, and for using this curatorial platform within ‘Female Human Animal’ (2018) directed by Josh Appignanesi. Her novels, ‘Book of Clouds’ (2009) and ‘Sea Monsters’ (2019), contain uncanny references to Carrington which might be said to constitute a more nuanced assessment of Carrington’s cult status. This chapter uses the ekphrastic thinking of Chloe Aridjis in order to re-explore Carrington’s feminist marvellous. It draws on unpublished interview material with Aridjis (July 2014). The chapter developed out of an invited keynote lecture for Edge Hill University (30 June 2017)
Reflections of a practitioner-researcher in the field of Widening Participation in arts education
No full textThis article provides an auto-ethnographic narrative to offer insights into my experience as a practitioner–researcher working in widening participation (WP) in post-compulsory education (PCE). It relates how I came to join the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) Practitioner Research Programme (PRP). It provides insights into the role of WP practitioner and manager and offers a reflection upon my experiences as an early practitioner–researcher conducting research in the field of WP. Writing in the first person, I reflect upon the positionality within my professional practice as someone who is immersed in the context that is being researched. I make my story as authentic as possible in order to throw new light upon knowledge in the field of widening participation (WP) practice. This immersion has enabled me to increase my professional knowledge and to establish a stronger voice in and for WP practitioners in the profession and for learners in the WP community. This empowerment has come about as my knowledge of the factors influencing the context of my work has expanded. I hope that it will be of interest to other researchers working in the field of WP and that they will accept my invitation to contribute to this conversation and reflect upon their own journey
The Yellow Steps
No full textThe output is an artefact by Ellis, which navigates with notions of visibility and change; primarily how the construct of gender is determined by what is visible.
Research Process: The work is a conceit for the way in which the trans body acts in opposition to this trope and moreover, as a site of cultural resistance. The project is a collaboration between Ellis and Mika, a trans boy, allowing him to build and actively participate in a narrative of his own construction. The title of the project is derived from Mika’s poem The Yellow Steps, which describes a piece of architecture that at once unsettled him but also offered an escape from his troubled home life growing up.
Research Insights: Architecture is used throughout to echo this sense of construction, the constant shrouding alluding to the underlying transition beneath. The work is a construct of measured realisation; beginning initially with the hidden, before a gradual advance towards revelation.
Dissemination: The output was disseminated by Conde Nast from 19 – 22 November 2020
Our Plan is to Announce
Full text linkThe output is a text-based artwork by Crouch presented in the form of a website.
Research process: Crouch has remixed content from UK government coronavirus briefings, which were broadcast daily between 23 March and 23 June 2020. Ministers’ speeches from each day were appropriated and subjected to a reorganisation procedure, with the speech ‘remixes’ being based variously on particular grammatical word, sentence or speech attribute.
Research insights: The procedures explore what happens when informational content of the briefings is rigorously and systematically turned into nonsense. At times the outcome remixes foreground government priorities or rhetoric, highlighting dominant words or phrases. In other the materiality of language is prioritised. Here a loss of clear meaning hints towards a sense of despondency and lack of control that came along with the pandemic. Linguistic communication is shown to function as more than just information dissemination. At the same time, the artwork questions the ability of language to adequately and fully represent our experience of the world.
Dissemination: The artwork is presented in the form of a website, available online through the URL provided