art-research-teach
Welcome!
Making ART. Doing RESEARCH. Being a TEACHer.
Some call the connections between these three things a/r/tography*.
This site is intended to be an extension to my sketchbook: an online place of exploration, to connect ideas using arts-based approaches, to think about artist-researcher-teacher identity, and to create new understanding in some or all of these three areas.
Sometimes I think about other people’s thinking. Sometimes I try to make some art. Sometimes I try to write some poetry.
All of this is a form of living action-research inquiry.
“*A/r/tography: a “commitment to aesthetic and educational practices, inquiry-laden processes, a search for meaning, and interpreting for understanding.”
“The arts create space for thinking differently and provide opportunities to explore intuitive and emotionally connected ideas that do not rely on words alone”
“Arts-based practices open up spaces for doing things differently by moving beyond propositional or conceptual knowledge and bringing into focus experiential knowledge to express knowing in practical terms”
“More ‘meaningful insights [that] often come by surprise, unexpectedly and even against the will of the creator’ result from reflection undertaken through an arts-based approach.”
“Georges Braque on losing his sketchbook:
‘It’s like I’ve lost my brains’.”
‘Exploring the development of student teacher thinking through an arts-based lens’ project - Phase 1 art-research-book now available.
Click on the book cover to read the e-book version.
Please be aware that this is a first draft - minor referencing/ sentence/ grammatical errors will be fixed going forwards, Please bear with me!
The e-book version here is also better viewed on desktop rather than mobile view, as you get the full benefit of the double-page spreads.
Invitation to the reader
The artistic offerings created as part of the research process and shared within the art-research-book are not intended to be explored objectively as creative works of art - they are there as a primer, a mixer and a medium for the thinking taking place - by both the researcher and the audience. I also acknowledge that there can be discomfort for both artist and audience in opening up artistic research for critique, yet scrutiny can also be a useful provocation for reflecting on the key messages and purpose of the research.
I invite you, the audience, to be open to bypassing the familiar, routinised ways of expressing and engaging with academic thinking. Be prepared for ambiguity, surprise, multiplicity, and imaginative and empathetic responses. In moving away from judgement and precise findings, the research process and outcomes here intend to re-frame 'ways of knowing’.