Context: Methods
Previous research focused on critical reflection within creative practices, particularly how through recorded and re-listened to conversations (interviews), and dialogic writing (using digital tools and platforms), we can develop our practices and identities as artists. Using autoethnography, a methodology to document and record our own lived experiences, undergraduate student participants and I (2014 -2018) experimented with different strategies to document making, thinking and talking about our work.
Outputs from this research:
· https://feltlikeit.wordpress.com/category/phd-research/ (Early Research Blog)
· https://drawnconversation.wordpress.com/ (Artist residency digital autoethnography)
· 10.5525/gla.thesis.82565 : Making the invisible visible: creating spaces for reflexive artistic practices through digital autoethnography (Thesis)
Post-doctorate I have continued to make work, write, and develop ideas that emerged from the process and outcomes of this research.
Context: Artistic Practice
My current artistic practice conceptually relates to protective armour construction, with reference to artefacts at Leeds, The Royal Armouries, research visits to the Welcome Collection and medical archives and my experiences of aging. Materially, I intend to build upon existing research concerned with bioceramics developed at Future Materials, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht and their open-source methods for making biodegradable air-drying ceramics with eggshell.
I have continued to use a blog (in its early stages) to share the documentation of the thinking, making, research, and outputs of this creative practice as a live document (making visible the indecision, decision-making, strategies, successes, failures, tactics, distractions and diversions) through different modes of writing: descriptive, reflective, explorative, personal, critical, informative and creative, as vehicles to demystify, and make the processes of making more transparent, or 'telling stories' about the research process. https://unravelling-practice.ghost.io/ghost/#/editor/post/68288159cf4d4b0008c01099
Examining my established methodology, previous and current body of work through the lens of Leeds Arts University Graduate Attributes, enables another layer of critical reflection through this discussion.
Graduate Attributes
· Self-directed – being confident in own abilities to set and accomplish challenging goals
· Collaborative - building belonging and resilience, through collaboration in personal and professional creative communities
· Critical - curious about the world and equipped to find creative solutions to problems through research, imagination, and critical thinking
· Professional - contextualises and applies their knowledge, skills, and mindset to thrive in professional settings
· Progressive - actively and ethically engaged with the world to make it a better, fairer, and more beautiful place
The ability to critically self-reflect is at the very centre of all these Graduate Attributes. To be self-directed and able to set challenging goals requires taking full ownership of an artistic practice as well as confidence and decisiveness. It was my interest in arts education, alongside my practice as an artist that formed my doctorate work. I wanted to address what I perceived as arts and design students often struggling to express and evidence their decision making, thinking, ongoing development, creative processes and professional identities for themselves and other audiences.
At the early stages of my research the decision to document making and thinking was expressed in the first blog post I made: https://feltlikeit.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/the-beginning/ and links to the first audio recording of my thoughts as I tried to articulate them: https://feltlikeit.podbean.com/e/the-beginning/ (Neil, 2013). It is an awkward listen! I am sharing it again because despite its clumsiness, tentativeness and confusion it was a pivotal moment in being decisive and setting a trajectory for a more critically engaged reflective practice. In this first blog post I unpack my thoughts and interrogate the artist statements that I had been reusing over several years, to: ‘re-examine what I considered my practice to be [and] how I have used words and language to define this. I knew what I liked doing, what I was drawn towards, but had reflected very little on why I was interested in those things and working in the way that I did.' (Neil, 2021: 134).
Feeling adrift from my own practice (this can happen at any time) required some deep introspection and a set of strategies to make work and possibly decide later what it is about. However, what we do and who we are as artists depends on how we contextualise and make sense of external circumstances and not isolated from them. Autoethnography is a powerful way to critically reflect on ourselves in the context of others, it ‘places emphasis on a transformative or emancipatory process for the individual and in the more widely constructed social relations in which the individual participates’ (Starr, 2010: 4).
Starr (2010) suggests that the transformative value of autoethnography is a result of ‘in- depth analysis of the complexity of the lived experiences of the self, the nature of the ebbs and flows’ (2010: 4) that as it becomes understood is examined in the context of the culture one is situated. Becoming confident with our artistic identities, positioned in the context of what we understand about artistic communities and professional settings is a critical position to take. My own challenges that I wanted to set myself emerged from a process of self-reflection and evaluation. Who was I as an artist, educator and researcher, what life experiences and knowledge do I bring with me that is valuable or requires challenging or questioning?
In critically reflecting on an existing personal artist statement (that no longer felt or sounded like me) I started to reframe my prior artistic practice, work and life experiences, and began to value the potential of this powerful intersection. Writing about this on a blog and imagining it being read, created an, albeit one sided, dialogue. Taking ownership of this work and decisions, and directions taken, enabled me to see how my ethos as an educator has been shaped, the direction my artistic practice might take and what my professional identity might be. This new understanding brought with it a sense of belonging and a confidence in the value of my own life experiences. This empowerment happened in a reflective space that I had created for myself using a blog and digital tools.
Collaboration has become an increasingly important aspect of my artistic practice. Not necessarily in the sense of working on something with the same intentions and aims as others, but more in terms of dialogue, sharing and forming ideas through communication and a desire to gain insight or new ways of looking. This was a prominent aspect of a residency I did at The Hunterian Museum in Glasgow where initially it was set up as a collaboration with the museum. I made work in response to their collections with an aim to bring visibility to their work and engage audiences. The idea of collaboration extended to how I thought of the visitors as participants in my creative process who encouraged dialogue and the revisiting of ideas. This collaborative approach, sharing and being open with the research and art work I was making, prompted rich critical reflection.
I had conversations with children and adults which challenged me to communicate in different ways. The change in audience, the dynamic I had with them and where I was in the process enabled me to find different ways to explain … I give slightly different versions of what I have done, what I intend to do, and what I expect to find out. (Neil, 2021)
Finding networks and organisations that aligned to my interests enabled different forms of sharing, presenting and conversations to happen. These began to diversify and included communities in fine art, digital technology, education and reflective practice. These different communities (groups, networks, organisations and societies) provided relevant but also diverse lenses to view my own interests and practice with. This brought challenge from different viewpoints and helped me to develop a flexibility in my thinking and new ways to explain and problem solve.
More recently collaboration has taken to mean working more directly with organisations and individuals. For example, there are existing recipes for bioceramics that I am interested in trying and developing for my own work. Future Materials, a collaboration between the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht and Central Saint Martins, London, have ‘Materials Bank’ https://www.futurematerialsbank.com/ an open source online archive of ‘materials and projects invented, discovered or re-discovered by creative practitioners from all over the world’ (Jan van Eyck Academie). Working with materials in their most raw form has always interested me (earth pigments, egg tempera, making paper from pulp, felt fabric from wool fibre) and I am also keen to pursue a more environmentally aware and sustainable practice. The Jan van Eyck Academie put this simply as ‘in the global transition towards sustainability, artists cannot stay behind’. This progressive approach had not previously been a central concern to my practice. It is probably through a developing awareness through my teaching and engagement with the issues made visible by students that this has become more prominent for my own artistic practice. Certainly, in terms of taking more consideration over how parts of the making process and outputs from it, may last, be sustainable, or be disposed of ethically and responsibly.
Concluding thoughts
There is more that could be discussed; however, I am able to make some initial observations. I notice how easily the Graduate Attributes were woven into my reflection. This has allowed me to make relationships between different experiences and my own post-graduate journey that I have not before. I have used the Graduate Attributes as a lens to reflect on my current positioning of my practice and arrived at a point where I am able to appreciate a more nuanced understanding of both. In my discussion I have also shared strategies which I have found helpful to stimulate my own curiosity and ambition. And with that, broadened my understanding of collaboration and desire to be more progressive in my practice(s) in research, education, and as an artist.
References
Neil, J., (2013). The beginning. Feltlikeit Wordpress Blog. 18 October 2013.
Available from: https://feltlikeit.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/the-beginning/
Neil, J., (2015). Reflection on The Hunterian Museum write up from Artist Residency 2014. [unpublished].
Neil, J., (2021) Making the invisible visible: creating spaces for reflexive artistic practices through digital autoethnography. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
Starr, L., (2010). The use of autoethnography in educational research: Locating who we are in what we do. Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education. 3(1), 1-9.