Session 4B : Bourdon Lecture Theatre

Writing Practices in the Art School

Saturday June 10th, 2023 : 13:30 – 16:00
Overview

Writing practices are no less complex or more ‘knowing’ than making practices, and yet they continue to be mythologised in the Art School as cerebral, formulaic and Other to making. Writing has been cultured into artist and artist-teacher training as a tool for assessment. This session opens dialogue between the ‘not knowing’ of creative practice and practices of writing. Through a series of presented and performed provocations, and a generative writing workshop in which written texts are starting points for experimentation, we explore how artists’ pedagogies can shape the way that writing in the Art School is taught and practised.

Speakers


Rebecca Bell

Rebecca Bell holds a PhD in Czech craft under Socialism from the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal College of Art (RCA). Bell is Lecturer in Visual Culture at the University of the West of England (Bristol). For over a decade, she worked in contemporary art commissioning in the public realm, with Andy Goldsworthy, DACS, and Art on the Underground. She has taught at a range of institutions, including Middlesex University, UMPRUM Prague, The School of Life, and the RCA. Her research focuses on making practices under politically controlled conditions, craft methodologies, pastoral materialities and pedagogies of hope.

Joanne Lee

Joanne Lee is an artist, writer and Course Leader for Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, where she also co-convenes the Transmission public lecture series. Her research uses image and text to attend to the everyday and the local. Recent projects have included the co-curation of ‘Everywhere: life in a littered world’ for the Art Institute, Plymouth (2021) and an article ‘A walker's guide to littered landscapes: an exploration of interdisciplinary, imaginative and collaborative modes of attention.’ (2019). A journal documenting Lee’s everyday life through ‘Sheffield in virus time’ now extends to over one million words.

Julia Lockheart

Julia Lockheart’s research explores visual narrative capture, languaging and collaborative writing as a tool for the creation and articulacy of new knowledge drawn from art and design practice. Julia is Director of the WritingPAD network (2002-present) and co-editor of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice (Intellect). She is also cofounder of DreamsID.com. She is Institute Manager of Research Degrees and Co-ordinator of Contextual Practices programme for Design at Swansea College of Art, UWTSD, where she is Associate Professor. She is affiliated with Goldsmiths, University of London as Associate Lecturer in Design.

Rachael Miles

Birkenhead born and bred. Currently residing in Cardiff (where the Tories have no chance of getting in) with a partner and 2 dogs called Bwtch & Femme. Rachael is an academic teaching in Visual Culture at UWE Bristol and works on a number of projects broadly themed around class, gender and poverty. Recent work involves writing, performance and the production of collaborative events with a focus on building multigenerational Queer audiences. Rachael also develops projects that share institutional knowledge and give communities broader access to the means of production.

Jenny Rintoul

Jenny Rintoul is Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture at the University of the West of England, Bristol, where she leads an undergraduate Visual Culture module that is delivered across seven art and design programmes. Jenny leads the Visual Culture Research Group (VCRG), which is a group of cross-disciplinary writers and makers interested in visuality and materiality (www.vcrg.co.uk), and is a member of the Ways of Writing in Art and Design Research Network (WoW). Her research on art and design education focuses on the erroneous theory/practice binary, tacit ways of knowing, and demystifying ‘intuition’ and ‘integration’.