Call For Participants – Rethinking Food: The Creativity of Entrepreneurship Workshop, 3-6 October 2017

14 July, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Research Matters

Rethinking food: The creativity of entrepreneurship

Food, from production through consumption to waste is a complex system at the centre of human life and culture. Food therefore is an important new area for entrepreneurial activity and design has a key role to play in its development working with business and academia. How can researchers in design and business from the UK and Turkey work together to promote entrepreneurialism and sustainability?

This workshop will provide an important opportunity to share learning from and build on the successful 4 year Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Design in Action project. Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, led on the food theme resulting in several new startups.

Under the Researcher Links scheme offered within the Newton Fund, the British Council and TUBITAK will be holding a four-day workshop on design entrepreneurship in Istanbul, on 3-6 October 2017.

Based on a concept developed…

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CIWEM Award for LAGI Glasgow Project

1 November, 2016 by Leave a Comment

The Land Art Generator Glasgow project, a joint initiative between ecoartscotland (Chris Fremantle’s ongoing framework for research and practice) and the Land Art Generator Initiative has been awarded the Chartered Institution for Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM)’s Nick Reeves Award, the national art and environment award.  Chris has been involved in On The Edge Research since the inception.

lagi-glasgow

ecoartscotland is thrilled that the Land Art Generator Glasgow project has been awarded the 2016 Chartered Institution of Water and Environment Management (CIWEM) Arts, Water and Environment Award.

This award acknowledges the major commitment of all the partners, including Glasgow City Council, Scottish Canals and igloo Regeneration whose effective collaboration has made the project possible. And it celebrates the innovative work of the multidisciplinary design teams who participated, including the winning team (Dalziel + Scullion, Qmulus Ltd., Yeadon Space Agency, and ZM Architecture).

The combination of a Council committed to strategic planning and innovation with a land owner and a developer both committed to sustainability at the heart of regeneration has been crucial for the development of LAGI Glasgow.

CIWEM’s Arts and the Environment Network citation highlights the collaboration on the LAGI Glasgow project. The citation says,

The judging panel were particularly impressed by the practical orientation and ambitious…

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Sánchez-León and Douglas: There is a work in the interpretation of the Work* – A Report

21 October, 2016 by Leave a Comment

An interdisciplinary “bing”** seminar and public discussion in four parts.

Nuria Sánchez-León and Professor Anne Douglas have very kindly provided ecoartscotland with a detailed report on the recent seminar, “There is a work in the interpretation of the Work”, organised in conjunction with the exhibition “Context is Half the Work: A partial history of the Artist Placement Group” at Summerhall Arts Centre in Edinburgh.  The seminar particularly focused on the contemporary relevance of John Latham‘s Placement in the Scottish Office and his work reimagining the bings of West Lothian.  The seminar was organised by Tim Collins, Reiko Goto and Ross Maclean, respectively two artists and a landscape architect.

mm-5-273 John Latham facing the Niddrie Woman. Photo Murdo Macdonald

On Saturday 1st October, Summerhall, Edinburgh, between 60-70 people met in the former Royal School of Veterinary Studies, now a creative hub for the arts with studio and workshop spaces. It…

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John Newling: The Map Room of the Last Islands

14 August, 2015 by 1 Comment

Woodend Barn, Banchory, Aberdeenshire
22 August – 23 September 2015

This major exhibition of previously unseen work is a powerful, and visually beautiful, illustration of the ways in which artist John Newling explores the relationships between the natural world and systems of value within society.

Since 2009, Newling has been creating art works that are constructed, primarily, through the growing, observing and preserving of Moringa Oleifera trees.  Often referred to as the Miracle Tree or Famine Tree, gram for gram, the Moringa leaves contain: seven times the vitamin C in oranges, four times the calcium in milk, four times the vitamin A in carrots, two times the protein in milk and three times the potassium in bananas. It is for this and other extraordinary properties of this tree that it has been referred to as the world’s most generous tree.

The paintings are maps of a kind, into and through which Newling explores his relationship to the trees and to wider ecology. They are a truly beautiful cartography of language, colour and shape; islands that Newling hopes may never be lost.

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Energy Cities and Cultural Development

8 October, 2014 by 1 Comment
Walk Among The Worlds by Maximo Gomez. Photo: Alain Sojourner http://alainsojourner.com/nuit-blanche-toronto-2014-walk-among-the-worlds/

Walk Among The Worlds by Maximo Gomez. Photo: Alain Sojourner http://alainsojourner.com/nuit-blanche-toronto-2014-walk-among-the-worlds/

We’ve never been to a conference on the cultural and creative industries at a University that didn’t have someone providing a theoretical critique of the subject. On 1st October Robert Gordon University and the City of Aberdeen co-hosted an event which drew on the experiences of other energy capitals to understand cultural and creative industries development. Pacem critique, this was a morning full of insight into the sorts of strategies, policies and actions that make a difference to cities and see the arts thrive as part of their communities. It benefited from specific experience of being a European Capital of Culture (something Aberdeen aspires to) and it was a good renewal of the process of building a culture and arts development agenda for Aberdeen.

The subtitle was ‘Global Energy Cities and Cultural Illumination’ but the real point is that Energy Cities with strong industrial stories have specific challenges not answered by the narrative of post industrial regeneration.

Jon Price, Chris Fremantle and Mark Hope were amongst a number of researchers and research partners from or associated with Gray’s School of Art (part of the Robert Gordon University) attending the conference. These notes and comments are an immediate response to the presentations from the four cities represented.

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Are dialogic and relational aesthetics relevant to all participatory and co-creative practitioners?

6 January, 2014 by 6 Comments

One of the questions we asked in the conclusions of the Practising Equality paper (2013), looking across art, design, architecture and new media at practices of co-creativity and participation, is whether the development of thinking about the aesthetics of participation in art has relevance to design, architecture and new media?

The emergence of a debate around the aesthetics of process and the social in art is one of the important developments of the past 25 years. Whether we are talking about Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’ discussing participatory work in galleries, or Kester’s attention to ‘dialogic aesthetics’ in situated practices, or Bishop’s interest in the perversity of participation, all are concerned with an aesthetics of process and social relations.

Suzanne Lacy, who is both the subject of one of Kester’s case studies and also a contributor to the discourse herself, draws attention to Allan Kaprow’s concerns. Kaprow’s practice is fundamentally participatory and co-creative, though not in any utilitarian sense. His ‘scores’ and ‘happenings’ presage many of the concerns of Bourriaud, Kester and Bishop.

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On Calendar Variations

23 April, 2011 by 2 Comments

Coessens, K. and Douglas, A. (2011) On Calendar Variations. Banchory: Woodend Barn.
Publication associated with exhibition at Woodend Barn, Banchory, Aberdeenshire (2-27 April, 2011).
With artistic contributions of Georgina Barney, Chris Fremantle, Reiko Goto, Fiona Hope, Jono Hope, Janet McEwan, Chu Chu Yuan.

Calendar Variations is a collaborative art research project that responds to Kaprow’s Calendar score,  1971.  Developed by a group of artist researchers from On The Edge Research, the project started as a response to the Unexpected Variations research festival, September 2010, at the Orpheus Research Institute in Musical Practice, Ghent.

First of all we performed the score through drawing, interpreting drawing through a variety of possible responses.  Each individual was invited to respond from within their own aesthetic understanding.  We then came together and shared our productions, seeking agreement about how to perform the score together.  We decided to walk the score.

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