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CAL Arts Economies 2023-24
How can the arts and learning assist in supporting economies that bring fulfilling, ecological, ethical thriving? In 2023-2024 the Centre for Arts and Learning will be focusing research events and projects on Arts Economies.
The arts have ways of envisioning beyond the facticities and constraints of contemporary life (Beauvoir 1948, Matthews 2019, 2024, Sayers 2023). Arts practice also illuminates and exhibits the cause and effect of social inequality. The arts can activate creativity, imagination, wellbeing - even happiness, all of which are priceless. However economic decisions are also made about the impacts of the arts on each of these conditions.
Economies have extensive grids of past, present and future interactions. As Yanis Varoufakis says, everyone in society can discuss economic processes – and not just economists. Posthuman creative economies might critique the capitalism of ‘recycling’ (Varoufakis 2017), or ponder ‘the value of a whale’ (Buller 2022), in its ability to capture vast quantities of CO2 (Pearson et al. 2023). In a similar way, arts economies expand to consider impacts on inclusive human and other-than-human environments.
Arts practice sustains the singularities of self and also collective expression, in the relationships between materials and maker, concepts and creation, and via ecosystems of interdependency. Art genres mediate the light, shadows and materiality created by each other, and support one another in creative ecologies.
However in education we are constantly faced with cuts to the learning experiences that enable participation in, and contribution to purposeful, engaged, necessary experiences of the arts. Arts pedagogies that reflect on the implications of capitalism and possible alternatives, could help to reassign value, and potentially prevent this embezzling from creative futures.
On the one hand, artist educators may want to protest about the normative constructions of economic value, and neoliberal complicity in education. Yet with the rising costs of living, what will we all do as creatives, artist educators, researchers and students, to keep the quality of life of our communities and families above the spiralling costs? Are ‘desperate measures’ needed? Can society afford not to invest in the arts? How can makers find equitable ways to ‘make it’? The Centre for Arts and Learning will be discussing these and other questions in the 2023-24 Arts Economies programme of events.
- Beauvoir, S. de (1948) The Ethics of Ambiguity. New York: Open Road.
- Buller, A. (2022) The Value of A Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Pearson, H. C., Savoca, M. S., Costa, D. P., Lomas, M. W., Molina, R., Pershing, A. J., and others, (2023) ‘Whales in the Carbon Cycle: Can Recovery Remove Carbon Dioxide?’, Trends in Ecology & Evolution (Amsterdam), 38.3, 238–49.
- Matthews, M. (2019) Ethos of Ambiguity: Artist Teachers and the Transparency Exclusion Paradox, The International Journal of Art & Design Education, 38.4. 853–66.
- Matthews, M. (2024) Moving Beyond Immanence: in R. Payne ed., Professional Learning for Artist Teachers: Pedagogy, Practice and Partnership in UK Contexts. Maidenhead: Open University Press
- Sayers, E. (2023) Skateboarding, Time and Ethics: An Auto Ethnographic Adventure of Motherhood and Risk, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 17.3. 306–26.
- Varoufakis, Y. (2017) Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism. London: Penguin.
Upcoming events
Centre for Arts and Learning and Institute of Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship: CAL and ICCE Arts Economies Symposium, Wednesday 8 May 2024
Past events
2024
2023
- Theo Bryer, Maggie Pitfield and Jane Coles, Drama at the Heart of English: Transforming practice in the secondary classroom, 5 Dec 2023
- Arts Economies, Jenn Steverson, Diaspora Ecologies: Place-Based Textiles as a Response to Climate Change, 7 Nov 2023
- Ecologies in Practice: Education, The Arts and the Earth Crisis: Day 2 - 14 July 2023
- Ecologies in Practice: Education, The Arts and the Earth Crisis: Day 1 - 13 July 2023
- All For the Arts: A panel discussion with three Professors of Art Education and Visual Culture - Raphael Vella, Andrea Kárpáti and Kevin Tavin, 14 June 2023.
- Miranda Matthews, Arts Methods for the Self-Representation of Undergraduate Students: Sensory Transitions into University Cultures, 24 May 2023
- All For the Arts: Danny Braverman, Drama in Coaching, 10 May 2023
- All For the Arts: Carol Wild, Artist Teacher Practice and the Expectation of an Aesthetic Life, 29 March 2023
2022
- All For the Arts: Centre for Arts and Learning and A Particular Reality, Art, Learning and Anti-Racism Symposium, 12 December 2022
- All For the Arts: Centre for Arts and Learning and PSST Practice Research Network, Creating Practice Research, Dr Özden Şahin, 29 November 2022
- All For the Arts - John Baldacchino, Art's Exiting into the World: Willed Strangers in Pursuit of Inclusion, 1 November 2022
- Miranda Matthews CAL Ecologies in Practice: Weaving Threads, 13 July 2022
- Ecologies in Practice Series - WochenKlausur, What art can do, 4 May 2022
2021
- Ecologies in Practice - Bridget McKenzie
- Ecologies in Practice Symposium - ARLG: Un-preparing / Co-Creating / Developing, 14 December 2021
- Ecologies in Practice Symposium - Erin Manning: Out of the Clear, 14 December 2021
- Roberto Zamora Figueroa and Juan Pablo Zamora Figueroa: Mar & Cielo, a seed towards Regenerative Filmmaking, 14 December 2021
- Ecologies in Practice Symposium - Oli Savage, Greenhouse Theatre: Saving the World, One Theatre at a Time, 14 December 2021
- Ecologies in Practice Symposium - Miranda Matthews: A View of Ecologies in Practice, 14 December 2021
- Ecologies in Practice Symposium - Trish Scott: Residents - Ecologies in Practice at Goldsmiths CCA, 14 December 2021
- Ecologies in Practice Symposium - Dennis Atkinson: Practice, Interstices, Otherness and Taking Care, 14 December 2021
- Ecologies in Practice - Esther Sayers; Penny Hay, Andrew Amondson, Sasha Mballa: ArtScapers, Forest of Imagination and the Living Tree, 1 November 2021
- Affective Digital Presence, Stephanie Jeanjean and Emilie Gossiaux, In the Mind's Eye: Online Non-visual Learning and Accessibility, 14 July 2021
- Curating Inclusive Digital Practice in Museums and Galleries: Teresa Cisneros, Richard Martin, Trish Scott, 30 June 2021
- Affective Digital Presence, Paul Sutton and Max Dean, Computers and Theatre: The Interactive Story of Prospero and Participatory Drama, 26 May 2021
- Affective Digital Presence, Kimberley Foster, Karl Foster, Victoria Mitchell, AND/BUT, 3 February 2021
2020
- Affective Digital Presence, Jane Prophet, Co-designing Augmented Reality Apps with Community Participants, 9 December 2020
- Affective Digital Presence: Heather Barnett and Sarah Christie, Small Acts of Being, 25 November 2020
- Affective Digital Presence: Miranda Matthews and Francis Gilbert, Affective Digital Presence in Creative Practice, 3 November 2020
- Discomfort Zones: Raju Rage, Under/Valued Energetic Economies in Arts Pedagogy, 10 July 2020
- Discomfort Zones: Rob Pepper, The Art of Adventure, 1 July 2020
- Discomfort Zones: Blue Elephant, Online Forum Theatre Workshop, 23 June 2020