A Particular Reality (APR) at Bath Spa University

July 2023: Images and Text from @aparticularreality Instagram. A day with @aparticularreality  @bath_bafineart , @bathartdepot and @aparticularreality.
APR members @abhaya_rajani and @sarahhowe.co.uk travelled to Bath to spend the day with incredible Bath Spa members Bhavana Mohan, Jasmin, @kelseycruzmartin , Gina Smith and @natashakiddartist.

Founded in 2018, A Particular Reality is a collective formed by students, alumni and educators from the Fine Art departments at Goldsmiths University of London, Kingston School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University and Middlesex University; with a commitment to building creative learning environments upon the values of equity and care.

A Particular Reality intends to forge connections across creative disciplines amongst students, educators and makers. We intend to elevate individuals who identify with feeling isolated in respect of their cultural identity and lived experience. Students from Goldsmiths and Kingston expressed a desire to be proactive in helping to address this feeling, not only for themselves but for the benefit of future students. We are a space for sharing rather than telling. We are committed to providing a non-hierarchical space to support marginalised students and staff and cultivate creative expression.

We call for institutions to serve people’s differences better. We strive for those who make up the institution to feel more connected to a network of practitioners, creatives and collaborators.

Aparticularreality.co.uk

^{Image credit: APR abhaya_rajani sarahhowe 2023}

Inventory of Behaviours

June 2023: Hosted by @magnusquaife at UniArts Helsinki supported by the Kuno network

 #inventoryofbehaviours  Natasha Kidd with @kelly_at_large in collaboration with @joaddisonartist @nwtinstruct @jendunseath worked with students from Finland, Norway and Denmark to scrutinise the behaviours of artists and ask what can we learn from the way they ‘work’ with a focus on productivity, space, the body and wellbeing.

Inventory of Behaviours is a research project that investigates what the ordinary behaviours of artists can tell us about creativity. It is developed by artists/senior lecturers Jo Addison (Kingston University) and Natasha Kidd (Bath Spa University) in collaboration with Freelands Foundation.

Jo Addison & Natasha Kidd work collaboratively as No Working Title. The events they curate explore the dialogic relationships between making and learning; they expose learning as form.

Inventory of Behaviours

Image credit: N.Kidd K.Large 2023

ACCELERATE: Accessible Immersive Learning for Art and Design

May 2023: Live events happened simultaneously in Bath, London, Ireland, Ukraine, and Poland for the Launch of Accelerate outputs.

ACCELERATE was a strategic partnership project (2021–2023) funded by Erasmus+ to develop innovative methodologies, tools, platforms, and resources for accessible immersive learning in art and design education.  

ACCELERATE has a simple but ambitious aim: to improve the teaching of art and design at higher education in a post-pandemic Europe through the development of innovative methodologies, tools, platforms, and resources for accessible immersive learning. It does so by bringing together art and design lecturers, educational researchers, and learning technologists from the UK, Ireland, Poland, and Ukraine to reflect on the impact of COVID-19 and war, to explore new possibilities for pedagogy and digital innovation

At its heart, ACCELERATE is about digital innovation in response to the impact that COVID-19 has had—and continues to have—on university teaching. It is fundamentally a practice-based project in its investment in the agency of technology and follows a ‘thinking through making’ approach. It seeks to address the particular challenges in the teaching of art, design and related practice-based creative subjects where materiality, embodiment, and experientially are central to the learning experience and where, consequently, the transition to online and distance learning has presented acute difficulties.

Bath Spa University led the project with University of Arts London (UK), Institute of Art, Design and Technology (Ireland), SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Poland), Sumy State University (Ukraine) and Chernivtsi National University (Ukraine).

Results and resources are published on the project website: www.immersiveartdesign.net

Image credit: SWPS Sara Bos 2023

April 2023: Doing Together symposium Bath Spa University

doing together was a two-day making and sharing practice symposium at Locksbrook campus Bath Spa University. This event took the form of ‘doing together’ through practical workshops that share the work we make/do as practitioners. The aim is to foreground the methods we use for doing, and share them with others. The symposium culminated in a reflective discussion on the event that evolved.

Natasha Kidd ran ‘The Undoing of an Object’ a short practical workshop that attempts to interrogate the complexities of “thinking through making” by literally taking objects apart.   Deconstructing an object visually, materially and conceptually we will interrogate the processes within it:  making, looking, thinking, gathering and auditing together.

Jenny Dunseath ran ‘About Making: Keep Chewing the Gum’ a session aimed at audiences with an interest in art practice, this playful and sometimes stupid session, involved multi-sensory, participatory approaches. While focus, certainty, coherence, and singularity are commonly considered pedagogical ideals, this session explores the nature of an art practice and the relevance of distraction and uncertainty to promote flexible, multifaceted, adaptive, and associative thinking.