Collaborative Engagements
Collaborative engagements consist of a cluster of research projects with a broad reach across creative communities. As a whole, this grouping engages in cross-project international activity in many countries.
Collaborative engagements core areas:
- Higher Education Research in Art & Design;
- Testing Space: innovations in independent publishing;
- Sound/Image Mix: encounters between sound, music,and the visual arts,
- Fashion for Inclusivity: working with the clothed body.
Higher Education Research in Art & Design is undertaken by Jeffries, Titley and Clarke. Central to Jeffries’ work in games design is to make explicit educational perspectives between academics and practitioners on skills for creativity, to influence creative curriculum in Art and Design higher education. Experimental research methods are used for his empirical findings to contradict anecdotal views regarding differences between academia and industry. Clark interrogates the practice of painting and printmaking within a European and International context. Titley’s work also brings creative communities and education together through the exchange of artworks on the theme of ‘This is England’ and ‘This is Pakistan’. Exhibited in both countries, artworks depicted cultural life in Lahore and Lancashire created by students, staff, and local communities. Alongside such works are a range of digital video and printmaking skill demonstrations, lectures, talks and interactive educational archive.
With Testing Space: innovations in independent publishing our collaborative engagements seek out places and people with the express purpose to create new ways of presenting and questioning Art & Design. Atkinson collaborates with artists of international significance, to curate and create collectable editions of their work. The emphasis is on publishing constraints of major museums, galleries, and mainstream publishing houses. The result is that Café Royal is recognised internationally as an influential publishing house, pivotal in the 'small-press boom' of the past five years. Murray’s research is in contrast to other photographic investigations of everyday life. His work, such as Preston is my Paris, appropriates vernacular methods of production and print materials intending to encourage participation with an audience beyond the conventional art world.
Our collaborations within Sound/Image Mix focus on sound art, music, and the visual arts. This has developed a discourse which often flows between non-western cultural practices and the avant-garde in Europe and the U.K. Caswell’s collaboration to analyse Korean folk music. At the core of which is how the study of a culture-specific topic can benefit from multidisciplinary insights. Gregory’s examination of the history of audio art in Japan such as through “Encounters in a Universal Ocean: Autonomy and the Sonic Arts in Japan”, continues to reflect on the theoretical and cultural interactions between musicians and artists. In Alkers collaboration “The wonderful and Frightening world of the Fall” the divide between popular culture and the avant-garde is explored. Indeed, the iconic place of the seminal Manchester band The Fall is fundamental to how Alker deconstructs the language of popular culture and issues of authorship and authenticity. Issues reflected in Gregory’s research. Mackintosh’s artwork also parallels Gregory’s examination of Shezad Dawood and Makoto Kawabata’s work: their uncompromising dedication to the spontaneous; the embracing of chance through their art practice. Mackintosh’s seemingly spontaneous and disposable work believes his interrogation of “information overload” reflects on radical Japanese sound artist. In this respect, our work can exist equally within and in between, the worlds of music and art.
Fashion for Inclusivity: working with the clothed body creates a unique focus for the exchange of expertise between medical science and the culture of fashion. In Candy’s influential research, data is interpreted to convey the emotional, tactile, and aesthetic significance of clothing style. Her research highlights the polarity between clinical, functional attitudes towards shoes and the experiences of wearers.