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Welcome Talk at the Symposium -“Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels” at the Glasgow School of Art
No full textThe increase in knife crime across the UK is one of the most challenging issues the UK faces. Involving and connecting our communities to work together against the destructive violence of knife crime is the key aim of the SiP: KiJ exhibition and supported by this accompanying design symposium with its Glasgow focus.
As our community of makers, designers and artists, we are only too aware of our responsibility and ability to shape, inform and improve lives through education.
Welcome by Professor Stephen Bottomley
Curator talks by Profess Norman Cherry and Dauvit Alexander.
Panel discussion: Professor Ross Birrell (GSA Professor in Contemporary Art Practice & Critical Theory), the curators, Anna Gordon, Head of S&J GSA and Professor Alistair Fraser from the School of Social & Political Sciences at Glasgow University and Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.
We envisage this symposium contributing to discussions around a ‘public health’ approach supported by Scottish government policy, illustrating how design can transform policy ideas into practical applications.
The panel discussed the nationwide problem of knife crime and how artists and makers have created new bodies of work by refashioning, adapting or otherwise transforming knives surrendered to UK police, mainly through the West Midlands Police knife surrender scheme.
The symposium was a call to invite stakeholders from Glasgow, as the exhibition's local intervention, to come together in a creative arts environment to understand how creative practice can offer insights, reflections, and practical applications of government strategic aims related to criminal violence, particularly among young people.
Future planned work will be the development of a network meeting to explore future impact through a GSA Impact fund award (Feb 2025). The event was supported by Craft Scotlan
Contribution in Practice
No full textThis short essay focuses on the condition of contribution in the context of the practice research PhD. It argues that reorienting toward contribution to knowledge, rather than emphasising the new, also enables a critical shift away from the problematic terms of innovation, favouring instead an ecology of practice in research
Cultural Assets and Vernacular Materials: exploring changing landscapes and sustainable development across Borneo’s craft sector
No full textIn Borneo, cultural assets are modes of expression that articulate intangible and tangible cultural heritage, which extends to beliefs, traditions, languages, rituals, dreams and craft narratives located in Indigenous communities (McHattie and Teo 2024). Across Borneo’s craft sector, a range of complex challenges have created barriers for craft practitioners and artisans to actively participate within the creative economy. The profound effects of climate change and extractive industries are directly impacting the island landscapes, which are changing in ways do not support natural craft resources (such as rattan, bamboo, timber and bark) to grow and thrive leading to material shortages. Furthermore, large scale and low-cost manufacturing and imports are becoming increasingly pervasive, requiring craft practitioners and artisans to adapt ways of making; diversify in the use of materials; and innovate ways to promote and sell work. Against this backdrop, there is a lack of structural support and equal access to education and limited infrastructure in more distributed geographies. This paper presents empirical research from a two-year collaborative research project, which mobilised 11 community-based projects across the regions of Sabah, Sarawak and West Kalimantan to explore pressing sustainably challenges facing their respective place-based practices. This included experimenting with alternative craft-based materials, innovating approaches to documentation and archiving, and prototyping new ways to engage with younger generations. The participatory process and outcomes of these projects collectively supports an experiential and expanded understanding of craft as cultural assets, which embody ancestral wisdom and the intimate relations to vernacular materials, landscapes and mythology
Nexa
No full textNexa is a map, model and evaluation tool for the now and new economy. It has been developed from concept at The Glasgow School of Art’s Rural Lab. Nexa is a polycentric and interpolar system framework which holds and connects multiple perspectives within the inclusive, equitable and generative space at its core.
Adopting with intent the feminine vocative form of the more commonly used ‘nexus’, a masculine form of the Latin verb ‘nectare’ – to bind, the Nexa model hosts and reveals the connecting binds and threads between multiple concepts, objects, items, interests or fields.
Nexa asserts the space in between these entities above the polarised points themselves, as a dynamic and catalytic space for mutuality, reciprocity and discourse. Inspired by the Japanese cultural tradition and artistic practice of Kintsugi, this central ‘Nexa’ intersect is conceived of as a golden space, where knowledge exchange happens.
Nexa is founded on and incorporates Professor Irene McAra-McWilliam’s original concept of ‘The Oyster’, which models an infrastructural pathway between the creative, innovation and wellbeing economies. Four ‘oysters’ are overlaid to create the prototype Nexa framework.
GSA Rural Lab is live testing the Nexa model as a novel and integrative strategic approach across its core programmes of Research, Education, Innovation and Enterprise
Erodium
No full text'Erodium' is a systems model which presents an ‘upward spiral’ conceptualisation of a future economy. Its directionality is upward and outward toward growth and possibility, but at the same time it is deeply embedded in and driven from place.
Inspired by the unique corkscrew-shaped seeds of the erodium plant, which disperses and proliferates through its seeds ‘drilling’ into the soil, the prototype design and model utilises the principles of the ‘Archimedean screw’, incorporating simultaneous upward and downward directionality.
'Erodium' has widespread potential application across multiple strategic and delivery frameworks, including new economic and scaling models, dynamically connecting depths of place, cultures and time to forward vision, futures and global agendas
Group value in the Adaptive Reuse of Historic Buildings: Case Studies from Merchant City, Glasgow
Full text linkSeveral properties in the Merchant City are not qualified as listed buildings but are designated shortly after restoration. This controversial phenomenon reflects legislation issues of listed buildings on the one hand and restoration issues with built heritage on the other. An investigation incorporating the review of existing preservation policies, archival research, and detailed case studies, complemented by on-site inspections, has led to the identification of a key concept: 'Group Value.' Researchers notice the growing limitation of the listed system or preservation policies, yet few have analyzed this phenomenon in specific cases with historical context.
This paper will elaborate on the formation of the concept of ‘group value’ and provide a theoretical lens for understanding the crisis and opportunities of ‘group value’ in the adaptation of historic buildings
Festivalization and Historic Building Adaptation in the Merchant City, Glasgow
Full text linkHolding festivals to attract investment, tourism, and attention has become a typical strategy used by city authorities for marketing and rebranding the urban image in recent decades. This strategy has contributed to the development of concepts such as 'festivalization' and 'the eventful city.' Glasgow's regeneration in the 1980s is renowned for hosting significant events, serving as a notable example that inspired other cities, such as Stockholm in 1998, to adopt similar strategies. Glasgow became a benchmark for illustrating how culture and events can provide economic benefits. While existing studies primarily examine this urban strategy through economic, human behaviour, and
geopolitical lenses, comparatively little attention has been given to the impact of place-making projects, particularly in the historic city center, where the efforts in historic environmental renovation and the adaptation of built heritage are essential to the success of festivalization. An analysis of conservation planning in the Merchant City provides insights into the relationship between festivalization and the adaptation of urban-built heritage. The exploration of several place-making projects from the 1980s illustrates that the festivalization strategy is embedded in conservation-related planning. A detailed examination of the Merchant Square case further demonstrates how the adaptation process
aligns with the core objectives of the festivalization strategy, which reconceptualizes space. In other words, the intervention methods applied to
historic buildings in Merchant City both spatially and strategically underpin festivalization
Sustainable Voices 3 - Interview with Jane Karweick & Gretchen Hammell
No full textInterview with Jane Karweick & Gretchen Hammell, part of the Sustainable Voices Podcast Series
The interview considers the long-form content as a counter-proposal to the dominant form of social media.
Through the generous support of the Learning and Teaching Department at The Glasgow School of Art, a series of podcasts were recorded that consider the open interview methodology and the long form content in delivery. ‘Sustainable Voices’, developed in a framework of the Student Partnership Programme, considers how climate literacy, sustainable art practices, and environmental challenges affecting the creative industry are thought through.
Teh interview examine how long-form content encourages thinking critically, synthesising information , developing a deeper understanding and allowing the formulation of a nuanced and advanced position to take place. Very relevant in recent conversations of consumption of information and content and effect in mental health and skill acquisition, the longform is proposed as a potential antidote to delivery, one that improves retention and understanding and one that ultimately aids to develop both focus and a lifelong learning mindset and how this allows for expanded understandings to occur with regards to subject matters that is not only expansive, but also presents itself to be not only a ‘wicked problem’ (Rittel and Weber) but also a ‘complex one’ (Hawkings and James)
The notes on process
No full textThis visual essay explores Carol Rhodes’s artistic process, particularly in her 2000 work Pier (Night), through a comprehensive analysis of her handwritten notes, drawings and the visual sources she kept in her studio. Rhodes’s cursive script reveals a meticulous working process, incorporating dates, titles, musings, doubts and abbreviations that document colour combinations, records and potential revisions or reuse. These elements are further contextualized within the broader framework of Rhodes’s studio practice, emphasizing the impact of specific visual sources and her methodical approach to composition and revision. Furthermore, my visual response as a painter aligns with Rhodes’s methods, capturing the layers, lines and textures characteristic of her work through the integration of her source materials. Her disciplined approach to landscape and composition informs my painting, reinforcing a shared commitment to precision and material engagement
Opening up openings: Zooming in on improvisation in the Theater of Home
Full text linkThis article presents a qualitative analysis of the opening section of an online improvisation session. The session, which was organized by the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, included an international group of musicians. It took place during the global COVID-19 pandemic where the participants were experiencing lockdown conditions. Phenomenological reflexive analysis and video elicitation techniques were utilized to develop a number of key themes related to the multimodal improvisation strategies identified as emergent in the session. The results highlight how technical, physical, and psychological constraints of online practice can facilitate new creative insights and approaches to improvisation. Particular emphasis is placed upon how an improvisation begins and the role of distributed and collaborative creativity within the overall process. The importance of the domestic environment, what we term The Theater of Home, is central to these new ideas, as is how particular scenarios/items function as psychological and creative boundary objects. The spontaneous multimodal integration of text, visual, and audio material within the domestic and virtual environment can be seen to support a new type of creative collaboration and one that draws out features of social improvisation