RSS 1.0Creative Industries
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Correction to: Introduction (Key Terms in Comics Studies)The original version of this chapter has been revised and an updated bibliography has been incorporated in the chapter.
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Soliata LafoaiThe research explores the legacies of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writing (c. 1893), investigating the relevance of his work to contemporary readers in Sāmoa, Scotland and Hawai'i. This is a wordless graphic adaptation of Stevenson’s novella The Beach of Falesā, included as a chapter in an anthology of adaptations and creative responses to Stevenson’s Pacific writing by artists, scholar and artists/scholars Solomon Enos, Simon Grennan, Keao Nesmith, Lalovai Pesetā, Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard and Selina Tusitala Marsh.
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Introduction (Island Tales: New Creative Interpretations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Pacific Writing)The research explores the legacies of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writing (c. 1893), investigating the relevance of his work to contemporary readers in Sāmoa, Scotland and Hawai'i. This is a written Introduction to an anthology of adaptations and creative responses to Stevenson’s Pacific writing by artists, scholar and artists/scholars Solomon Enos, Simon Grennan, Keao Nesmith, Lalovai Pesetā, Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard and Selina Tusitala Marsh.
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Drama as a transformational capability of sustainability scienceEducation for sustainable development (ESD) is a foundational aspect of the transformatory capability of sustainability science at the individual and group levels. Despite international frameworks to promote and monitor the development of sustainability competences, evidence of the efficacy of ESD remains limited and even challenging. This article proposes drama-based educational approaches, as part of an increasing body of arts-based methods used in sustainability science, which materially impact a wide range of sustainability competences. Drama is a practice-based approach that intentionally uses carefully designed educational activities involving body, story, interaction, and collaboration to generate sustainability awareness, knowledge, mindsets, and action taking for individuals and groups within higher education. Examples of applied drama practices can include various forms of role play, forum play (playing out roles and pausing/fast-forwarding/reversing to explore possible solutions), and legislative theatre (where participants collaborate with lawmakers to address local issues). This article draws on an international project applying drama methods across disciplinary areas, and outlines how drama methods may contribute to sustainability competences applied in practice. As a result of this, we propose further research to inform future high-impact practices of applied drama for the field of ESD.
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Beyond text: Learning through arts-based researchThis original new book represents a variety of art forms across different professional contexts. Its focus is on the ways that educational practitioners and leaders from a range of cultures, disciplines, professions and organizations practice arts-based research, and it explores how these can enable innovative means of learning and enhance professional and organizational development. This vibrant project allowed for long term systematic conversations between a large and unusually diverse group of twenty-nine people from eight organisations in six countries. It was unusually diverse in many senses: for some the word 'data' meant little, for others it was central to their daily work; for some artistic practice was core, while for others the arts were a means to an end; while some were social entrepreneurs running their own companies others were researching in universities and a number were doing both; some were working within the STEM disciplines of business, management, engineering, science, technology, sustainability and the built environment, others were in the social sciences of social and health care, education and youth work while others were engaged in rapid or long term social and cultural action as a means of resisting state violence and military occupation; some worked in one of the safest countries on the planet, others in one of the most tear-gassed refugee camps in the world. Within these professional groups there were also ranges of experience, for example senior researchers, early career researchers, PhD students, seasoned professional artists and newcomers to arts forms. Whilst the main communication of this group was English, six other major languages were spoken, Estonian, Finish, Catalan, Spanish, Arabic and key stakeholders bought Swedish and Japanese into the space. This meant that while the conversations in and about arts-based practice were transnational, interdisciplinary and systematic, they had all the messy, troubled-ness that the intercultural on all of the above levels brings with it. This unique and exciting collection discusses how creative arts practices can have a significant impact on research across a range of international contexts, drawing on their own field of research and educational experience. For instance, drama, music, dance and visual arts can be used to understand how learners internalise concepts, reflect on how decisions are made in the midst of action in leadership education, or investigate the use of the intuitive alongside the rational and analytical in their educational experience. Non-textual arts-based forms of research can also provide modes of investigation into pedagogical and professional practices when applied to fields that normally lie outside of the arts. Its greatest strengths are its focus on arts-based research as a way of learning in a variety of contexts, and often in collaboration. Its consistent theoretical, artistic and professional engagements make it a very readable and engaging read. The representation of a variety of art forms across different professional contexts means that this book will have appeal to several readerships in higher education, including the following groups. Academics and practitioners using arts-based methods in organisation and business settings. Researchers in the arts and researchers generically in the social sciences, humanities and arts. University students of the arts, education and professional studies, especially those interested in the wider international and intercultural diversity of research methodologies. Those working in international research teams using any form of qualitative research will also find this collection very interesting. It also has potential interest for groups outside higher education with an interest in arts-based research - for example community groups looking to explore collaborative projects.
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Drawing and installation on the British Peak District: Self, environment and a mobile working kitThis text reports about my practice-based doctoral research project exploring the question ‘How can the relationships between self and the outdoor environment of Bakestonedale Moor manifest in a creative arts practice from drawing and installation?’. I have developed a drawing and installation practice as the bearer and expression of my relationship with the outdoor places of the British Peak District in the vicinity of Pott Shrigley. This led to the development of the ‘mobile working kit’, a collection of modules fashioned from paper, string, wood and fabric, which I use to make drawings and mark the land with sculptural additions. My outdoor art-making events may only last a few hours but I later exhibit its artefacts as indoor art displays complemented by photographs and videos from the outdoor sites. I provide descriptions of two drawing activities outdoors, first, using a three-dimensional fence-like paper sculpture as a drawing surface and, second, drawing on a ground-based paper platform. These examples of art-making are then contextualized in reference to Barad’s concept of intra-activity where material changes in the world are understood to occur in co-constitutional negotiation of all active components. I use this concept and Barad’s understanding of performativity to describe process in art-making and in geological, meteorological and biological changes outdoors. I then relate these positions to current performance drawing in reference to the role of the artist and how the arts practice determines her connection to the outdoor environment.
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Practice-based Research and Creative Arts Practice: Intra-action, Self and the Other; Drawing and Installation in the British Peak DistrictThis research uses a creative arts practice emerging from the processes of drawing and installation to create and explore the relationships between the artist and the outdoor spaces of the British Peak District. A mobile working kit made from paper, fabric and wood is used to make temporary installations outdoors in response to wind, weather and topography. The mobile working kit modules are then returned to the studio and later installed in art exhibition spaces, their display indexing the connection between self, other and the outdoors. The multitude of processes in outdoor environments and their relationships to landscape and its inhabitants’ actions is used as a methodological template to frame change. Based on the dichotomy of mobility and inscription, artmaking actions and the research process are described through the conceptual lenses of ‘gesture’, ‘practice’ and an expanded understanding of drawing. Following this, a taxonomy is suggested that categorises the embodiment of artmaking events from the tensions between their experienced particularities and the artist’s perceived material practice frameworks.
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Casting ShadowsThis research output is a resource for teachers and students in Scottish schools working at 4th Level in English, Media and Social Studies. It is made with the Scottish development Education Centre (ScotDec), which delivers professional learning in Global Citizenship, Learning for Sustainability and Rights-based learning for teachers and youth workers across all sectors. The research explores the legacies of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writing (c. 1893), investigating the relevance of his work to contemporary readers in Sāmoa, Scotland and Hawai'i. Research Questions: 1. What legacies has Stevenson’s Pacific writing, and his residency in Hawai ‘i and Sāmoa, left for contemporary Pacific communities? 2. In what ways can an engagement with RLS’s Pacific fiction inform the creative practices of our project poets and workshop participants? 3. In an era in which educators around the world are seeking to ‘decolonise the curriculum’, what does it mean, within the structures of our project, to ‘decolonise’ Stevenson’s work, given his keen observations on the consequences of western colonial incursion into the Pacific? As methods, it utilises narrative drawing, creative writing, movie, literary criticism, community-based participation and pedagogy in English, Hawaiian and Samoan languages.
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Artmaking in the outdoor environment: Negotiating experiential and material complexitiesThis practice-based research project uses a new materialist approach to investigate the relationship between the geological, biological and meteorological activities of the outdoor world and the dynamics of a creative arts practice. It asks the question how the relationship between the self and the outdoor environment might manifest in a creative arts practice in the British Peak District. The project has produced a new approach to arts practice based on the development of a mobile artmaking kit made from string, fabric, paper and wood, and in response to the topography and the wind and rain of Bakestonedale Moor. This mobile working kit (MWK) has been used to make site-specific drawings and temporary installations and provide artefacts for indoor exhibition displays. The research understands outdoor environments as an intra-active process (Barad, 2003) and the activity of its material components as a performance. The arts practice produces meaning for the artist and audiences due to the aesthetic changes that MWK installations bring to the environment. Such meaning-making processes are based on an individual’s subjective engagement with the artwork (Dewey, 1994). The emerging practice operates as an epistemic practice that creates and captures knowledge in the experience of the particularity of artmaking events, and such knowledge also accumulates in ‘techniques’ (Spatz, 2015) regarding the use of the MWK. The development of the arts practice has revealed a range of dynamic relationalities between artmaking materials, the outdoor environment and the artist. Such relationalities are exemplified by the connection between emerging material properties in moments of creative experimentation and their implementation in the design and outdoor use of the MWK modules. My engagement with many outdoor artmaking situations prompted the formulation of a number of experiential schemas as a way of describing the experience of the outdoor world, for example the relationality of distance versus proximity. It has also led me to understand the outdoor environment and its plants, rocks, valleys, hills and animals as a material complexity that is similar to the material complexity within artmaking. Considering both, the outdoor processes and actions of artmaking, as a performance, led to the conclusion that this arts practice operates as a form of non-verbal, gestural transaction between the self and the other.
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Beat Soundtrack #33: Simon A. MorrisonDr Simon A. Morrison is interviewed for Rock & The Beat Generation about the relationship between the Beat and Rave scenes.
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Interview #28: Simon A. Morrison Beats on the dancefloor?Dr Morrison was influenced about his writing (specifically Dancefloor-Driven Literature) and wider career for the influential Substack publication.
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Transatlantic drift: The ebb and flow of dance music (podcast)I contributed an episode to the New Books Network podcast series looking at my last book, with my Transatlantic Drift co-author, Katie Milestone. Katie takes the story from WWII to the Millennium, then I carry it from there to the Millennium.
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A brief history of dance musicArticle featured in The Conversation on a brief history of dance music – from basements to beaches, dancefloors have mirrored social change.
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Book review: Jack Kerouac – Self-portrait: Collected Writings Edited by Paul Maher Jnr and Charles Shuttleworth (Sal Paradise Press / Rare Bird, 2025)Kerouac works unseen, unread but not unloved
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The beat travels back over the pond: UK and continental Europe, 1985-1990Titled Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music, this book tracks the evolving story of electronic dance music from WWII to the Millennium, as the beat bounced between Europe and North America. It will be published by Reaktion, in 2024. Music is not formed in isolation; humans are social animals, keen to draw on influences, to come together collectively, to share music, whether in their hometowns or travelling the world to share melody, and to feel the beat, communally. From Detroit to Wigan; from Dusseldorf to Chicago; from New York to Ibiza, the story of dance music has been a conversation between many people, in many, many different areas, communicating through the beat. This book will interrogate those ideas.
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Medium (un)specificity as material agency – the productive indeterminacy of matter/material (Russian Translation)In this article, I consider some of the debates brought to the fore by the proliferation of recent textile focused exhibitions; namely the tension between a continued allegiance to medium specific conventions and the richness, hybridity and heterogeneity afforded by the post-medium condition of contemporary art. Through a new body of sculptural and installational practice I propose a constellatory opening up of textile in which the medium specific can be (re)mapped in a fluid and fragmentary way. Drawing particular reference from Adorno’s conception of the constellation and mimetic comportment, this model of practice involves a mode of behaviour that actively opens up to alterity and returns authority to the affective indeterminacy of the sensuously bound experiential encounter. This is manifest through a range of practice strategies - “thingness”, “staged (dis)contiguity”, and the play between “sensuous immediacy and corporeal containment” - which mobilise a precarious relationship between processes of attachment and detachment. Acknowledging the critical currency afforded to textile through feminist and poststructuralist critique, the work moves away from “a rhetoric of negative opposition” and predetermined discursive frameworks, returning authority to the aesthetic impulse, privileging the ambiguous resonances of an abstract sculptural language over more overt strategies of representation.
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Home for the (Hollywood) holidays: Fathers, family, and the “true” meaning of Christmas on screenSince the 1940s, Hollywood has dominated the construction of the festive season in the Anglo-American cultural imaginary. The Hollywood Christmas film, commonly combining generic elements of comedy, drama, and/or romance, invariably centres on the family, whether its formation, its estrangement, or its idiosyncrasies, vulnerabilities and, inevitably, its resilience. Central to many such films, and building on a well-worn narrative that reaches all the way back to A Christmas Carol, is a man who must learn the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas. This lesson is invariably shaped by his fatherhood. (Re)discovering joy in the paternal role, or rejecting individual or financial achievement in favour of familial contentment, become pathways to masculine redemption. In exploring fatherhood in relation to this under-studied but commercially enduring form, this chapter examines examples including Elf (2003), Christmas with the Kranks (2004), Deck the Halls (2006), Four Christmases (2008), Love the Coopers (2015) and Daddy’s Home 2 (2017), interrogating the redemptive paternal narratives embedded within. In doing so, it acknowledges the particular construction of white, middle-class fatherhood in these films, and discusses this in the wider context of anxious white masculinity in post-millennial Hollywood. Into the twenty-first century, when Hollywood began to embrace a wider diversity of representation and express a tentative ambivalence towards the monolithic white, middle-class, American, heteronormative nuclear unit that has heretofore constituted the cinematic “family”, the contemporary Christmas film remains as a curiously nostalgic, conservative expression of family and, particularly, paternal values.
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Roberto Gerhard, Symphony No 5 reconstructed by Darren SprostonThis is a reconstruction of Roberto Gerhard's Fifth Symphony which was left incomplete and unpublished on his death. Archival material from the University of Cambridge has been used to recreate the work
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Too Good To Hide: Tony HayesThe article ‘Too Good To Hide: Tony Hayes’ was written in relation to the exhibition of the same name at the Rainbow Tea Rooms in Chester (July - October 2024). The exhibition was curated by Stephen Clarke, and was the fourth curatorial project for Clarke at the café’s exhibition space in Chester city centre. Tony Hayes is a photographer based in Widnes who has undertaken an AA2A (Artist Access to Art Colleges) residency at the University of Chester. In the article Clarke considers how the camera operates as a series of lenses and mirrors to view a subject. Clarke refers to the catalogue essay by John Szarkowski for the exhibition ‘Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960’ at the Museum of Modern Art New York in 1978. Szarkowski describes how a photographer uses a camera either as an objective ‘window’ to view the world or a subjective ‘mirror’ that reflects the photographer’s own sensibility. Clarke applies this discussion to the work of Tony Hayes who has made a series of photographs looking into shop windows that record both the view through the glass pane and the reflection of the photographer. Stephen Clarke and Tony Hayes were interviewed by Sean Styles on BBC Merseyside in Liverpool at 1.30pm on Sunday 6th October 2024.
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Stephen Clarke: Stars, Stripes and SteamThe photographs of New York city in this exhibition were taken by Stephen Clarke during two visits to New York in the mid-1990s. Paul Sampson, curator at Oriel Colwyn, organised the exhibition to coincide with the 2024 Presidential Election in the United States of America. The closing night of the exhibition was the final polling day for presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The starting point for this exhibition was a number of photographs of the US Flag – the Stars and Stripes – along with images of steam rising from the underground heating systems in New York city centre which gave the show its title – Stars, Stripes and Steam. This is a humorous comment on the nature of political discourse that mixes patriotism and heated debates. Stephen Clarke (photographer) and the Paul Sampson (curator) wanted the audience to reflect on the historical perspective of New York city while considering the future of the new presidency and the USA. This was Stephen Clarke’s second solo exhibition at Oriel Colwyn; his first was ‘Shifting Sands’ (22/12/12 – 15/03/13). Some of the photographs in Stars, Stripes and Steam were previously published by the independent photobook publisher Out Of Place Books (2020) in the photobook ‘NYC-19XX’ by Stephen Clarke.
