Items where Subject is "Social sciences"

Inclusivity and Equality in Performance Training focuses on neuro and physical difference and dis/ability in the teaching of performance and associated studies. It offers nineteen practitioners’ research-based teaching strategies, aimed to enhance equality of opportunity and individual abilities in performance education.
Challenging ableist models of teaching, the sixteen chapters address the barriers that can undermine those with dis/ability or difference, highlighting how equality of opportunity can increase innovation and enrich the creative work. Key features include:
• Descriptions of teaching interventions, research and exploratory practice to identify and support the needs and abilities of the individual with dis/ability or difference
• Experiences of practitioners working with professional actors with dis/ability or difference, with a dissemination of methods to enable the actors
• A critical analysis of pedagogy in performance training environments; how neuro and physical diversity are positioned within the cultural contexts and practices
• Equitable teaching and learning practices for individuals in a variety of areas, such as: dyslexia, dyspraxia, visual or hearing impairment, learning and physical dis/abilities, wheelchair users, aphantasia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autistic spectrum.

The chapter contents originate from practitioners in the UK, USA and Australia working in actor training conservatoires, drama university courses, youth training groups and professional performance, encompassing a range of specialist fields, such as voice, movement, acting, Shakespeare, digital technology, contemporary live art and creative writing.
Inclusivity and Equality in Performance Training is a vital resource for teachers, directors, performers, researchers and students who have an interest in investigatory practice towards developing emancipatory pedagogies within performance education.

In recent years, the mainstream press in the UK and France have devoted significant attention to illustrated imagery in communicating contemporary events. In particular, the illustrated image via reportage has become a prominent tool for articulating the identities of individuals at the margin of society, for example victims of war, refugees and displaced people. This article explores this alternative method of reporting by focusing on the considerable coverage that the Jungle camp at Calais has received through reportage across the British and French press and beyond. Utilising Fuyuki Kurasawa’s essay ‘Humanitarianism and the Representation of Alterity: the Aporias and Prospects of Cosmopolitan Visuality’ (2010), the article looks at the reporting of the refugees’ situation through an analysis of illustrations presented in articles and blogs published by The Guardian, Le Monde, Libération and Arte. It examines the potential for reportage illustrations to provide ‘thicker’ representations, more complex discourses and new or alternative approaches to the construction of identities, in particular identities that constitute ‘the other’ within the contemporary European scopic regime. The article finds that the construction of the subjects’ identity follows established tropes which are related to the methods and conditions of creation, and that there is a need to query existing approaches in order to question dominant discourses of identity. Moreover, we suggest that within the case of such image making, it is the identity of the artist/publisher/reader that is ultimately asserted, within the context of a humanitarian discourse.

Alongside South India’s rapid urbanisation, the early decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed the arrival of new digital technologies and social media platforms in India, opening new possibilities for performance on a mediatised urban and global stage. In a wave of popular performance practices emerging around 2011–2, Bengaluru (as with other cities across India) became the site to a host of flash mobs staged in urban spaces and filmed for online publics. This chapter examines the flash mob performance trend of that era in relation to national discourses of ‘New India’as an example of forms of cultural practice characterised by an ‘aesthetics of arrival’ in globalising India.

Students entering art and design courses in UK higher education come from a range of educational and cultural backgrounds. These students frequently report finding academic writing challenging. Expectations as to the nature of description, analysis and criticality can also differ across subject areas. As a result, students need support in developing their ability to communicate appropriately within their disciplines – their academic literacies. This study applies genre analysis to identify ways in which students express critical thinking in undergraduate Visual Effects Design and Production essays. The findings highlight common ways of linking ideas through exemplification, drawing conclusions from grounds, and challenging the validity of assumptions. Ways of expressing the strength of claims and indicating the writer’s attitude are also frequently used in the sample. The findings are then integrated into a practical model for impromptu teaching of writing by subject lecturers. The article confirms understandings of the way students express criticality in essays, and aligns insights from genre analysis and academic literacies in a novel way. The outcome is a proposal for a practical, low-preparation approach to teaching academic writing within the disciplines.

Young men, especially from working-class backgrounds, often lack the space, capacity, or opportunity to reflect upon masculinities and their role in shaping future trajectories. By devising mechanisms to engage young men differently in creative activities, participants in our project were supported to think beyond assumed futures and explore new possibilities. Mobilizing the theory of possible selves, this article draws on data across three creative university outreach workshops in England with 18 participants who were given the opportunity to explore masculinities using creative writing, photography, and dance/movement. Combining artifact analysis and semi-structured interviews, the article argues that these workshops created safe spaces for young men to articulate their concerns and fears about harm and risk in everyday life while facilitating an exploration of alternative possible selves.

This article contextualizes and characterizes the Venezuelan feminist film collective Grupo Feminista Miercoles. Founded by Venezuelan Josefina Acevedo and Italians Franca Donda and Ambretta Marrosu, among others, Grupo Feminista Miercoles (1979–88) produced the documentary Yo, tu, Ismaelina (‘I, you, Ismaelina’) (1981) and the videos Argelia Laya, por ejemplo (‘Argelia Laya, for example’) (1987), Eumelia Hernandez, calle arriba, calle abajo (‘Eumelia Hernandez, up and down the street’) (1988) and Una del monton (‘One of the bunch’) (1988), and participated in several activities organized by the Venezuelan women’s movement. On the one hand, this article pays attention to both the cinematic and political contexts that allowed the emergence of this collective, with a focus on the influence that Italian cinematic and feminist ideas had in these contexts. On the other hand, it also provides formal analysis of the collective’s filmography and explores how feminist ideas and praxis are deployed in its films. The overall aim of this article is to restore the contributions of Grupo Feminista Miercoles to both Latin American political cinema and transnational feminist cinema.

Cine Mujer was the name of two feminist film collectives, one founded in Mexico (1975–1986) and the other in Colombia (1978–1999). Sharing the same name but with no ties between each other, these collectives produced films that provided different representations of women, politicized personal experiences and domestic spaces, and promoted processes of consciousness-raising. Broadly, this article looks at the Cine Mujer collectives as part of a larger phenomenon that, although informed by second-wave feminism and the New Latin American Cinema, can be better understood within the singular complexity of Latin American women’s movements. Specifically, it analyses two documentaries, Cosas de mujeres (1978) and Carmen Carrascal (1982), produced by the Cine Mujer collectives in Mexico and Colombia, respectively. Drawing on Laura Marks’ work on hybridity, excess, and haptic visuality, this article explores the relation between modes of production and representation in these films and positions them as emblematic examples of a formative moment in Latin American feminist documentary. By emphasizing the emotional and sensorial appeal of these films, this article also attempts to expand what is understood by political cinema.

This paper presents an overview of an exploratory case study collaboration between Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in support of an RNLI delivery programme for international community management of drowning prevention in low-resource environments. The study focuses on the development of low-volume public rescue throw-lines that can be community made and maintained, the assembly and use of which are supported by a set of RNLI-developed instruction manuals intended for universal dissemination. The study examines the clarity of the instructions in the context of the makers’ interpretation of the manuals within the local constraints of Zanzibar. Preliminary findings indicate that these universally intended instruction manuals, in their current format, are open to interpretation, producing unsafe drowning prevention rescue lines that do not meet safety-critical standards. A re-design of the manuals through creative collaboration in a local context are the outcomes of this research. Discussion is also given as to whether a universal instruction manual should be the desirable outcome.

In Theodor Adorno’s writing the term “natural history” has quite a different meaning to its usual scientific usage. Adorno’s idea of natural history aims at reconciling, in form and in content, the opposing forces of nature and history with the aim of overcoming the division of natural being and historical being that Adorno considered to be the central problem of critical social theory. Through sprawling installations the French contemporary artist Pierre Huyghe creates new forms of interaction between natural systems and artificial constructs. Huyghe’s body of work is submitted to interpretation through Adorno’s dialectic of nature and history to establish the relevance of both Huyghe’s practice and Adorno’s thought to the conditions of the Anthropocene.

The idea of a ‘third space’ located between academic and professional domains has proven useful in exploring changing academic and professional roles in higher education, including in online learning. However, the role of technology in accounts of third space activity remains under‐explored. Drawing on research into the introduction of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) at three UK higher education institutions, it is argued that both social and technical factors must be considered to understand, plan for and manage the third space roles and structures which emerge in such initiatives. This study focuses on learning designers, confirming that they act as third space ‘blended professionals’ in the somewhat distinctive case of MOOC development. However, it also proposes the concept of a socio‐technical third space in which blended professionals act as hubs in a metaphorical network of activity, using social and technical means to shape their own roles and those of others.

In university educational technology projects, collaborations with external partners pose a range of opportunities and challenges. Educational projects are often associated with unbundling of conventional higher education roles though there is limited empirical work in this area. This is particularly the case with massive open online courses (MOOCs), where further research is needed into the production of courses and the roles of those who produce them. This study investigated the extent to which conventional roles of academics are unbundled during MOOC production partnerships between universities and an external MOOC platform provider. The findings indicate that aspects of conventional educator roles are substantially unbundled to learning designers and other seemingly peripheral actors. Unbundling is partially driven by pragmatic decisions shaping course production processes which need to accommodate the massive and open properties of MOOCs, the nature of cooperation agreements with external platform providers and the reputational risk associated with such public ventures. This study adds to empirical knowledge on the unbundling of roles in online learning projects, and the findings have relevance for those involved in decision-making, planning and development of such projects in higher education.

Exploring musicactively can be restricted for someone with cognitive, physical, or sensory impairments. They may face barriers to participation and diminished experiences between their musical expression and the music making means available to them. Technology can be used to bridge these gaps and focus on a person’s capability to create personal instruments that allow for active music making and exploration of sound. Thisdoctoral research aims to look at the use of music technology within the school setting and the needs of the users and those around them.Drawing on this and following an Action Research methodology, a tool will be developed following a participatory design process that utilises both hardware and software, in a modular fashion, to provide a flexible and adaptable system to facilitate music making and sound exploration.The desired outcome will be a toolbox that allows users to put together instruments that suit the needs of those playing them allowing access to musical expression.

Zine, self and micro-publishing has seen a spectacular resurgence in the
last decade, with individuals within tight communities pushing the boundaries of the practice in terms of form, content and process.

This paper will examine ways in which this reinvestment of illustrative authorship
has been stimulated by the iterative and performative aspects of zines, self and
micro-publishing, through the discussion of varied publications’ genesis with their
illustrators – including my own self-published book The House.

This paper will consider how performance underpins both the motivation and
creative process of such publications so as to highlight potential contributions of
the scene to wider illustrative authoring practices.

This research explores how blind and visually impaired (VI) people can engage with e-textiles in creative and tactile ways, by making interactive e-textile art pieces to tell their own stories. Touch, gestures used to interact with textiles and e-textiles, and association of meaning with objects are central concerns of the work, in the context of how different materials can evoke and be used in self-expression. The research focuses on how VI participants can design and make their own e-textile objects, bringing in ideas of empowerment and agency, and drawing attention to what characterises an effective ‘participatory making’ environment.
Three studies are reported. The first study observed practices at two schools for blind and VI children/young people to establish how ‘objects of reference’ are used within the classroom environment, and what other sensory stimulation is important. The second study involved two series of hands-on e- textile making workshops, at a charity for VI people, and at a contemporary art gallery, to explore how visually impaired participants can design and make personal e-textile objects. The third, a laboratory study, investigated what associations and gestures visually impaired participants used with e-textile sensors that had different textures and functioned in different ways. The research explored the potential of participatory making of e-textiles in terms of touch, personal association, accessibility, and creativity.
The research identifies some effective practices for participatory making of e-textiles with visually impaired people, including a modular approach to circuit-making. It highlights the importance of ownership of the process for the participants. It demonstrates that, although there is ‘no common language of gesture’ for touch-based interaction with e-textiles, conventions can be established through example or consistent use. It outlines the ‘lessons learned’ in working with blind and visually impaired people, which can inform other researchers, designers, or artists interested in participatory making.

To commemorate this momentous occasion, a scheme was launched under the rubric “The Kangaroo and the Eagle: Allies in War and Peace 1908 – 2018”, which devised and funded several historical and creative projects. One such project involved an invitation to 6 artists in Australia and 6 in the USA, who were tasked with creating an artwork that reflected upon this unique moment in the two country’s history. The twelve selected artists each had experience of working with the military in a range of ways.

Following recent endeavours that have unearthed women’s cinema and reclaimed its contribution to film history, this video essay revisits the filmography of the Colombian feminist film collective Cine Mujer (1978–1999). Narrated by three of its members—Eulalia Carrizosa, Patricia Restrepo, and Clara Riascos—through semi-structured interviews that intersect the personal, professional and political, this short film also reuses Cine Mujer’s archive. Its purpose is, one the one hand, to contribute to restoring its legacy and, on the other hand, to reframe and resignify its images within women’s ongoing battle for equality.

Making textiles with others is an exciting and unconventional way of doing research. It has developed from the discipline of textiles practice, but can be readily adapted within other disciplines, bringing arts-based research approaches into conversation with social science research. Textile-making activities can include knitting, sewing, crochet, weaving, dyeing, braiding and embroidery; we consider ‘making’ to also include related activities such as handling textiles or playing with clothes. There are many ways of Making Textiles Together: it should be thought of as an approach rather than a single method.

Making together is the key element of this approach. Activities can be highly diverse in terms of context, format and intention, from drop-in workshops to open-ended creative projects that might extend for months, or even years. They might be synchronous or asynchronous and might take place in person or online. Participants might contribute to one shared piece of work or work on individual textile pieces side by side.

These activities can be used to generate rich data of multiple types. Data might take form in the creative work itself or data might be generated alongside the things being made, for example in the form of audio recordings of discussions, observational notes, or video footage of gestures and interactions. Data can be generated by the researcher, by the participants, or both.

Making Textiles Together offers flexibility in terms of research questions. The approach can be used to investigate something that is closely linked to the act of making, such as how people with different cultural backgrounds learn hand-crafting skills. Alternatively, it can be used to research a completely different topic. For instance, the research focus might be to explore people’s coping strategies when grieving and the researcher might choose a textile making activity to create the desired environment for sharing these personal and sensitive stories. A third possibility is an action research approach that uses making to address and solve problems or create items that can be used directly by the participant group, such as mending garments or creating objects to meet specific needs.