2013...

...after the new year celebrations settled...

....the year has started well with a trip to Derry for the MECCSA conference, where my colleague Neill Patton and I gave a brief overview of some of the issues and debates coming out of the two Scotland-based projects in Remaking Society. More about that another time, but here's the presentation.

Remaking Society: realising the potential of cultural activities in contexts of deprivation from Graham Jeffery

Whilst there we visited the Museum of Free Derry, which is a visceral memorial to the struggles of the last 40 years of the Bogside community. Very powerful. Hoping to go back this year for some more of the City of Culture events - the Void Gallery has a really strong programme, but there's lots of good stuff happening. 

In the meantime, here's a good article from the Hindustan Times about Reversing the Gaze, the project that our UWS doctoral student Ben Parry has initiated, working with the Acorn Foundation and sundry others in Dharavi. 

It's shaping up to be a very busy year...and hopefully a little pivotal, as the wheels fall off the scrappy carts peddled by the shameful austerity merchants in the UK government and the Scottish independence debate hots up. Much happening, at home, abroad, at work; feels quite interesting.

Also - a quick plug for The Eskdalemuir Harmonium - the first in a series of coloured vinyl albums being made by my excellent PhD student Chris Dooks, and just released by Toronto-based Komino Records. 

Practice/Research:debates and dialogues

Here's the slideshow from the presentation that Graham gave at the MashingUp:Practice+Research event at CCA Glasgow on 19th May.

Practice/Research: debates and dialogues

View more presentations from generalpraxis.

Mashing Up: Practice + Research

Afternoon symposium on 19th May at CCA Glasgow, with many UWS staff and students, plus artist Chris Dooks, TV director/producer turned academic Nic Jeune (Bath Spa University), Jackie Sands, and Graeme Harper (University of Bangor).

Summary of what we're talking about below, with full details here. 

At UWS, we pride ourselves on the vocational and practitioner-led focus of our curriculum. Many of our academic staff have spent years working as cultural producers, artists and entrepreneurs outside of the university sector, and bring their knowledge of practice in the arts and cultural industries to bear on their teaching and research. At the same time, universities strive to build meaningful relationships between their research and teaching activites and wider communities, in order to justify their position as ‘places of learning’ and to maximise the social, cultural and economic ‘impact’ of academic work.

As the learning landscape becomes more convergent, with collaborations of all kinds characterising modern higher education research and teaching, it is important to consider the implications of these forms of academic practice. In this symposium we bring together practitioner-academics, artists, and researchers to consider such questions.

Knowledge-based communities often seem to divide themselves into distinct tribes of either theory or practice. But whether explicitly articulated or tacit, theory is always informed by forms of practice, and practice is always informed by theory. Within the disciplines that make up the creative and cultural industries, practice-based research has become increasingly prominent, but the place of such work within higher education can be contested, because it communicates knowledge in ways that are not necessarily written traditionally or ‘theoretically’ but expressed otherwise, for example through the production of artefacts in visual art, design, performance, music or moving image. At the same time, higher education must develop critical awareness and theoretical and analytical capabilities, to produce more competent and skilled practitioners and researchers.

Creativity, invention and discovery depend upon challenging disciplinary boundaries, playing with orthodoxies, and making new connections. Creativity may also involve leaps into the unknown or experimental and unorthodox approaches. However, funding and policy imperatives often mean that researchers are under pressure to justify the’ impact’ of their work in economic and practical terms; and artists involved in research, particularly in higher education, are expected to account for their methods and approaches in externally verifiable ‘research’ terms. So terminological confusion abounds.

What can researchers learn from artistic methods?  Practitioners and theorists may have more common methodologies than they think; the media theorist and the journalist often utilize similar methods of inquiry.  Artists and scientists conduct controlled experiments which depend on deep expertise, specialised knowledge, highly skilled technical facility, and intuition. Can cultural and artistic research reveal common ground between theory and practice? And in this context, how does theory help to illuminate practice?

Creative Media Practice at UWS

In my day-job at the University of the West of Scotland, we've just launched our new MA Creative Media Practice, starting this September. It's is new and innovative programme focusing on the development of knowledge, understanding and creative and technical skills in the fast-moving areas of screen and broadcast, digital content creation and the wider creative industries, including audio, performance and digital arts.

Although based primarily at our Ayr Campus – which has some of Scottish higher education’s finest media, broadcasting, and recording facilities – parts of the programme may also be delivered at Glasgow’s Pacific Quay, and it's also likely that we'll be doing some projects and workshops at Glasgow's CCA, where UWS has just become a Cultural Tenant. Some of the intensive workshops, such as screenwriting and creative documentary, may also be offered as residential 2-3 day or one week events.

Aimed at graduates from a wide range of disciplines, and industry professionals seeking to enhance or diversify their skills, the programme has been designed with industry input, including consultation with Scottish Screen and Skillset. We think that the programme will appeal to experienced professionals looking to consolidate their work or even thinking about a change of direction. We're hoping to build a dynamic learning community and encourage lots of collaboration across the programme.

And we're very pleased to say that under a new initiative from the Scottish Funding Council, just announced, a number of funded places are available for part-time postgraduate diploma study of this programme (which covers the first half of the course).

There's more information here and you can contact the programme leader, Tony Grace, directly at Tony.Grace@uws.ac.uk.