MA Week 10 - Christmas already??

It’s hard to believe that it is already the end of the first term, and with it, the hand-in deadline looming. I’ve learnt quite a bit this term. I’ve gained a deeper understanding of my practice and have related it to some current artists. I’ve understood that I’m starting out professionally, and that means taking small but definite steps. I’ve documented all this in my 2000 word critical evaluation, but here are a few more informal thoughts.

Learning points:

• I need to manage my time and energy a bit better. The project plan worked well, but my contingency got eaten up by various unwanted life events (and, truth be told, a couple of “morning afters” that lasted all day). This sometimes meant I was having to work when I really didn’t have the energy/wherewithal.
• I need to understand a bit more about how blogger works as I seem to keep getting formatting and line breaks where I haven’t put any.
• I need to read more journals and articles, not just books and websites.
• I need to do a bit more artist research – but that will come naturally, if past experience is anything to go by.
• I need to not be afraid to draw, even if what I draw is cr*p.

Highlights:

• Joining a supportive cohort of like-minded people and making new friends. Thank you, everyone!
• Getting back into the college library and finding out I can borrow 25 books at once.
• Getting my Linder article published on FCK LDN’s website.

What next?

Christmas, my birthday, then back to College to do some printing and laser cutting!

MA Week 10 - Ethics

Reflection on taught session, Friday 4^th December 2015

Ethics

 

Karen led a discussion on Research Ethics.

As we’d learnt before, one of the defining principles of research is that it disseminates information, so by definition it’s not individual. Images, objects and actions can have consequences too. Ethics is crucially important when it involves human participants. Karen gave an example of a student researching disabled dancers. Who owns the research? What gives the researcher the right to do that research?

 

We also discussed the ideas of the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov. One of my fellow students had been doing a lot of research into him. His series of partly-stripped homeless people in the former USSR came under discussion. Mikhailov evidently defended it as photographing nudity was forbidden under the Soviet Union – but basically, sex sells, and including partial nudity would ensure the plight of the homeless people was raised. If he paid the participants in cigarettes, which they wanted, was it so wrong? I think they were exploited, but I’m not a homeless person, so how can I judge… what gives me the right to judge?

A group discussion followed. One of the points raised was the desire for us all to put work “out there”, trying to build an audience, weighed against the likelihood that it would be stolen or pirated. For example, music samples and photographs. Also, it’s far too easy for people to be able to make anonymous, negative comments via social media. Another thought was that we could be promoting stereotypes (an example given was “McDonald’s eaters”) in our quest to produce interesting work.  We concluded that you can’t allow for every circumstance. You may also decide to publish some work even if it does offend.

I had been pondering ethics after writing about Stuart Whipps’s work in my week 9 blog post.  Had Whipps considered what emotions the Mini carcass might provoke if seen by workers who’d had their lives turned upside down when the Longbridge motor works closed? If so – what did he think and do about it? Anything? I don’t know, and probably never will. However, this was brought a lot closer to home for me earlier in the day. A fellow student told me they had been upset by an image I had used as it unexpectedly reminded them of a very distressing situation.  Generally I have used my own image in any image manipulation I’ve done, in order to avoid ethical issues. And yet I hadn’t avoided them! We talked about the situation and it was clear there was no way I could have anticipated my classmate’s reaction. But this image wasn’t set out to upset. It may have been intended to shock – there is a difference. When I did my depiction of my breast cancer experience, I didn’t care if it shocked. I just wanted to describe the reality of having this disease in a way that is masked by all the pink fluffy sisterhood approach. Although it might have shocked some people and struck a real chord with others, I’d never set out to upset (to clarify, my classmate’s experience was not to do with breast cancer). So in future I need to think about this; if I might upset one or a few persons, should I hold back on expressing myself? I think probably not, although in that case I have to be prepared for negative comment or criticism. As we said in the group discussion, you can’t allow for every circumstance. But a good learning point for me, and I thank my fellow student for being open enough to approach me about it and talk it through with me.

MA Week 9 - Artist Research : Simon Fujiwara

Simon Fujiwara, "Aspire", installed at University of Leeds, 2015

I first came across Simon Fujiwara when his public artwork, “Aspire” was unveiled at the University of Leeds in June 2015. The work resembles a brick chimney and is Fujiwara’s view of the history of the city of Leeds, and in particular the University. It is made of cast jesmonite with a galvanised steel core. At the base coal is incorporated indicating the industries upon which the city was built. The colours then become lighter as the chimney rises, to a pale verdigris which depicts Leeds’s current economy which is “almost complete immaterial industry – entertainment, services, education”. In Leeds, a new, post-globalised urbanism flourishes. Or so thinks the artist (Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, 2015).

I like this piece. I like the textured surface, and the way the colours pale and rise and reflect the massive plate glass windows of the new library, in front of which it sits. I am less convinced about Fujiwara’s take on my home city’s history. Of course, he is duty bound to produce an uplifting, optimistic piece of work as a commission for a University. The name is not only intended to reflect that, it’s a pun on the two nearby church spires (neither of which, incidentally, now serves a church). My own lived experience of de-industrialisation, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, is quite different. However, I could relate to Fujiwara’s depiction of bricks, having started out on my own brick investigations. Taking both at face value, my work and Fujiwara’s work are connected by what one physically views when one looks at them.

But Fujiwara likes to play with memory. In 2012, Tate St. Ives staged Fujiwara’s first major UK show, “Since 1982” (Grant, 2012). In this exhibition, he drew upon and embellished his own lived experience. One example is “Welcome to the Hotel Munber”. His parents had lived in Spain before his birth, running the aforementioned hotel. Fujiwara presented a performance piece with the assertion that his early life in the hotel had strongly influenced his art, whilst at the same time noting that this could not have happened as he was born after his parents left Spain. Fujiwara notes he invented “a whole new narrative in an attempt to lend significance to the work” (Martin, 2011, p91).

In his 2012 piece, “Saint Simon” in the Tate exhibition, he investigated the Mexican saint San Simón, also known as Maximón, who is popular in Guatemala. The saint is venerated during Holy Week when his effigy is paraded in the street, usually with a mask for a face. In Fujiwara’s work, he intended to project himself psychologically into his saintly namesake, replacing the mask with an image of his own face (Tate, n.d., n.p). Here we see a manipulation of memory conflated with his own identity.

This idea of reworking memories is of growing interest to me and I mentioned it in blog post about Stuart Whipps. Here I think Fujiwara takes it a stage further by openly acknowledging that some of his work is fictional , yet persuading an audience – and possibly himself?? – to take it seriously. The idea of manipulating his own identity means he puts himself almost bodily into someone else’s past and questions the idea of the believers. Subversion and manipulation are always so interesting ; they make you question what you’re doing, and why.

Fujiwara also has two pieces in the British Art Show 8 ; a video loop about a Mexican rubbish picker and a Berlin web designer who has no arms, and three shaved fur coats stretched over frames. These are comments on wealth and materialism (Leeds Art Gallery (1), 2015). The work discussed in this blog post shows Fujiwara’s breadth of practice. It seems he will not allow his practice to be described simply, nor allow himself to be pigeon-holed; I have the idea he likes to re-invent himself, almost, and keep his audience guessing. I find his approach both challenging and inspirational.

MA Week 9 - Artist Research : Stuart Whipps

Stuart Whipps, "The Kipper and the Corpse" (2015), installed at BAS8, Leeds Art Gallery

 

Stuart Whipps has come onto my radar via his piece in the British Art Show 8 (BAS8), “The Kipper and the Corpse” (Leeds Art Gallery (2), 2015). It is the carcass of a mini built by British Leyland in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher came to power and the year Whipps was born. Whipps’s work explores the “slippery relationship between memory and truth” (Leeds Art Gallery (1), 2015) and as such I feel it relates to some of the work I’ve done on de-industrialisation – pulling from my own memories. I had quite a strong emotional reaction to this piece; it reminded me of what my family went through with the de-industrialisation of Leeds. There was a sense of emptiness, starting into the shell of the car… where had it travelled to? What had gone on inside it? Who owned it? A stark monument to the Thatcherite chapter of our collective history. Whipps intends to restore the Mini with the help of ex-Longbridge employees as BAS8 tours over the next year.

The piece is the third part of a series of works which investigate the demise of the Longbridge motor works in Birmingham. For the first part, Whipps photographed the plant between 2005 and 2008, and also travelled to Nanjing in China to photograph the motor company that had bought the property rights from MG Rover. (Colin & Yee, 2015, p 120)/

The second chapter was exhibited at the “East International” exhibition in Norwich in 2009. This included photographs of the recently closed plant and archival documents including “text pieces that use the cumulative word counts for all of Margaret Thatcher’s Speeches, Interviews and Other Statements between her election in May 79, and the sacking of Derrick (Red Robbo) Robinson at British Leyland in November 1979. They are presented by the categorisation method utilized by the Margaret Thatcher archive”. (Whipps. S.,(1) n.d.). Herbert (2009, p329) also comments on the inclusion of a script from an episode of Fawlty Towers, mentioning striking car workers– the name of the episode gives its name to the current piece.  Herbert considers the 2009 piece underlines and opposes the Thatcherite line of de-industrialisation’s inevitability and affirms the move to a post-industrial economy.

All three chapters in this series seem to resonate directly with me. One of the first pieces of practice I undertook concerned the de-industrialisation of the UK and the rise of China as a superpower. The piece I produced commented on the loss of industry in Yorkshire in particular, and the vigorous and bullying rise of Chinese imported goods. The saddest thing to see on the Mini carcass was the British Leyland works plate next to the museum exhibit number. British industry now only exists as some memory in the Museum space.

 

How are the mighty fallen

 

Another piece of work by Whipps which deals with archive and memory is “Birth Sprse in Peckham. Latham was a Zimbabwean-born British experimental artist who was concerned with processes, and the recording of sequences of events and patterns of knowledge (Stiles, n.d.).  Whipps investigated Latham’s archive and interpreted it as a fragmented display, including an animation of text from books in Latham’s collection, which he made during the exhibition itself (Street, 2013). Whipps deliberately disturbed Latham’s archive by collapsing together the various events and their representations. (Whipps. S.,(2) n.d.).

In all these pieces of work, Whipps is taking archival material –photographs, documents or a car – and re-interpreting it. He builds upon the memory, but he also re-works it, and so by implication distorts it. He gives his own viewpoint; it’s not his own lived experience, he is giving his version of someone else’s history. He is often creating randomness from order, as with Latham’s archive and the archival documents in the East International exhibition. He also makes works in progress ; the restoration of the Mini, the animation of Latham’s books. Here I believe he is creating new experience – something existing, viewed differently – and thereby new memories.

 

 

MA Week 9 - Published on FCK LDN!

Fame! Well, in my eyes anyway.

 

 

FCK LDN is an online magazine which covers all things cultural outside London. To quote their website, “FCK LDN is an online magazine; a magazine that does to London what mainstream arts coverage does to the rest of the UK. It pretends that it does not exist. We talk about music, the arts, fashion and culture everywhere in the UK, except London.”

Much as I like London and enjoy visiting that city, I am in complete agreement with FCK LDN’s ethos. Too much emphasis is placed on London when it comes to discussing culture, to the detriment of the rest of the UK. I had wanted to contribute to their website for a while and had been thinking of trying to do a gig review, but once I started the MA it occurred to me that I could do some kind of arty review. Let’s face it, I’m much more likely to be downing a pint than taking notes when I’m at a gig. However, the opposite is true when I’m in a gallery.

My chance came when I wrote up the “Linder in conversation” event which was held as part of the British Art Show 8. I contacted FCK LDN and sent them the link to my blog. Their response was sensible and encouraging – basically that it was the right sort of subject matter, but it needed more context and less academic language. I rewrote it, and was absolutely chuffed to bits when they published it – view it here. It may seem like a very small step, but it’s one that I wouldn’t have taken if I wasn’t doing the MA.

The style in which I rewrote the piece is much nearer to my normal writing style than the kind of “academic” style I’ve tried to adopt for the Research Methods blog so far. I also think it’s probably a more interesting style. So this is something to think about over the Christmas break – can I make my blog more interesting – and even get people to want to read it!! - without losing the academic viewpoint? Let’s see.

MA Week 9 - Professional Context Presentation

Presentation 2: Professional Context

I gave my second presentation on 27^th November, this time looking at “professional context".
 

I decided to start out by talking about the creative industries, cultural capital and some facts and figures, all of which I pulled from my week 7 blog post . I talked about the USA and Italy as international players, then brought it down to the UK, then to Leeds. As it’s unlikely I will be applying for funding abroad any time soon, the USA and Italy topics were quite conceptual for me, rather than contextual. However, we had been briefed to look globally and this seemed to me to be the best way to do this. The most interesting thing was the discovery of the small grants offered by Leeds Inspired.

 

I then talked about where I fit in. As I mentioned in the week 7 blogpost, I need to undertake two main steps: get networking, and thereby identify opportunities; and get creative! I identified 5 networking opportunities as examples for the purpose of the presentation:

• Twitter – where I’ve already “met” some artists, including the Leeds-based ceramic artist Rebecca Appleby

• FCK LDN website – they blog on all things cultural outside of London and I have just sent them a re-written version of my Linder blog entry
• Curator Space – they have had some interesting call outs but for a lot of them I just haven’t got the body of work
• Creative Networks events at Leeds College of Art – a really good way to meet people, everyone is mingling and happy!
• University of Leeds Heritage “Show + Tell” – again a great way to mingle and meet. I have also contacted the organiser to ask about the call out for papers for the Spring 2016 date. I really would like to do a paper (if you can call 3 minutes a paper!) at this. I have a couple of ideas: bricks (as per my current investigation) and wanderings (as per a paper my tutor heard at a conference – where you walk, then stop and observe)

I also showed a picture of me exhibiting at my Access course final show. I think the things I have done hitherto are quite “white cube gallery”, but if I can get going with doing some of my printing ideas – if – I think they could go in a more industrial setting. I stressed I need to get creative. And I gave an open invitation to collaborate!

 I finished by talking about my current investigation into bricks, a nascent collaboration between myself and the writer Christina Croft – a conversation with Christina led me to think about bricks and this led to something definite for my MA proposal –and about Linder’s collaborations for the British Art Show 8, with Kenneth Tindall, Max Sterling and Dovecot studios (see previous reference).

I thought the structure of the presentation worked well, and it came in at just under 10 minutes, the allotted time. I did seem to get through it a bit quicker than when practising at home, though. Perhaps I spoke quicker than I expected due to a bit of stage fright. I would have liked to have said more about my own context but I really feel I am at the very start of this journey, and I didn’t want to put things forward then end up not doing them. In contrast, other people on the course seemed to have lots of professional practice already under their belts. But I am where I am. For me, it would be really interesting to do the same exercise again in a year’s time.

There was some interesting group feedback. The gist of it was to get to know what’s going on locally and get involved. For example, pop-up events, online communities, studio space. So the Heritage Show + Tell would be one example, but what others could I get involved in? You also need to think about separating out your subject and your approach. I took this to mean that you need to think about positioning what you are doing as well as doing it. Another point was a “knowledge audit” – know what you know, and own it. For me, an example was suddenly finding I could undertake a creative collaboration with a longstanding friend.

I feel that, by identifying my 5 networking examples, I am starting to think about this, and act upon it, more importantly. If I can start to produce some creative work, that will be another part of the proverbial jigsaw. These are all factors that will need to be incorporated into a plan for the next term of the course.

 

MA Week 8 - Presenting my presentation thought process

I’ve been working on my “professional” context presentation, and thought it could be useful to share the way I work. It’s a kind of unstructured structuredness somehow!

Everything I do starts off with a kind of fag packet approach. I have to write things down to get the thought process going. Then I do kind of spider diagrams and scribble on these in layers… so perhaps my often-layered creative work has the same root somewhere in the primordial soup of my brain. So the approach to this presentation was the same, as shown below in pages from my notebook. I then started researching actual facts and figures and pulling these together.

 

 

Then the structure itself started to become clear to me. I grouped the ideas around central themes. This is also always a facet of how I work. The notebook page below shows this. It’s interesting that what I scribbled below wasn’t too far from how the actual presentation turned out.

 

These are a couple of other pages starting to note what needs to go with each slide and to work out how the networking and collaboration bits were going to fit in. At this stage I was doing lots of drafting and moving around of slides. It took a while for this middle bit of this presentation to settle into place.

I worked on the content of the slides and the script at the same time. This helped me to get a feel for what I could and couldn’t include, given the timeframe of 10 minutes. To be quite honest, I’ve done lots of presentations in my previous professional life so I had an idea at the outset how much material I would need to generate to fill, but not overfill, the time.

The scripts and slides have now been incorporated into my week 9 blogpost on the presentation, so anyone reading this can see how it finally turned out!

MA Week 8 - Project Managing my MA

Project Managing my MA

Plan - version 1

I’m now on version 3 of my outline plan for the delivery of this term’s two modules. I have a background in management and project management, and a plan seemed to be the best way to get a handle on what I need to do. I went through the learning outcomes and tried to understand what actions I would need to take to achieve each one, then I worked the actions up into a plan and cross-referenced it back to the outcomes. That way I could understand if I was missing any outcomes. It also gave me a set of bite-sized objectives for each week, so I could keep tabs on my progress.

Plan - version 2 - growing day by day!

 

By and large this seems to have worked OK. There are a few lower priority tasks that haven’t got done, but these are just things like writing up a talk I’ve been to, not core tasks. I’ve also had to move some actions to other weeks, but that kind of “juggling” is a normal part of project management. I feel comfortable with that. I have handed in my two presentations the night before the deadline and I got good feedback on the first one (still to deliver the second one) so the plan has obviously hung together well.

There are some things to think about, though, which I decided to note down whilst I’m pulling together work for the final Christmas deadline.

1.       With the benefit of the hindsight of having got part-way through the modules, I’m not completely sure I interpreted the learning outcomes totally correctly, or in the fullest sense, in some cases. This means I have caused potential for some rework or further work. How I could have avoided this is not clear; understanding always develops as you undertake any project. However, from the outset, I have regularly checked back between the outcomes and my objectives and I think I have covered (or will cover) everything that’s needed.

 

2.      I had underestimated the intensity of the course. I knew it would be time-consuming, but I hadn’t realised how intense I would find the Friday sessions in college and the practical work I’ve undertaken. Now that I realise this, I try to allow myself breaks. I had expected to be able to do quite a bit of work on the course at the weekend but instead I am doing more during on weekday evenings, and trying to leave some free time on Saturday and Sunday to take a mental break from it.

3.      I have (I think) over-researched some topics at the expense of others. For example, I seemed to spend a long time researching the creative industries in other countries. Whilst this was very interesting, I think I should have stepped back to reflect on what I was trying to achieve and the level of information I actually needed for my presentation. I need to bear this in mind as I work on my essay in the next couple of weeks, and indeed throughout the course.

All in all I am happy to say that I believe I am on track for the December 11^th deadline. I will hand in the three versions of the plans, complete with scribbled notes, to evidence my use of project management techniques.

 

Plan - version 3 - must be nearly Christmas!

 

 

 

MA Week 7 - facts and figures

Some relevant facts and figures

 

Bob & Roberta Smith discussing the value of the arts to the economy
at Creative Networks Event, Leeds College of Art, May 2015

As part of my research for my “Professional Context” presentation, I’ve been looking at what the “Creative industries” actually comprise and how much they give to the economy.

Origins of the term “Creative Industries”

The term “Creative Industries” actually comes from the government of Tony Blair. This government identified these industries as important to the economy, and brought 13 sectors together under the umbrella of “Creative Industries”. Digital technologies were seen as a particularly important facet. The approach combined “new labour” modernisation with some “old labour” cities. Blair wanted to find a concept in which the UK could still be identified as a world leader in the UK’s post-industrial age. However, some of the traditional Labour-held cities had already moved culture to a central part of their economy once traditional industries had declined. Sheffield and Manchester are examples of this (interestingly, Leeds isn’t mentioned – but here we moved to a financial sector economy). The concept of Creative Industries was exported to other countries and is seen as a successful marketing exercise for the UK. (Flew, 2012, pp9-15)

USA

I chose to look at the USA because their cultural capital is so large. America boomed post-war and their culture now permeates the whole of Western culture, and possibly (probably?) world culture. Think of American movies, music, fashion, food. Yet in spite of this they have no national creative industries policy. Some funding is available via the National Endowment for the Arts but the sector is strongly reliant upon private philanthropy. Another factor is the strength and power of the commercial entertainment sector (Flew, 2012, p 40). However, the NEA, established by congress in 1956, does partner with the state and federal agencies and the philanthropic sector to support and promote access to arts and culture for all Americans (National Endowment for the Arts (1), n.d.). It awards grants to organisations which meet its aims up to the value of tens of thousands of dollars (National Endowment for the Arts (2), n.d.).

Despite no national creative industries policy, Flew (2012, pp 40-41) identifies the expansion of cultural activity in some American cities as the idea of arts and entertainment quarters aimed at attracting creative practitioners to live and work in the city. Flew quotes a text by Florida which influenced urban policy and cultural planning to take up the idea of “creativity strategies”. This meant that city planners began to actively seek to promote the “three T’s” of technology, talent and tolerance to cause creative practitioners to work, live and contribute to the economy of their city. Seattle, Austin and Boston are amongst examples quoted of cities with strong, dynamic creative economies.

The US does have an organisation that lobbies on behalf of the arts, “Americans for the Arts”. Their aim is to lead and to bring together organisations and individuals who promte and support the arts such that all and any Americans can access culture and the arts. Any individual can join and their website is full of information about how to lobby for the good of the Arts.

The US definition of creative industries does not include the commercial entertainment sector (Flew, 2012, p 39). However, the industry is still healthy. According the the NEA,

(National Endowment for the Arts (3), n.d.), in 2014 the creative industries sector was worth $698bn (£459bn), equivalent to 4.3% GDP.

 

Italy

Italy is clearly another country whose culture has had a profound effect on the world. Think Italian couture, Roman Catholic church, Roman monuments, Renaissance artists.

Traditionally there has been public funding for heritage, music, theatre and the like, initially provided centrally, but more recently provided less centrally and more via the regions and local authorities (Compendium, 2015, (1) & (2)). However, with the pressure on public finances, the state has increasingly turned to the private sector for help. This has resulted in sponsorship of renovations by private companies. For example, the luxury leather goods manufacturer Tod’s has given £20m for the restoration of the Colosseum. This gives them the right to have their logo on the tickets for a period of time, and to associate the Colosseum with their branding. This engagement with the private sector has yielded funding for a variety of projects (Fendi are sponsoring the Trevi Fountain restoration, for example), but also friction as there is a view that Italy is simply selling its massive cultural heritage to the highest bidder. A further complication is the active solicitation of foreign sponsorship, e.g. “a preliminary agreement with Saudi Arabia to fund the restoration of the Mausoleum of Augustus” (Faiola,2014).

The Italian creative industries sector figures for 2011 show it adding €95bn to the economy, about 6% of GDP (Forum D’Avignon and Tera Consultants (2014); Italian National Institute of Statistics (2012)), but I don’t have a further breakdown of this. However, it seems healthy in its own right.

 

UK

The UK has also given its culture to the world: the British Empire, Beatlemania, Britpop….

Centralised funding comes from the Department for Culture, Media and Sports via Arts Council England (for England, at least). ACE’s mission is “Great Art and Culture for everyone” (Arts Council England (1), n.d.); they support organisations that facilitate public access to arts and culture of different genres – music, art, theatre, museums etc. The latest funding round shows a significant cut : for 2012-15, ACE distributed £1.4bn of public money and £1bn of National Lottery money. For 2015-18, the figures are £1.1bn of public money and £700m National Lottery (Arts Council England (2), n.d.).

To quote Dr. Ben Walmsley of the University of Leeds, “Art fundraising is in an exciting state of flux. Are we ready for change?” (Walmsley, 2015). Whether we are ready or not seems irrelevant as change is what is happening.  Walmsley goes on to say that arts organisations need to “stop appearing to be needy” and to become embedded in their communities. In other words, they need to get business savvy PDQ. In fact, ACE has inaugurated the “Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy” programme to “transform funding” (Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy (n.d.)) and to “develop an enterprising culture in which income generation is placed at the heart of an arts organisation’s business model and ethos” (ibid).

All this said, the UK creative industries sector is still doing well, generating £76.9bn of value equivalent to 5%GDP. I was quite surprised to find out that 46% of this is from software and games – a sector that didn’t really exist 30 or 40 years ago - and only about 7% from music, arts and culture – which is where I would position myself. (The Creative Industries (n.d.))

 

Leeds

Leeds has given some culture to the world – textiles, Hepworth, Moore, the Kaiser Chiefs (??) – and is bidding to become Cultural Capital of Europe in 2023. But the funding situation reflects that of ACE. In 2012-15 Leeds City Council had a funding pot of around £3m per year for the arts. By 2017-18 that will have been cut to around £2.5m per year (Yorkshire Evening Post, 2014). Most of the funding is distributed to arts organisations (Leeds City Council (n.d.)), to allow citizens to access the arts and culture. However, through further investigation I realised they also fund “Leeds Inspired”, which I’d hitherto only known by its website, and they do small grants of £100 - £1000 to individuals to support artistic activities, such as exhibitions. However, you do have to have a track record of delivery. (Leeds Inspired (n.d.))

 

Discussion

This has been quite a time-consuming but interesting investigation. There is a welcome theme of organisations that support the arts in all the places above, showing that even in these times of financial constraint, at least some importance is still attached to the arts. I do think, though, that the situation in Italy – turning to the private sector – is going to be reflected across the piece. The Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy initiative is, I suppose, a necessary evil in England, to ensure that the arts can remain vibrant across the country. I think we will see more and more of this as the Conservative government squeeze public services further. As the “creative industries” was a Labour invention, it will be interesting to see if the Conservatives actively decide to undermine these sectors.

 

The creative industries seem to be holding their own, even growing in the UK. This, again, is welcome news as it implies the sectors are maturing and established. I was a little concerned to see how much the UK sector relies on the Software sector. I’m not sure if the proverbial man on the street would quote software as part of the creative sector. I wonder if its inclusion in the figures obscures the fact that the “traditional” arts sectors are perhaps not doing as well as they might.

Anyway, on the basis that I am unlikely to be applying for funding abroad any time soon, it was interesting to find out about the Leeds Inspired small grant scheme and it does give me a glimmer of hope. I used to write and critique business cases in a previous life so that “transferable skill” may well come in useful again. I think my next steps need to be to continue my networking strategy, to step it up in fact, and to start to get some creative work done. Then I can see where I fit into the  Leeds scene. Aligning myself with one of the established organisations here, say perhaps volunteering for East Street Arts or similar, would seem to be my best bet to get experience which could help me get funding. I need to develop these ideas into more concrete plans as I progress with the course.

 

 

MA Week 7 - Time for a break

A welcome break



Cheltenham Gold Cup Winner!

 

Not in college this Friday! Taking part in my other life at Cheltenham Racecourse instead. Glad of the break to restore a bit of energy.

MA Week 6 - Presenting Work for Assessment

Reflection on taught session, Friday 6th November 2015

Presenting Work for Assessment

Some really useful stuff in this session from Annabeth.

Signpost your work

You need to signpost your work so that both internal and external examiners can find their way through it. If you think something belongs in both the Research Methods and Professional Context module, you will have to write it up in two different ways as a piece of work can only be marked once. It’s a good idea to summarise and label your work so that it’s very clear to the examiners.

This threw me a bit. I’m fine with signposting my work, or presenting it any way that’s needed, but I’d understood from previous talks that the work we’re doing this term would be viewed holistically and that it was OK if the two modules mingled together. After all, it’s the  one person, me in this case, doing both and having one set of thought processes. My classmates pointed out that I should be able to easily split my blog posts between the two modules, but I think it will mean some rework, which means using time, which is in short supply at the moment. Ho hum. I also need to go back and tag my blog posts with the relevant module name, which I hadn’t thought of doing, but that shouldn’t take too long.

All that said, the point was then made that you do need to be able to “synthesise” the modules, i.e. cross-reference them as you move on. I need to bear this in mind in future but I don’t see it as an issue. In fact I think it is a positive thing as it acknowledges that you are trying to form a holistic view of your practice.

Think about how you present your work for assessment:

·         If you’re a sculptor or VJ, film your work, your process, your studio. Get a YouTube channel and put bite-size videos up, then signpost the examiner to key clips of them.

·         Use audio clips of you articulating your thoughts, if you wish, but don’t expect the examiner to listen to the whole lot – again, signpost the main clips.

·         Get good photos of your work.

·         Document critical moments.

·         Don’t forget to document the learning outcomes as well as your artistic outcomes.

·         Reflect! Reflect!

I feel comfortable with this. During the Access course I documented and reflected on everything. The points I do need to think about are the quality of my photos, so I need to chat to my tutor about this. What is acceptable for journals? And is my reflection at the correct level for Masters? I’m also making frequent reference to learning outcomes, checking my work and progress against them, so again I’m comfortable with that. I just need to keep it up!

Investigate recent advances in your own field

For example, the latest thinking on feminism. Doing this had been mentioned before. I’ve been trying to check publication dates on books to see how recent they are, particularly if an issue is very current (the state of the creative industries is a recent example I’ve been researching). So I’ve started to become aware of this. Another to keep in mind.

Annabeth also suggested TED talks and the identification of conferences you’d like to attend. This was useful as I hadn’t really thought in this way. Something to take on board.

Think professionally

Start thinking about your community of practice, and get on with identifying organisations you can partner with and who can fund you. How can you partner with these? How are you going to pitch to these? Do you need to think about quantitative methods, e.g. getting some facts and figures?

I’ve started thinking about networking as a way into this. I need to also start building a body of work to use with organisations. There is much more thinking I need to do about this; I need to develop that thinking as I move through the course, particularly as my attention turns back to the more creative angle. I hope this will occur as a natural development.

Conclusion

I’m comfortable that I’m already covering at least some of the points raised. I think this is a blog post that I need to keep referring back to as I progress through the course, as a kind of checklist, until all the practices become second nature.

MA Week 5 - Thinking about printmaking

Creative thoughts!

Although there is little time left over from all the theoretical research to do anything creative, I’ve managed to fit in a little bit of printmaking. I’ve reflected on it in my creative journal but thought it deserved a mention here, too, since it constitutes research of a kind.

I had a go at linocutting earlier in the month and really enjoyed it. I like the way you kind of have to “think backwards” and work up from light to dark. My technique leaves a lot to be desired but I am going to get some cheap linocutting gear and have a go at home. This experimenting can be a form of action research.

Bricks & Brambles

I also wanted to have another go at drypoint so I treated myself to a half-day course at the West Yorkshire Print Workshop (WYPW). Again, the quality of what I produced left a lot to be desired, but I could immediately see how I could improve. The images show my reflection in my creative journal and the third proof (referred to as (3) in the reflection).

I set myself the professional goal of learning more about printmaking as part of this term’s objectives. Since the WYPW session I’ve had another go at drypoint in college. I can think of ways I could develop it – for example, printing the same image on top of each other in different colours, to represent the kind of distortion of normality that seems to be ever present in my life these days; obscuring part of the print – again a distortion; trying chine collé of some kind; printing non-related images over each other. I think these kind of ideas tie in with my generally “layered” approach to producing artwork. I suspect I will end up carrying forward my “printmaking” objective into the next module.

MA Week 4 - Theoretical Context Presentation

Presentation 1: Theoretical Context

 

 

 

I gave the first of my two presentations on 23^rd October, on the topic of “theoretical context".

I started out talking about how I work, particularly my copious notemaking as discussed in my week 2 blog post.  I also discussed how I use action research, and how I’d applied grounded theory to my practice to discern my main strands or meta-narratives – as discussed in my week 3 blog post.

Having seen the variety and quality of work produced by some of my classmates, I had felt quite diffident about presenting the main theme of my work as a narrative enquiry into my own lived experience. It suddenly felt quite uninspiring. However, I came across lovely quote in one of the set texts, in which the author encouraged his students to discover “the thesis you are living and cannot see”  (McNiff, 1998, p146). I quoted this and explained it had given me the confidence to carry on with that line of enquiry.

I then moved on to talk about my practice itself and the three meta-narratives I’d identified - heritage, identity and process theory. Once I’d concluded I was dealing with these three quite broad categories, I realised that I didn’t have the time to start to read and research widely into each. I therefore decided to relate a piece of my work in each category to a current artist.

In the “heritage” category, I related a piece of my work which comments on the de-industrialisation of the UK (Yorkshire in particular) to the current piece in the British Art Show 8, “the Kipper and the Corpse” by Stuart Whipps. This deals with the closure of the Longbridge motor works in Birmingham.  (Colin & Yee, 2015, p120)

In the “identity” category, I related a manipulated image of my face to the work of the German collage artist Annegret Soltau. Soltau also uses images of herself and her family and manipulates the features to explore how body and spirit connect (Butler & Mark, 2007, p306). I also explained here that I use my own image to avoid ethical issues.

In the “process theory” category, I discussed how repeated quadrilaterals repeatedly appear in my work. I put this down to spending 25 years working in IT, coding repeatable computer programs and defining repeatable processes. I related some work from my current investigation into bricks – repeated quadrilaterals – to the recent public art work by Simon Fujiwara, “Aspire”, which is based on a brick chimney and represents the heritage of Leeds (and of course thereby also relates back to the “heritage” category) (Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, 2015).

By working this way I hope to be able to access the theories I need by researching more into these three artists. I thought this could help identify new and interesting leads, and hopefully bring the theories to life a little.

I’ve presented many times before and standing up and talking doesn’t really worry me. That said, the presentation came in slightly short of the allocated ten minutes, I think, probably due to the adrenaline rush that always accompanies these occasions. I received good feedback, that the presentation was very measured and controlled, and that is thanks to learning this important transferable skill in my previous life. One learning point for next time, though, is that I didn't put a bibliography into the presentation. It had never occurred to me to do this, to be honest, as it seemed it would just be a lot of small text.

This was the first presentation I’d done where I focused on images on the slides, rather than text. In my previous business incarnations bullet points had always been the order of the day. This time I went for images of my work and the work of others. I wasn’t sure how this would work, but it went well as far as I was concerned. Other members of the class seemed to be able to relate to what I was discussing and commented on some of the images afterwards, which was a confidence boost. I will use this image-based approach for the next presentation, too.