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CAMC Curates is the newsletter for the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities with updates, news and events from our expert and engaged researchers.
Events
Potent Relics
Lecture: 13 May, 6-7pm
Register here
Professor Juliet Simpson will give her inaugural lecture on ‘Potent Relics – Art and Memory Matters’ on 13 May 2021 (6-7pm, online). In a journey that takes us from cathedrals to the smallest personal keepsake, ‘Potent Relics’ sheds new light on the pivotal contributions made by artists, via monuments and objects to shape present and future memory-making.
Exhibition: 12th April – 30th June
Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire
SelfScapes, a research cluster led by Jo Sperryn-Jones (CAMC), focuses on the relationship between self and its environment by investigating both the body and place as sites for interconnected experiences. SelfScapes received Arts Council England funding last year to collaborate with Forestry England. includes academics from York St John and Professor Mike Collier from University of Sunderland. Several research events culminated in 19 artists, including Jo, creating work for an exhibition of sculpture, photography, painting and sound works, currently on display throughout Dalby Forest in Yorkshire from the 12th of April until the end of June.
Click here for further information or contact Jo Sperryn-Jones
Life Futures
Roundtable: 26 May, 5.30-6.30pm
On zoom – registration link coming soon
Daniele Lorenzini, Carolina Rito and Federico Testa are organising the first Life Futures event via Zoom on Wednesday, May 26, 5.30pm. The event invites participants to join forces in a process of collective imagination about a post-Covid future. Guest speakers include: Miguel de Besitegui (Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), Chiara Bottici (New School, New York), Maurice Stierl (PAIS, Warwick), and Martina Tazzioli (Goldsmiths, London). This is a collaboration between Coventry University, University of Warwick and City of Culture 2021.
Orbiting the Liverpool Biennial PGR Symposium
Suzanne Treister, HFT The Gardener , Liverpool Biennial 2016. Venue: Exhibition Research Lab (ERL), Liverpool School of Art and Design.
Online symposium: 28-29 May
Register here.
The Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities, Transart Institute (New York-based PhD programme) and Liverpool John Moore University are organising the first joint PGR symposium on curatorial practices. Speakers include Joasia Krysa (Liverpool John Moore University), Manuela Moscoso (curator of LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL 2021 “The Stomach and the Port”), Carolina Rito (CAMC), and Bill Balaskas (Kingston University). CAMC researcher Carolina Rito will explore how new curatorial and artistic practices are modifying the ways we think about both knowledge production and research in the cultural sector and in academia. Visit the programme here.
For questions, please contact Carolina Rito.
Carolina Rito’s Institution as Praxis at ICA
Online talk: available here from 19 April - 19 May
Institution as Praxis – In Conversation is a pre-recorded event that centres around the book Institution as Praxis – New Curatorial Directions for Collaborative Research, edited by Carolina Rito and Bill Balaskas (Sternberg Press). The publication explores the question: How are curatorial and artistic practices advancing new research methods? In this discussion, Rito and Balaskas are joined by farid rakun from ruangrupa – the Jakarta-based artists’ collective, the curators of next year’s documenta 15; and Pujita Guha and Abhijan Toto – the co-directors of The Forrest Curriculum, which is an itinerant and nomadic platform for mutual co-learning and ‘indisciplinary’ research.
The discussion will be available on ICA’s digital platform Cinema 3 from 19 April and will be available to view until 19 May, 7pm. Watch here.
CFP & Virtual Joint 2021 CAMC-Coventry-Warwick PGR Symposium
Vincent van Gogh, Flowering Almond Blossom (1890), Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, Creative Commons (Wikimedia, Open Source).
Symposium: 19 May, 9.30am-4.00pm
Online, hosted by the University of Warwick
Following the success of last year’s first virtual symposium hosted by CAMC, our May 2021 event will take place online, on 19th May 2021, jointly convened by Prof. Juliet Simpson (CAMC) and Dr Rosie Dias (Warwick).
In the spirit of nourishing our joint PGR communities, we hope that the 2021 event will provide opportunities for PGRs to come together to communicate their research, discover shared interests, grow networks and benefit from dialogue with colleagues.
Practice Research: Interdisciplinary Methodologies in Cultural Institutions and HEIs Symposium
Symposium: 10 June, 10am-4.30pm
Online. Register here.
Carolina Rito (CAMC) and Anthony Downey (BCU) are organising a research event with practitioners and researchers in the field of practice research to explore and discuss the challenges and opportunities in developing new methodologies in research-led practices and in collaborations with the cultural sector. The event will foster a conversation between arts professionals—artists, curators, and directors of cultural organisations—and PhD students, early career researchers, and postgraduates to collectively consider how academic research can evolve from “research about” to “research with” cultural organisations and via critical methodologies. This event is in collaboration with the AHRC Midlands4Cities DTP.
Speakers: Bill Balaskas (Kingston), Michael Birchall (Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst), Anthony Downey (BCU), Mel Jordan (CPC), Emily Pringle (Tate), Carolina Rito (CAMC), Michael Schwab (JAR), Gavin Wade (Eastside Project).
For more details and questions, please email Carolina Rito.
Research News
Black Arts Movement in Coventry: new Critical Practices Talks
© Eddie Chambers, ‘Destruction of the National Front’, 1979-80. Image: © Garry Jones, Thirteen Ways of Looking (2 October - 13 December 2020), Herbert Art Gallery & Museum.a
A new strand in the Critical Practices Talks has been launched on the Black Arts Movement in Coventry. This project is part of the Coventry City of Culture 2021 programme, in collaboration with Coventry University, the Herbert Gallery and Museum and MAOKWO.
Curator and researcher Ian Sergeant gives an overview of the social-political context in which the Black Arts Movement emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the UK. Sergeant explains the conditions in which this group of artists started to reflect on intersectional issues of race, gender and politics of representation. Also, Ian explores the international solidarities reflected on the Pan-Afrikan Connection exhibition at the Herbert in 1983, and the relevance of the music scene (e.g., ska, reggae and Coventry-born two-tone).
BALEAP 2021
Online recording available here.
Dr Niall Curry recently spoke at the BALEAP 2021 online conference, hosted by the University of Glasgow. He gave two invited talks on digital pedagogy and teaching writing on April 7th. The first talk “Investigating the Use of Write & Improve for Developing Written Language and Writing Skills” focused on his research published earlier this year and discussed how we can use technologies, like Write & Improve, to develop learners’ written language and writing skills. This talk was pre-recorded and available for participants to watch in advance of the live session.
The second talk “Digital Pedagogy and Online Learning: Reflections and Applications for Teaching EAP” was live and drew on his recent research on digital pedagogies and grant award from the Institute of Coding. It outlined how we can effectively support the development of a digital pedagogy. Both talks were funded by Cambridge University Press and are featured as recordings on their digital pedagogy website, here. Niall was also one of two invited speakers and a panel member the University of Limerick’s “Intercultural Writing” event, on April 29th. Niall spoke about writing as a cultural, intercultural, and transcultural phenomenon and discussed ways in which we can support and engage with PhD writers who bring different perspectives and languages to their English language academic writing practices.
Corpora in Applied Linguistics: Broadening the Agenda
Dr Niall Curry also co-organised a successful BAAL/CUP symposium with colleagues Dr Robbie Love (Aston University) and Dr Gavin Brookes (Lancaster University) at Aston University. The symposium “Corpora in Applied Linguistics: Broadening the Agenda” was a two-day event on April 15th and 16th. There were 12 talks, 2 plenaries, and a live panel and 200 participants registered for the event. The talks throughout were well attended and the symposium, which was funded £1500 by BAAL, created a space of interesting and valuable discussions. There are a number of publications being written to document the outcome of the event.
Publications
We are delighted to announce the publication of two new monographs by CAMC colleagues, Dr Victoria Leonard on Bodily Fluids in Antiquity, Routledge, and Dr Imogen Peck on Recollection in the Republics. Memories of the British Civil Wars in England, 1649-1659, OUP: both published this week.
You are warmly invited to join us for a CAMC hosted ‘New Publications Celebration’ on 20th May at 2pm (online) to celebrate Victoria’s and Imogen’s achievements and hear more about the research which have inspired their work. Please contact research.fah@coventry.ac.uk for more information.
You can find out more about the books below.
Bodily Fluids in Antiquity
Bodily Fluids in Antiquity is co-edited by Dr Victoria Leonard, Research Fellow at CAMC, with Prof. Mark Bradley (University of Nottingham) and Dr Laurence Totelin (Cardiff University). The edited volume was published by Routledge on 27 April 2021, and follows an international conference supported by the Wellcome Trust that was held in 2016. Offering a range of scholarly approaches and voices in twenty-four chapters, this volume explores how ideas about the body and the fluids it contained and externalised are culturally conditioned and ideologically determined. The analysis encompasses the key geographic centres of the ancient Mediterranean basin, including Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and Egypt. By taking a longue durée perspective across a richly intertwined set of territories, this collection is the first to provide a comprehensive, wide-ranging study of bodily fluids in the ancient world.
You can find more information about Dr Leonard's edited volume here.
Recollection in the Republics
This week sees the publication of CAMCE Research Fellow Dr Imogen Peck's first book, Recollection in the Republics: Memories of the British Civil Wars in England, 1649-1659, published by Oxford University Press. The very first study of the ways Britain’s domestic conflicts were remembered in their immediate aftermath, it sheds fresh light on England's republican interval, early modern memory, and the experience of post-civil war states more broadly.
You can find more information about Dr Peck's monograph here.
hEDS Together
Dr Sally Pezaro's (CAMC) has a new article published in partnership with Dr Gemma Pearce from the School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences and Dr Emma Reinhold, Primary Care Advisor to EDS UK. It sets out new clinical care considerations for those birthing with hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndromes (hEDS) and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD) and introduces their new initiative, hEDS Together.
Problematic substance use among UK midwives
Dr Pezaro also has a new editorial written in partnership with Dr Karen Maher from the School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences. It introduces a founding study to explore problematic substance use among UK midwives, and invites them all to participate in this study before September 2021.
The link to participate is here.
Using non-representational theory to explore older people’s travel to and from the supermarket
Dr. Emma Waight (CAMC) has recently published an article in Mobilities entitled ‘Using non-representational theory to explore older people’s travel to and from the supermarket’ in collaboration with Yuanyuan Yin (University of Southampton).
In this article, they draw on a qualitative research study with participants over the age of 65 living in the UK as they investigate their journeys to and from the supermarket. They present three vignettes/personas of individuals with differing needs and experiences and find that their grocery shopping journeys are not just about procuring food but also sociomaterial events that both affect, and are affected by, bodily capabilities and mental wellbeing.
Dr. Gadakari’s (CAMC) paper, published in the Journal of Aging and Social Change, is one of several publications produced as part of the recently concluded ESRC funded, Euro-China collaborative project titled, ODESSA: Optimising Care Delivery Models to Support Ageing-In-Place.
The project worked with people across UK, France and China, over the traditional retirement age of 60, with a particular focus on the over 80s, to find new and innovative ways of adapting a person’s home so that they can live independently for longer and avoid going into residential care as well as making it easier for them to access public services such as health and social services.
It contributes original research by building a common framework for the study of care delivery mechanisms that meet older people's needs in China, UK and France, through exploring the relationships between living arrangement, living environment and the design of care delivery from technological, financial, political, social and cultural perspectives.
Image credit: Yellow House, by John Devane
