Keynote presentation for North East Scotland Visual Arts Research Network: summer school for doctoral researchers at Grays School of Art, August 2010. Exploring issues of conversation, collaboration and learning in artistic projects/interventions.

1. Spaces of Encounter Artists, conversations and meaning-making

2. (project by artist Dan Robinson: http://black-dogs.org/)

3. My interests in research/practice Conversational forms of learning; dialogic rather than ‘banking’ theory of education (Freire) Working between universities and other research/practice communities – the state of being ‘in between’ Network spaces: spaces which enable interchange and learning: what are their characteristics? Theoretically informed reflective practice: practitioners/professionals analysing and reflecting on their own situations/dilemmas Co-construction of knowledge – using technologies and open processes Artistic practice as musician/collaborator/educator, and activism…

4. Researching art… Art as a form of knowledge (knowledge in and through art-making) Knowledge about art (borrowed from Phil Taggwww.tagg.org, who in turn borrowed it from Herbert Read: knowledge about art, knowledge in/through art, knowledge for art)

5. Ways of ‘knowing’ Academic discourse privileges language But artistic communication encompasses more than language – music, art, dance, performance, image-making etc. Otherwise why wouldn’t we just write it? Writing, speaking and acting are different – academia often privileges writing and more ‘fixed’, apparently less fluid ways of knowing ‘Performative turn’ in accounts of practice – more dynamic, fluid, but also difficult to explain Academic research requires argumentation and ‘proof’ – can practice provide this?

6. Situations not objects of study… ‘The world is a making; it is processual; it is in action; it is ‘all that is present and moving’ (Williams). There is no last word, only infinite becoming and constant reactivation.’ The world is constituted through activity Talk is there to do things (not just rule-bound, concerned with exchanging meanings) (Nigel Thrift: Afterwords)

7. ‘Theory’ and ‘practice’ Theory – theorein (Greek) – to see – contemplate - essentially to think about Practica – to do, practice (complex word) Praxis – the interplay between theory and practice – reflection in action, knowledge in/through action Underpinning every practice there are sets of theories – an implied ways of seeing the world – worldviews, standpoints, set of values and learned behaviours – research unpacks this. Raymond Williams: from medium to social practice: making work in the arts and media, (we can reify the products as ‘objects’ AND think about them as a social practice).

8. praxis…?

9. Creativity Meaning-making Combination/recombination An ‘interdisciplinary turn’? Dialogue becomes prominent Meanings less settled Emergent processes: play, improvisation, chance, generating situations rather than objects Artistic work that illuminates a situation

10. Theories/Mythologies of Creativity Collaborative Social Socially and culturally constructed Everyday creativity ‘High’ creativity How creativity is valued, and what kinds of creativity are valued most… Individual Psychological Cognitive Modernist Romanticist etc etc Creativity = agency/autonomy – the ability to be able to reshape the world Is this why creative work/labour is so sought after? It’s generative: a sense of agency?

11. Creative milieux Creative places and situations are both designed and performed (by who?) The city The neighbourhood The organisation The programme The project A creative situation is both a question of design AND performance Top-down/bottom-up – but more complex than that

12. The ‘creative city’ From mid 1990s, creativity has moved closer to centre of urban and national policy rhetoric..

13. Place-making? Artistic interventions

14. artists’ organisations; media co-ops; cultural enterprises at various scales

15. Knowledge In traditional research/schooling – “acquiring knowledge is largely separated from the situations in which, through knowing in action, knowledge is constructed and used” (Gordon Wells) (Friere – ‘banking’ theory of education)

16. …and knowing (in action) We mobilise knowledge through practice.

17. Why the arts matter… Artistic approaches are powerful because they embody the ‘knowing in action’ paradigm. Learning ‘about’ the arts (history, context, convention, tradition, etc) Learning through the arts – through practice And learning through encounter with the arts (E.Bosch: The Pleasure of Beholding); again, illuminating a situation Active, agentive, engaged, not passive

18. Locating practice Spaces Domains of practice Disposition Economy/resources Institutions Traditions Interests Questions etc

19. Locating practice…complex/dynamic Working in private? Working in public? Exteriorising the interior world? The imagination/the imaginarium

20. Two collaborations Both cast and funded as ‘professional development/professional learning’ One formal – an accredited CPD programme, Teacher-Artist Partnership One informal – artist residency: ‘The Cave’ (BBC SSO) – a ‘project’

21. Teacher Artist Partnership Programme

22. Artist-educator pedagogies art and design (and some traditions of performing arts) education has championed the ‘artist-teacher’, in which the skill and craft of the arts practitioner is blended with pedagogical knowledge a rich vein of research from Dewey to Stenhouse to Schon has championed the idea of teaching as a type of artistry, which involves making rich, complex judgements about teaching - a form of empowered, active professionalism Now - Creative PartnershipsTMand a host of other policy invocations based on ‘partnership’ have brought these debates to the surface Arts-led approaches supposedly enhance learning outcomes. But this is not unproblematic, (US: ‘arts integration’; UK ‘creative/cultural learning’)

23. ‘Teachers’ and ‘artists’ Embodied roles - performing identities Interpersonal - psychosocial AND occupying ‘positional role’ within institutions Pervasive mythologies - using highly loaded terms in everyday language Reference orientations/generative metaphors/controlling discourses/organisationalnarratives

25. ‘Mediated conversations at a cultural trading post’ mediated conversations at three levels: Firstly we have recorded and analysed literal conversations between teachers, artists and tutors in various combinations. Secondly, we treat ‘conversational learning’ as a broader aspiration implying a particular set of social, intellectual and pedagogical commitments. Thirdly, the programmes themselves as a complex ‘instructional system’, and the discourses of policy and pedagogy that they mobilise, act as a kind of ‘holding framework’ and conversational form that uncovers some of the paradoxes, tensions and debates that characterise the territory.

27. TAPP stories Artistic/pedagogic research practices Applied problem solving – for whom? Complexity of artist roles and teacher roles

28. Thurle Wright: critique of TAPP There is something suspicious about the TAPP constant call for ‘collaboration’ which denies the essential self referential nature of the artist. Art forms have their own communicative idioms, whereas TAPP prioritises verbal communication. Residencies imply a deficit model (‘redressing an inherent lack’). Equal partnerships is a myth (‘circumstances do not allow it’) The blurring of the artist into the ‘arts educator’ creates role confusion. The apparent TAPP over-emphasis on process over product is misplaced (‘as an artist I must value product’). Artists should not be expected to perform an instrumental role with respect to other areas of the National Curriculum.

29. Dilemmas/tensions Pedagogy implies dialogue/collaboration/conversation But many artists (and artistic thinking?) need solitude Achieving a balance? Signal/noise ratio in schools (and HE) can be very poor…. The ‘quality of time’

30. The Cave

40. Creative places, projects and proceses Situations/events are enabled by conversation: we imagine and talk things into existence Questions of design and performance Illuminating situations – is this what artists do? “If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” (Albert Einstein)

41. Contacts/web generalpraxis.blogspot.com Graham.Jeffery [at] uws.ac.uk uwspracticeresearch.blogspot.com uwscreative.blogspot.com twitter.com/grahamjeffery twitter.com/UWScreative