Arts University Bournemouth
AUBREI - Arts University Bournemouth Research Excellence and ImpactNot a member yet
342 research outputs found
Sort by
MOOCs, learning designers and the unbundling of educator roles in higher education
No full textIn university educational technology projects, collaborations with external partners pose a range of opportunities and challenges. Educational projects are often associated with unbundling of conventional higher education roles though there is limited empirical work in this area. This is particularly the case with massive open online courses (MOOCs), where further research is needed into the production of courses and the roles of those who produce them. This study investigated the extent to which conventional roles of academics are unbundled during MOOC production partnerships between universities and an external MOOC platform provider. The findings indicate that aspects of conventional educator roles are substantially unbundled to learning designers and other seemingly peripheral actors. Unbundling is partially driven by pragmatic decisions shaping course production processes which need to accommodate the massive and open properties of MOOCs, the nature of cooperation agreements with external platform providers and the reputational risk associated with such public ventures. This study adds to empirical knowledge on the unbundling of roles in online learning projects, and the findings have relevance for those involved in decision-making, planning and development of such projects in higher education
‘That huge, haunted solitude’: 1917-1927 a spectral decade.
Get PDFThe scene that followed was the most remarkable that I have ever witnessed. At one moment there was an intense and nerve shattering struggle with death screaming through the air. Then, as if with the wave of a magic wand, all was changed; all over ‘No Man’s Land’ troops came out of the trenches, or rose from the ground where they had been lying.
In 1917 the British government took the unprecedented decision to ban the depiction of the corpses of British and Allied troops in officially sponsored war art. A decade later, in 1927, Australian painter Will Longstaff exhibited Menin Gate at Midnight which shows a host of phantom soldiers emerging from the soil of the Flanders battlegrounds and marching towards Herbert Baker’s immense memorial arch. Longstaff could have seen the work of British artist and war veteran Stanley Spencer. His vast panorama of post-battle exhumation, The Resurrection of the Soldiers, begun also in 1927, was painted as vast tracts of despoiled land in France and Belgium were being recovered, repaired, and planted with thousands of gravestones and military cemeteries. As salvage parties recovered thousands of corpses, concentrating them into designated burial places, Spencer painted his powerful image of recovery and reconciliation. This article will locate this period of ‘re-membering’ in the context of such artists as Will Dyson, Otto Dix, French film-maker Abel Gance, and more recent depictions of conflict by the photographer Jeff Wall. However, unlike the ghastly ‘undead’ depicted in Gance’s 1919 film or Wall’s ambushed platoon in Afghanistan, Spencer’s resurrected boys are pure, whole, and apparently unsullied by warfare
But they’re only imitation…? Plastic flowers that can disgust and delight
No full textIn spite of the long-lived and ongoing trade in plastic flowers, they are scarcely mentioned in books on plastics and in accounts of the history and craft of artificial flowers. This chapter considers the cultural, historical and commercial value of plastic flowers. In its consideration of the presence, popularity and provocative nature of plastic flowers, notions of taste and different attitudes towards plastics and plastic flowers, it draws on the views of designers, key manufacturers, academics and professionals associated with design, horticulture and floristry. It argues that plastic flowers have and continue to make, an important contribution to design and culture, even though they can disgust as well as delight
Finding the Line: A triangulation between walking, multimodality, and embodied poetics
Get PDFDeploying a customised embodied poetics (after Lorde 1984; Cancienne & Snowber 2003; Peary 2018) and primarily drawing upon a two-week coast-to-coast walk across the north of England undertaken during the summer of 2019, this article is structured as a walk in 5 stages (i. Setting Out; ii. View from a Hill; iii. Drifting; iv. Back-bearing; v. Returning). It explores the effectiveness of this experiential approach for the composition of poetry. Walking can be in itself a form of creativity, an act of subversion, or deep reflection — a way of going inward as much as outward. The poem written in situ can be a form of qualia-capture for the little epiphanies of secularised pilgrimage. Sister methodologies such as the psychogeographical dérive (Debord 1954) are drawn upon, but a customised approach is forged: the way of the dériviant who transgresses borders and forms. Extending this approach, a multi-modal approach is discussed, included Twitter poetry, audio recordings, and artwork. Restricted from further long-distance walks during the Covid-19 Lockdown of Spring 2020, Nan Shepherd’s ‘deep mapping’ approach (2011) is adopted, continuing the practice-led exploration within the local universe of the Wiltshire Downs. Finally, the benefits of such an embodied praxis are suggested
Tactile Stories: Interactive E-textile Wall-hangings created by blind and visually impaired makers
Get PDFWe present Tactile Stories - a collection of interactive wall-hangings that were created by participants who are visually impaired. Each art piece conveys a story or association personal to its maker, created by combining e-textile circuits and switches, sound boards and traditional crafting. The result is a tactile auditory object, consisting of different textures, colours and shapes which conveys a special story for the user to explore. We demonstrate our approach to such
an accessible form of making, how the e-textile technologies were used to enable this, and encourage audiences to engage with touch
based forms of interaction
Our Human Condition
No full textOur Human Condition was a research project that addressed the personal stories of siblings in which one or more of them has a genetic condition. The resulting suite of 29 photographs was exhibited at The OXO Gallery, London during January 2020, and by invitation at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood in February 2020.
Over a two year period of sustained engagement, Wenham-Clarke worked with seven charities to recruit families with well-known conditions such as Downs Syndrome to more rare conditions such as Albinism and ATRX. The programme of research explored how the siblings’ development influenced each other’s lives; how they saw society; and how society related to them. It sought their views on new genetic therapies and screenings that are now available or might be introduced in the future. The project included one family whose son was taking part in one of the first human genetic trials for muscular dystrophy.
Powerful and moving insights into the world of these individuals were revealed,
demonstrating a robust pride in their sense of worth and contribution to wider society. These finding were shared at The World Congress of The International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 2019.
The work was selected in the highly prestigious peer-reviewed exhibitions, such as AOP50, the 50th Anniversary of The Association of Photographers, The British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain, and The International Photography Awards. The London exhibition had 4000 visitors and hundreds of thousands of views by commuters whilst on the large scale digital screens at Waterloo Bridge and along The Thames Embankment. Genetic Society and leaders in the field of genetics have acknowledged the work's contribution to public education and awareness
Might autobiography be useful in addressing the problems of gendered assessment?
Get PDFAs UK universities undergo unprecedented internationalisation, they struggle to shape a plethora of cultural and social capitals into an educational environment that is fair and equitable for all. ‘While academia has opened its doors, it has been unwilling or unable to dismantle the norms, networks, and practices that reproduce white, rich male privilege’ states Shilliam (Shilliam, 2014, p.15). With existing concepts of social justice proving adequate, lecturers seek new interpretative models of inclusivity.
In teaching MA Fine Art, Illustration and Drawing, communities of practice are facilitated through discussion, collaboration and engagement between students of differing backgrounds, nationalities, life experiences and neurodiversity. Critical reflection and experiential learning are deeply embedded in these courses and their assessment. The documents that result, support and narrate an individual’s developmental journey, whilst contextualising the self within wider discourses and debates. Reviewing these textual and visual outputs in the context of unconscious gender bias, led me to consider the trajectory of autobiography in terms of diversity.
This article is a launchpad for further enquiry. It questions whether present-day assessments somehow mirror the patriarchal attributes of men’s autobiographies that traditionally focused on power, success and achievement within the public realm. It also examines the more personal, introspective modes of women’s day-to-day self-referential writings for more useful approaches. Perhaps the memoirs, house-keeping records, correspondence and diaries representing women’s real-life narratives have specific relevance to students reflecting and analysing their progress. Feminist artists strategically constructed autobiographies to accentuate the issues women faced. Maybe students could appropriate these methodologies to re-imagine, re-present and rewrite their learning experiences. Autobiography encompasses the subjective, embodied and relational complexities of memory, narrative, creativity, identity, experience and intentionality (Smith & Watson, 2012, p.8). Given these characteristics, the genre arguably demands more consideration in art education
Drowning Prevention by Design
Get PDFThis paper presents an overview of an exploratory case study collaboration between Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in support of an RNLI delivery programme for international community management of drowning prevention in low-resource environments. The study focuses on the development of low-volume public rescue throw-lines that can be community made and maintained, the assembly and use of which are supported by a set of RNLI-developed instruction manuals intended for universal dissemination. The study examines the clarity of the instructions in the context of the makers’ interpretation of the manuals within the local constraints of Zanzibar. Preliminary findings indicate that these universally intended instruction manuals, in their current format, are open to interpretation, producing unsafe drowning prevention rescue lines that do not meet safety-critical standards. A re-design of the manuals through creative collaboration in a local context are the outcomes of this research. Discussion is also given as to whether a universal instruction manual should be the desirable outcome
Towards a Latin American Feminist Cinema: The Case of Cine Mujer in Colombia
Get PDFThis article contextualises and characterises the history and film production of the Colombian feminist film collective Cine Mujer, and analyses how its collective and collaborative practices challenged auteurism. From 1978 to the late 1990s, Cine Mujer produced several short films, documentaries, series, and videos, and acted as a distribution company of Latin American women’s cinema. Its twenty years of activity possibly make it one of the world’s longest-lasting feminist film collectives. Yet, its history is largely unknown in Colombia and abroad. Thus, the question that motivates this article is related to how to inscribe Cine Mujer in film history without uncritically reproducing the methodologies that cast a shadow on women’s cinema. Throughout its trajectory, Cine Mujer transitioned from being an independent cinematic project interested in artistic experimentation to a media organization that produced educational videos commissioned by governmental and global institutions and often targeted at marginalised women. Based on interviews conducted with some of the Cine Mujer members, the Cine Mujer’s catalogues, and its films and videos, I organise Cine Mujer’s corpus of work in three main modes of production that disrupt the role of the auteur and the centrality of the director