- Venue
- New Art Spaces of Federation House, Manchester
- Location
- Scotland
Snowy conditions had already intervened in the proceedings by delaying speakers’ arrivals as Kwong Lee, Director of Castlefield Gallery, introduced the potential of this one-day, discursive event. He has been working alongside a-n The Artist Information Company and five Universities to explore the contribution of artists to the AHRC’s Connected Communities Programme. Due to poor acoustics, his warm, softly spoken approach was initially difficult to follow in the large, open plan New Art Spaces of Federation House, Manchester. But as the audience leaned in to listen I began to realise that we were at a ‘gathering’, rather than a formal seminar or conference, where there would be plenty of opportunity for productive dialogue even within the now constricted timeframe.
Steve Pool, Freelance artist and Co-investor of the Connected Communities projects, addressed us and explained how Professor Kate Pahl, Principal investigator for the project, had asked him to extemporize until she arrived. “Why didn’t she just say ‘make it up as you go along’?” he asked jovially, indicating the oppositional effect that word choice can have in distinguishing and dividing the different practices of artist and academic. However, Steve went on to express how valuable such relationships could be when good collaborations are able to develop, where new language can be learned and formulated, where new practice and modes of enquiry can be considered.
Professor Pahl arrived in her snow covered boots to outline the framework of the AHRC project and its focus on artists working within Connected Communities, the large-scale programme delivering cross sectors projects between arts and humanities academics and the wider community. It has explored the range of opportunities available for artists to take part in team-based research, through both established and emerging ways, such as delivering workshops, through writing, facilitating co-production, and interpreting and representing research findings. The project has also enquired into how these opportunities have impacted on perceptions of the artist’s ability to work in Higher Education, both from a personal and a public perspective.
Jeanie Scott, a-n Executive Director, spoke about the work her organisation has undertaken to evaluate the importance of culture to contemporary society through academic research with artists. She referred to the ‘Ecology of the Visual Arts’ created in 2013, an infographic by Emily Speed, which quantifies this considerable contribution in terms of practitioners, curators, networks, facilities, etc. The need to protect artists by developing methods of ‘future proofing’ through HEI modules is urgent at this time when an expectation to ‘work for free’, or ‘as near as’, is still commonplace – ‘Three out of Four Artists Earn Less than £5000 per Year’ http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/arts/news/three-in-four-artists-earn-less-than-5-000-a-year-1-3369907
Steve Swindles (Professor in Creative Practice, Director of Research, and director of Graduate Education, University of Huddersfield) might be just the enlightened individual to advise those of us in this unenviable position, but he chose not to stray into this territory. An artist turned artist/academic, he spoke eloquently about the role of the artist within HEI’s, defining the ‘academic relationship’ as comprising of The Academic, The Faculty, The Community, and the best approach was to take up the attitude of being a foreign guest. To be the one who thinks and acts otherwise, uses different language, looks at contradictions both culturally and intellectually: A disruptive force, a critic from within, who hopes to slowly influence dialogue and development. Yet when pressed by the audience to reveal how successful his strategy had been – what influence did he have? What budgets could he access? The picture was all too familiar – no studio provision; small, well-used, but tight budgets that delivered excellent value for money and produced popular, accessible, innovative exhibitions for the wider community, presenting the HEI in a favourable light. Job done!
What draws the artist into this relationship? (Besides a regular income, a legitimate place in society, the chance to be paid to undertake research, a project budget – however tight)
Just as The Artist is autonomous so is The Academic dependent. It seems that both want to swap or partly interchange elements of their respective positions, but in order to do that both must compromise some territory. To work best this requires a trusting relationship based on mutual respect and time to bond through ‘shared passionate interest’, as defined by speaker Paul Evans, a practicing artist and recipient of Leverhulme Trust Research Programme Grant in 2010. It funded his artist’s residency within Cardiff University School of History and Archaeology enabling him to explore his love of whales in partnership with Dr Jacqui Mulville on the project ‘Osteography’ https://osteography.wordpress.com/
Through such a relationship the artist must yield to the confines of the institution, becoming dependent, compliant, and part of something bigger in order to achieve more than is possible when acting alone. Yet he retains his identity and autonomy.
As the artist yields so the academic begins to explore, encouraged to approach a different method in his thinking and responding in a more open-ended dialogue which comes about through changes in language, expectation, mode of engagement, practices and outcomes. Whilst retaining his position within the established institution. What happens to both protagonists is an improved communication that ultimately is experienced by the wider community in the resulting exhibition, pop-up event, or festival.
So it would seem that Dr Kate Pahl had the last word on this – in order for the union to be successful she advised ‘each has to lose something’.
Laura Donkers is an environmental artist based on the Isle of North Uist, Outer Hebrides. Key areas of her work can be distilled into ‘the collection and presentation of primary observations, which interrogate the political, physical, and material conditions of landscape as experienced through the body’. Forming around concerns that as our lives become increasingly encoded and intellectually based so there are fewer opportunities to interact meaningfully with the places where we live. Interconnectedness of art, ecology, site and politics provides a rich framework for artistic and intellectual explorations, assisted by good agrarian knowledge gained through a life on the land. Processes of field research produce sound and video installations that aim to trigger an understanding of connection by presenting experiences of those living ‘first hand’, in touch with environment, community and self.
She is about to begin a Practice-led PhD at University of Dundee. Online portfolio www.earthebrides.com
